The Powhatan (also spelled Powatan and Powhaten), or Powhatan RenapeThe word "Renape", which means human http://www.powhatan.org/history.html, is cognate with Lenape, the name of another Algonquian-speaking tribe of what is now New Jersey and Pennsylvania. (literally, the "Powhatan Human Beings"), is the name of a Native American tribe, and also the name of a powerful confederacy of tribes that they dominated. They spoke an Algonquian language, and lived in what is now Virginia at the time of the first English-Native encounters.