Early 1600s The county was under the domain of the Tsenacommaco or the Powhatan Confederacy. The confederacy, which encompassed 6,000 square miles of eastern Virginia, bound together approximately thirty Algonquian tribes of 13,000 people in 200 villages. It included the Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes; the Upper Mattaponi tribe is a non-reservated descendent of the Mattaponi and Pamunkey. The paramount chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, Wahunsonacock or Powhatan as the English called him, died in April 1618. He had ceded power to Opitchapan or Itopan about a year earlier in 1617. Opechancanough, Powhatan's younger brother, succeeded Opitchapan in 1619. (The marriage of Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, to John Rolfe in 1614 ensured peace with the English olonists.).