tertainment. The English
first met with him at a place of his own name, (which it still retains,)
a short distance below the falls of James River, where now stands the
picturesque City of Richmond.[129:C] His favorite residence was
Werowocomoco, on the east bank of what is now known as Timberneck Bay,
on York River, in the County of Gloucester; but in his latter years,
disrelishing the increasing proximity of the English, he withdrew
himself to Orapakes, a hunting-town in the "desert," as it was called,
more properly the wilderness, between the Chickahominy and the Pamunkey.
It is not improbable that he died and was buried there, for a mile from
Orapakes, in the midst of the woods, he had a house where he kept his
treasure of furs, copper, pearl, and beads, "which he storeth up against
the time of his death and burial."[130:A] This place is about twelve
miles northeast from Richmond.

At the time of the first settlement of the colony, Powhatan was usually
attended, especially when asleep, by a body-guard of fifty tall
warriors; he afterwards augmented the number to about two hundred. He
had as many wives as he pleased, and when tired of any one of them, he
bestowed her on some favorite. In the year 1608, by treachery, he
surprised the Payanketanks, his own subjects, while asleep in their
cabins, massacred twenty-four men, and made prisoners their werowance
with the women and children, who were reduced to slavery. Captain Smith,
himself a prisoner, saw at Werowocomoco the scalps of the slain
suspended on a line between two trees. Powhatan caused certain
malefactors to be bound hand and foot, then a great quantity of burning
coals to be collected from a number of fires, and raked round in the
form of a cock-pit, and the victims of his barbarity thrown in the midst
and burnt to death.[130:B] He was not entirely destitute of some better
qualities; in him some touches of princely magnanimity are curiously
blended with huckstering cunning, and the tenderness of a doating father
with the cruelty of an unrelenting despot.

Powhatan was succeeded by his second brother, Opitchapan, sometimes
called Itopatin, or Oeatan, who, upon his accession, again changed his
name to Sasawpen; as Opechancanough, upon the like occasion, changed
his to Mangopeomen. Opitchapan being decrepid in body and inert in mind,
was in a short time practically superseded in the government by his
younger, bolder, and more ambitious brother, the famous Opecha