The premise of James Horn's new book is simple. In 1561, a Spanish mariner kidnapped a Native teenager named Paquiquineo during a reconnaissance of Chesapeake Bay. Renamed don Luís de Velasco, this extraordinary man circulated throughout the Spanish empire, traveling to Seville, Madrid, Mexico City, Havana, and Santa Elena in Florida before returning home in 1570 with a handful of Jesuits. He soon turned on the mission and killed all but one. Florida's adelantado, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, retaliated, and don Luís disappeared. Or so it seemed. In 1607, English colonizers invaded the Chesapeake. Their greatest opponent was Opechancanough, pronounced “oh-pee-KAAN-kuh-noo” (as the archaeologist Martin D. Gallivan explains; note the similarity to Paquiquineo), a Pamunkey weroance and brother of Wahunsonacock, the paramount chief of Tsenacommacah. Horn argues that Paquiquineo and Opechancanough were in fact one and the same.
Part 1, “Atlantic Worlds” (chapters 1–3), focuses on how the captive...
