Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 86.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this on August 29, 2022, in Austin, Texas.

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.

For weeks now, I've been anticipating Opa-Kancona's war.

A brilliantly conceived theater-wide ambush of the English settled along the James River

sprung on March 22, 1622, just a few months more than 400 years ago.

Then I sat down to write, and I realized that the useful prerequisites for this episode are very scattered, starting with

the last part of episode 30, as Apple counts it, the Spanish on the Atlantic coast and the strange

story of Don Luis, which dropped on July 15th, 2021, obviously more than a year ago.

It's expecting a bit much for even our most long-standing and attentive listeners to remember all that,

so this episode will consolidate the story of Opa Kankana and the most interesting speculations about him.

Opa Kankana lived until 1646 when an English man shot him in the back.

At that time, Opa Cancana was believed to be 99 or even more than 100 years old, and he had

been known to the English for 37 years since at least 1607 when John Smith was captured

by his hunting party.

That would put the year of his birth in the mid to late 1540s, making him just a few years younger

than Sir Francis Drake. I crack me up.

Opa Cancana was nothing less than an unreconstructed Native American patriot.

More than 40 years ago, the great historian of colonial America, Carl Brydenbaugh, wrote that Opaacancona deserves to, quote, rank high among the most famous American Indians, with Massasoit, King Philip, Pontiac, Logan, the

Orator, Joseph Brandt, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo. Bridenbaugh admitted Opa Cancana's close relative

Wahoon Sonocococque, known to us as the Paramount Chief Powhatan, Powhat, because Bridenbaugh argued that

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