Don Luís de Velasco / Paquiquineo (fl 1561–1571) – Encyclopedia Virginia encyclopediavirginia.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from encyclopediavirginia.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
SUMMARY
Juan Baptista de Segura was a priest and vice-provincial of the Jesuits in the Spanish province of La Florida. In 1570 he led a mission to the Chesapeake Bay and was killed the next year in an ambush led by Don Luís de Velasco (formerly Paquiquineo), a Virginia Indian who had converted to Christianity. Born in Toledo and educated at a time when Spanish clerics vigorously debated the best way of converting American Indians, Segura joined the Society of Jesus in 1556 and was ordained a priest the following year. Ten years after that he was named vice-provincial of the Jesuits in La Florida. An intellectual and idealist, Segura was also an indecisive leader who advised his superior that the Jesuits should abandon La Florida and then, just a few months later, organized a mission to the Chesapeake Bay. Segura insisted, against the advice of Florida governor Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, that the Jesuits did not need military protection on their mission. He instead placed
Archaeological work conducted in 1996–1997 determined that a Patawomeck settlement on Potomac Creek, where the creek empties into the Potomac River at Marlboro Point, dates to around AD 1300. The Algonquian-speakers likely intruded on the area from the north and lived behind a palisade designed to protect them from various warring groups. By 1607, when the first English colonists arrived at Jamestown, the Patawomeck lived north of Accokeek Creek on the south bank of the Potomac River. Their principal town, surrounded by a palisade, was Patawomeck. Based on accounts published in 1612 and 1624, they numbered from 160 to 200 men, and English observers suggested their tribal name translated to “trading place.”