1606 map of the Tidewater region of Virginia, showing the colony of Jamestown, among others. In the upper left is an image of the Powhatan, the chief of the Tsenacommacah. In the upper right is an indigenous hunter/warrior, carrying a bow, a club, and the body of an animal he has killed.
25 June 2021
Tsenacommacah is the Powhatan term for the Tidewater region and surrounding lands in what is now commonly called Virginia. The word was also used to refer to a socio-political grouping of Algonquian peoples living there, the Powhatan Confederacy. The meaning of Tsenacommacah is somewhat uncertain, but it is often translated as “densely inhabited land,” a compound of tsen (close together) + ahkamikwi (land dwelt upon, dwelling house).
But when English settler-colonists founded their first colonies there, they dubbed the land Virginia, after Elizabeth I, the so-called virgin queen. Originally, Virginia referred to all English claims to North America, not just the area we now know by that name. But since the first successful English colony was in the Tidewater at Jamestown, the name eventually came to mean that and immediately surrounding areas and not other colonies elsewhere on the Eastern seaboard.
The earliest use of Virginia that I have found is from Walter Bigges’s account of Francis Drake’s 1585–86 expedition to raid the Spanish colonies in the Americas. Bigges was one of Drake’s ship captains. The passage refers to Drake’s June 1586 resupply of the Roanoke colony, which was in what is now North Carolina, but in the sixteenth century that was all Virginia. The reference to St. Helena is to St. Helena Island in what is now South Carolina and not to the island in the South Atlantic where Napoleon was exiled:
Here it was resolued in full assemblie of Captaines, to vndertake the enterprise of S. HELENA, and from thence to seeke out the inhabitation of our English countrey men in VIRGINIA, distant from thence some sixe degrees Northward.
When we came thwart of S. HELENA, the shols appearing daungerous, and we hauing no Pilot to vndertake the entrie, it was thought meetest to go hence alongst. For the Admirall had bene the same night in foure fadome and halfe three leagues from the shore: and yet we vnderstood, that by the helpe of a knowen Pilot, there may and doth go in ships of greater burthen and draught then anie we had in our Fleete.
We passed thus alongest the coast hard abord the shore, which is shallow for a league or two from the shore, and the same is lowe and broken land for the most part.
The ninth of Iune vpon sight of one speciall great fire (which are verie ordinarie all alongst this coast, euen from the Cape FLORIDA hither) the Generall sent his Skiffe to the shore, where they found some of our English countrey men (that had bene sent thither the yeare before by Sir Walter Raleigh) & brought one aboord, by whose direction we proceeded along to the place, which they make their Port. But some of our ships being of great draught vnable to enter, we ankered all without the harbour in a wild road at sea, about two miles from shore.
From whence the General wrote letters to Maister Rafe Lane, being Gouernour of those English in VIRGINIA, and then at his fort about six leagues from the rode in an Island, which they call ROANOAC, wherein specially he shewed how readie he was to supply his necessities and wants, which he vnderstood of, by those he had first talked withall.
The morrowe after Maister Lane him selfe and some of his companie comming vnto him, with the consent of his Captaines, he gaue them the choise of two offers, that is to say: Either he would leaue a ship, a Pinnace, and certaine boates with sufficient Maisters and mariners, together furnished with a moneths victuall to stay and make farther discouerie of the country and coastes, and so much victuall likewise that might be sufficient for the bringing of them all (being an hundred and three persons) into England if they thought good after such time, with anie other thing they would desire, & that he might be able to spare.
Or else if they thought they had made sufficient discouerie alreadie, and did desire to returne into England, he would giue them passage. But they as it seemed, being desirous to stay, accepted verie thankefully, and with great gladnesse that which was offred first.
Drake and his crew would be the last white men to see the ill-fated colonists of Roanoke.
Subsequently, Jamestown would become the first successful English colony in North America, and Virginia would be among the thirteen colonies that rebelled against Britain in 1775. On 25 June 1788, it became the tenth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. The western region of the state, which had relatively few slaves and little political or commercial interest in breaking with the Union during the Civil War, split from the eastern portion of the state, becoming the state of West Virginia on 20 June 1863.
I also chanced upon 1609 use of Virginia that, while far from the first use of that name, is fascinating in its own right. It’s from the dedicatory epistle to a published version of a sermon delivered by William Symonds on 25 April 1609 in Southwark, London to an audience of prospective planters in Virginia:
This land, was of old time, offered to our Kings. Our late Soueraigne Q. Elizabeth (whose storie hath no peere among Princes of her sexe) being a pure Virgin, found it, set foot in it, and called it Virginia. Our most sacred Soueraigne, in whom is the spirit of his great Ancestor, Constantin t[h]e pacifier of the world, and planter of the Gospell in places most remote, desireth to present this land a pure Virgine to Christ. Such as doe mannage the expedition, are carefull to carry thither no Traitors, nor Papists that depend on the Great Whore. Lord finish this good worke thou hast begun; and marry this land, a pure Virgine to thy kingly sonne Christ Iesus; so shall thy name bee magnified: and we shall haue a Virgin or Maiden Britaine, a comfortable addition to our Great Britaine.
Of course, Elizabeth herself never “set foot” in North America, but the passage is representing the dual nature of the monarch’s body—the physical human body and the body of the nation she rules. It is this latter body that set foot in and established colonies in North America. The passage also invokes the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was campaigning in Britain when he became Emperor. By so doing it compares the current king, James I, who by establishing the Virginia colonies brought Christianity to the region, to the emperor who established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. And Symonds refers to America as “a Virgin or Maiden Britaine,” a place that, since it is untouched by sin, can be perfected as a Christian nation—a sentiment that was shared by the later Puritan colonists of New England, but not by the Virginia colonists, who were in it solely for the profit. The idea of “virgin” land also necessitates the erasure of the indigenous people already living there and is why today we call it Virginia and not Tsenacommacah.
Sources:
Bigges, Walter. A Summarie and True Discourse of Sir Francis Drakes West Indian Voyage. London: Richard Field, 1589, 47–49. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Gleach, Frederic W. Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures. Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press, 1997, 25, 207.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Virginia, n.
Symonds, William. “Dedicatorie Epistle.” A Sermon Preached at White-Chappel, in the Presence of Many, Honourable and Worshipfull, the Aduenturers and Planters for Virginia, 25 April 1609. London: I. Windet, 1609, unpaginated front matter. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Whitt, Laurelyn and Alan W. Clarke. “The Powhatan Tsenacommacah (1607–1677).” North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019, 117.
Image credit: John Smith and William Hole, 1606 (published 1624). Library of Congress. Public domain image.