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Updated: June 5, 2025
Werowance and Caucorouse are not synonymous terms. Werowance means "chief," and Caucorouse means "talker" or "orator," and is the original of our word "caucus."
Until our interview with Chanco the Christian, the village of the Paspaheghs, and not the village of the Chickahominies, had been our destination, and since leaving the block house we had made good speed; but now, within the usual girdle of mulberries, we were met by the werowance and his chief men with the customary savage ceremonies.
The forest echoed to the loud and warlike tune, and a multitude of birds rose startled from the trees upon the bank. The Indians frowned, and one in the boat behind called out to strike the singer upon the mouth; but the werowance shook his head. There were none upon that river who might not know that the Paspaheghs journeyed to Uttamussac with prisoners in their midst.
The Indian pointed to the crimson flood below. "There are my young men; there are my braves. Among them were a werowance and a sagamore. They two have strings of pearl thicker than the stem of the grape vine; they are painted with puccoon, and the feathers of the bluebird and the red-bird are upon them.
The tomahawk had stopped but a feather's breadth from her black hair, so close that the Indian who held it could scarcely breathe for fear it might have injured the daughter of The Powhatan. For a moment it seemed to all the anxious onlookers as if the werowance, furious at such disobedience, were about to order the blow to fall upon both heads.
I myself would have been pleased to go on shore and see these strange people, but not being able to do so save at the cost of leaving my master, I can only repeat some of the curious things which Nathaniel Peacock told me. It must be known that there was more than one nation, or tribe, of savages in this new land of Virginia, and each had its king or chief, who was called the werowance.
Behold the supplies I, thy father, have here for thee." And Smith, though he doubted somewhat, did not feel certain that Powhatan was not speaking the truth. But Pocahontas, still in hiding, knew well that no man in Werowocomoco would have dared shoot at the white men except by direct order of their werowance.
Werowance and Caucorouse are not synonymous terms. Werowance means "chief," and Caucorouse means" talker" or "orator," and is the original of our word "caucus."
Smith, in his "General Historie," says the Indians have "but few occasions to use any officers more than one commander, which commonly they call Werowance, or Caucorouse, which is Captaine." It is probably not possible, with the best intentions, to twist Kocoum into Caucorouse, or to suppose that Strachey intended to say that a private captain was called in Indian a Kocoum.
I abode there for a time, then I set forth once more and travelled long in a land called Italy and entered later the service of a great werowance, the Emperor Rudolph, to fight for him against the tribes of his foes, the Turks.
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