Cockacoeske

Cockacoeskie
Personal details
Born	ca. 1640 Pamunkey Neck, VA
Died	ca. 1686
Spouse	Totopotomoi
Children	Captain John West
Known for	First signatory of the Articles of Peace in 1677 after Bacon's Rebellion
Nickname	Queen of Pamunckey

Cockacoeskie (also spelled Cockacoeske) (ca. 1640 - ca. 1686) was a 17th-century leader of the Pamunkey Tribe of Native Americans in what is now Virginia in the United States. Over the thirty-year span of her reign, she worked within the English system, trying to recapture the former power of past paramount chiefs and maintain a peaceful unity among the several tribes under her control. She was the first of the tribal leaders to sign the Virginia-Indian Treaty of 1677/1680

History

The death of Opechancanough in 1646 led to the disintegration of the Powhatan Confederacy. Chiefs competed to gain power among the tribes of the former confederacy. Among the Pamunkey, Cockacoeske's husband Totopotomoi became leader in 1649.

Totopotomoi was killed in 1656 in the Battle of Bloody Run (not to be confused with the 1763 Battle of Bloody Run in Michigan). A Historical Marker at the site of the battle describes the debacle:

Nearby is the site where Chief Totopotomoy of the Pamunkey died in 1656. The English colonists had become concerned over the recent settlement nearby of the Rickohockans along the falls of the James River. They called upon Totopotomoy to assist in removing the Rickohockans. An English force led by Col. Edward Hill along with Totopotomoy and his men fought the Rickohockans in 1656. Totopotomoy and many of his men were killed, and the event became known as the Battle of Bloody Run. The Council of Virginia later censured Hill for his lack of leadership.

Following Totopotomoi's death, Cockacoeske was recognized by the Colonial Government as "Queen of Pamunkey".

When Bacon's Rebellion erupted, the English once again sought help from the Pamunkey against the hostile tribes. Sporadic raids by Indian tribes against settlers on the colony's frontier contributed to Nathaniel Bacon's beginning a popular uprising. A wealthy planter, he competed for power with Gov. Berkeley and resented the failure of the government to help settlers on the frontier. Although raids had been by the Doeg and Susquehannock tribes, Bacon and his men attacked the peaceful Pamunkey, Mattaponi, and Kiskiack tribes, causing much distress in their towns.

The meeting at which the colonists request help from Cockacoeske is described in a contemporary account transcribed by Thomas Jefferson:

Our commitee being sat, the Quenn of Pamunkey (descended from Oppechankenough a former Emperor of Virginia) was introduced, who entred the chamber with a comportment gracefull to admiration, bringing on her right hand an Englishman interpreter, and on the left her son a stripling twenty years of age, she having round her head a plat of black and white wampum peague three inches broad in imitation of a crown, and was cloathed in a mantle of dress't deer skins with the hair outwards and the edge cut round 6 inches deep which made strings resembling twisted frenge from the shoulders to the feet; thus with grave courtlike gestures and a majestick air in her face, she walk'd up our long room to the lower end of the table, where after a few intreaties she sat down; th' interpreter and her son standing by her on either side as they walked up, our chairman asked her what men she woud lend us for guides in the wilderness and to assist us against our enemy Indians, she spake to th' interpreter to inform her what the chairman said, (tho' we believed she understood him) he told us she bid him ask her son to whom the English tongue was familiar, and who was reputed the son of an English colonel, yet neither woud he speak to or seem to understand the chairman but th' interpreter told us, he referred all to his mother, who being againe urged she after a little musing with an earnest passionate countenance as if tears were ready to gush out and a fervent sort of expression made a harangue about a quarter of an hour often, interlacing (with a high shrill voice and vehement passion) these words "Tatapatamoi Chepiack," i.e. Tatapamoi dead. Coll. Hill being next me, shook his head, I ask'd him what was the matter, he told me all she said was too true to our shame, and that his father was generall in that battle, where diverse years before Tatapatamoi her husband had led a hundred of his Indians in help to th' English against our former enemy Indians, and was there slaine with most of his men; for which no compensation (at all) had been to that day rendered to her wherewith she now upbraided us.

Her discourse ending and our morose chairman not advancing one cold word toward asswaging the anger and grief her speech and demeanor manifested under her oppression, nor taking any notice of all she had said, neither considering that we (then) were in our great exigency; supplicants to her for a favour of the same kind as the former, for which we did not deny the having been so ingrate, he rudely push'd againe the same question "what Indians will you now contribute, &c.? of this disregard she signified her resentment by a disdainfull aspect, and turning her head half aside, sate mute till that same question being press'd, a third time, she not returning her face to the board, answered with a low slighting voice in her own language "twelve, tho' she then had a hundred and fifty Indian men, in her town, and so rose up and gravely walked away, as not pleased with her treatment.

After the rebellion had ended, a new treaty was negotiated between the Colonial Government and the Indians. The Virginia-Indian Treaty of 1677/1680, also known as the Treaty of Middle Plantation, was signed on May 29 1677 by Cockacoeske and her son, and later by several other tribes. Essentially, these tribes accepted their de facto position as subjects of the British Crown, and gave up their remaining claims to their ancestral land, in return for protection from the remaining hostile tribes and a guarantee of a limited amount of reserved land -- the first Native American reservation to be established in America.

Cockacoeske is thought to have been succeeded by a niece, Queen Betty.

Family

If Cockacoeske had children with her husband Totopotomoi, their names are not known. Her one known son, who joined her in signing the Treaty of 1677/1680, was born around 1655-56. He was known as Captain John West and was "reputed the son of an English colonel".

Further reading

• Frederick W. Gleach, Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: Conflict in Cultures (Lincoln and London: The University of Nebraska Press, 1997)
• Martha McCartney, "Cockacoeske, Queen of Pamunkey: Diplomat and Suzeraine", in Peter H. Wood, Gregory A. Waselkov, and M. Thomas Hatley (eds.), Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, c1989)
• Helen C. Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989).