ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 55 
Powhatan, who gave his own name to a confederation, 
which included the tribes of the Monacans, and Man- 
nahoacks, and perhaps others, who Hved to the west 
and northeast of the mouth of the James River, and 
among the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge and Alle- 
ghany Mountains. This Indian potentate, at the time 
of the first settlement of Jamestown in 1607, was gener- 
ally recognized by the Indians as a sort of king, and 
maintained a numerous retinue of hunters and warriors. 
This confederation had made some progress toward 
civilization, if judged from the point of view of having 
fixed habitations, peaceful pursuits, and the possession 
of some of the useful arts, the most important of which 
was agriculture. 
The intelligence to provide stores of grain, fish, and 
other articles of subsistence, was the first step to the 
recognition of property, and one essential to civiliza- 
tion. They had passed out of the condition of savagery. 
Although some tribes north of the Potomac had ad- 
vanced so far as to erect dwellings of a more or less 
permanent character, and even to cultivate certain 
crops, yet, leaving out the Pueblo Indians of New 
Mexico, none either north or south seem to have at- 
tained that degree of civilization which erected tem- 
ples and recognized not only a priest but a priesthood, 
and practiced a fixed system of religious worship, ex- 
cept the Natchez tribe, with its affiliated branches of 
Indians living on the Lower Mississippi. As religion is 
one of the chief elements in unifying a people, it is 
The New England Pokanoket confederacy, under Massasoit, over 
several tribes and a large section of country. Doubtless there were 
other confederacies of which I have no data. 
