Don Luis de Velasco

Don Luís de Velasco
Paquiquino
Kiskiack or Paspahegh tribe leader

Don Luís de Velasco (flourished 1561-1571), also known as Paquiquino, was a Native American, possibly of the Kiskiack or Paspahegh tribe, from Tidewater Virginia. In 1561 he was taken by a Spanish expedition. He traveled with them ultimately to Spain, Cuba and Mexico, where he was baptized as Don Luís de Velasco and educated. Don Luís returned to Virginia in 1571 as guide and interpreter for a party of Jesuit missionaries. He is believed to have taken part in a later massacre of the Jesuits at this site, when the region was struggling with famine.

Carl Bridenbaugh is one of the historians who have speculated that Don Luís was the same person as Opechancanough, younger half-brother (or close relative) of the Powhatan (Wahunsonacock), paramount chief of an alliance of Algonquian-speakers in the Tidewater. Opechancanough succeeded to the post of paramount chief and led two noted attacks on Jamestown settlers, one in 1622 and another in 1644, in an effort to expel them. The Virginia anthropologist Helen C. Rountree has suggested this is an unlikely coincidence, arguing that the Virginia Indians may have claimed otherwise "in an attempt to disavow their association with Opechancanough, whose memory was still so detested by the English due to the attack of 1622."

During the sixteenth century, the Indians in Tidewater Virginia were Algonquian-speakers. They lived in towns and villages located along the rivers feeding the Chesapeake Bay, and were ruled by chiefs, or weroances that were part of the Powhatan confederacy.

Early in the 16th century, Spanish explorers discovered the Chesapeake Bay while in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. They gave the land now known as Virginia the name Ajacán.

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