Reading with Powhatan Ancestral Remains in Robert Beverley's The History and Present State of Virginia

Abstract:

This essay presents Robert Beverley's 1705 The History and Present State of Virginia as a case study of the role Indigenous ancestral remains serve for both colonial attempts at control and as teachers for current anticolonial scholarly approaches. Analyzing his depiction of Powhatan ancestral remains, this piece first argues that Beverley presents Powhatan ancestors as solely bones, that is, as transferable and general "objects" that serve as a synecdoche for removed Indigenous populations at large. However, despite Beverley's brief and abstracting descriptions, I argue that these moments continue to register the prolonged attention and ongoing care that Powhatan relations undertake for their ancestors, underscoring the presence of what I call testimonies of remaining care. These testimonies, I argue, break apart settler erasures by attesting to the kinship that always continues to surround Powhatan ancestors. Reframing texts like Beverley's as narratives that depend on Indigenous life rather than death, this article demonstrates how ancestral relations testify to the structural grounding of Indigenous communities and care work to narratives that seek to obscure them.