By 1635; account published September 8, 1635
A Wicomesse envoy contests English demands for jurisdiction
Maryland; Wicomesse and Patuxent communities
A colonial account published in 1635 reports an exchange between Governor Leonard Calvert and an unnamed envoy representing the Wicomesses. After killings of English people, Calvert demanded the accused be surrendered to him. The envoy offered customary compensation and argued that English newcomers should respect the country’s existing customs. Calvert dismissed him with a renewed demand for an answer.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
The envoy identifies himself in the account as born at Patuxent and married among the Wicomesses. This is reported speech in an English promotional publication, not an independently preserved Indigenous transcript. The account places the violence in the previous year and the embassy about two months later; Hall’s edition labels it 1634. The timeline uses the secure 1635 publication year, not an established date of the conversation. No agreed settlement is recorded in this passage.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 1, p. 21; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- A Relation of Maryland (London, September 8, 1635), in Clayton Colman Hall, ed., Narratives of Early Maryland, 1633–1684 (1910), pp. 70, 88–90; Maryland State Archives scan ↗