to a turkey farm, bought a live turkey, brought it back to the reservation and killed it. That way we were able to fulfill the terms of the treaty—after all it was killed on the reservation." As far as anyone knows, they have not missed a payment in 342 years. History Based on archaeological evidence, scholars estimate that various distinct cultures of Native Americans occupied this part of the mid-Atlantic coast for more than 10,000 years before European contact. Evidence has been collected by archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians. Varying cultures of indigenous peoples of the Americas lived in the areas later occupied by the historic Pamunkey. The Pamunkey are part of the larger Algonquian-speaking language family. This was composed of a number of tribes who spoke variations of the same language, a language now mostly lost. By 1607, more than 30 tribes were tributaries of the Algonquian Powhatan Confederacy, of which the Pamunkey were the largest and one of the most powerful. Chief Powhatan and his daughter Matoaka (better known as Pocahontas to historians), who achieved historical fame, were Pamunkey Native Americans. Captain Samuel Argall abducted her as a hostage in an attempt to secure the release of some English prisoners and ammunitions held by her father. European contact Initial contact with Europeans was around 1570. "And from [1570] on at ever briefer intervals until the first permanent English colony was established at Jamestown in 1607, the Powhatan Confederacy was visited by white men: Spanish, French, and English." (Barbour, 5). Scholars estimate that when the English arrived in 1607, this paramount chiefdom numbered about 14,000–21,000 people. Colonists of the first successful English settlement, based at Jamestown, had a complicated relationship with Virginia's Native Americans. In the winter of 1607, Opechanacanough, chief of the Pamunkey tribe, captured Captain John Smith. Smith was brought to Opechancanough's brother, Chief Powhatan. This first meeting between Powhatan and Smith resulted in an alliance between the two people. Powhatan sent Smith back to Jamestown in the spring of 1608 and started sending gifts of food to the colonists. If not for Powhatan's donations, the settlers would not have survived through the first winters. As the settlement expanded, competition for land and other resources, and conflict between the settlers and Virginia tribes, increased. Gradual English colonization The story of Pocahontas (Matoaka) tells a piece of Pamunkey history, but from an English colonial perspective. Study of primary documents