#66 Jamestown and the Powhatans Part 8: The Emissaries
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2022
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Again we digress into the question of privateering and letters of marque, and then take on the stories of the two “sons” whom Christopher Newport and the paramount chief Powhatan exchanged as hostages and emissaries in 1608, the English boy Thomas Savage and the young Powhatan man Namontack. Neither are as famous as Pocahontas or, for that matter, Squanto (Tisquantum), but they were remarkable in their own right. Both would show an impressive facility for utterly alien languages and cultures, and both would be torn between loyalty to their own people and to the side that adopted them. One of them would eventually achieve the honor of giving a name to a vessel of the United States Navy.
Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast
Selected references for this episode
Christopher Clausen, “Between Two Worlds,” The American Scholar, Summer 2007
The Paris Declaration of 1856 (re privateering)
Jimmy Buffett, “A Pirate Looks At Forty,” with Jerry Jeff Walker
Malintzin (Wikipedia)
Debedeavon (Wikipedia)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 66. |
| 0:11.1 | I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this in Austin, Texas, very early in the morning on March 28, 2022. |
| 0:23.7 | If you are new to the podcast, we are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without presentism. |
| 0:30.9 | For those of you have been hearing that word, but didn't have a good working definition. |
| 0:35.9 | Presidism is the uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, |
| 0:40.6 | especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts. |
| 0:47.8 | Longstanding and attentive listeners have heard me go off about presentism |
| 0:51.8 | and a different but related idea, weaponizing of history for |
| 0:56.4 | contemporary political purposes. My various tirades on that topic appear in several episodes, |
| 1:04.0 | including toward the end of episode 25, taking stock, and episode 48, a sidebar I put up on November 19th, 2021. |
| 1:14.5 | Announcements and some news from history, Twitter. |
| 1:18.7 | The weaponization of history by, shall we say, both sides of the American political divide, is really out of hand. |
| 1:30.1 | I haven't minded to do a sidebar episode on that subject at some point as soon as my muse leads me in that direction. Before we get to business in |
| 1:37.0 | Virginia, shout out to devoted listener Phil from Reading, Pennsylvania. Reacting to my little |
| 1:43.3 | digression on letters of Mark and reprisal a couple of episodes back, |
| 1:48.4 | a Texan congressman had proposed issuing letters of Mark to go after the yachts and planes of Russian oligarchs. |
| 1:56.2 | Bill sent me a direct message on Twitter this Friday, |
| 1:59.7 | pointing out that letters of Mark have been outlawed |
| 2:02.1 | by international agreement since at least the Paris Declaration of 1856. That agreement provides |
| 2:09.0 | in pertinent part that, quote, privateering is and remains abolished. The neutral flag covers |
| 2:16.8 | enemy's goods with the exception of contraband of war. |
| 2:21.2 | Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under enemy's flag. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jack Henneman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jack Henneman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.