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the Virginia indian

heritage trail

Edited by KarEnnE Wood

Second Edition

Published by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

ISBN 0-9786604-3-

Copyright 2008 by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or electronically transmitted in any form without written permission from the publishers.

Designed by Sequoia Design, Charlottesville, VA

Printed in the United States of America

Cover image: Sierra Adkins (Chickahominy). Photo by Robert Llewellyn, 2006.

For our elders and ancestors,

whose voices were silenced but

whose courage created us.

Acknowledgments

This edition of The Virginia Indian Heri- tage Trail was made possible by funds from the Virginia Tourism Corporation and the Virginia Council on Indians. The previous edition was funded by grants from the following agencies: Jamestown 2007, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the Virginia Tourism Corpora- tion, the Virginia General Assembly, and the Virginia Foundation for the Human- ities. We thank the Virginia Indian tribal leaders for planning assistance and insight as the project progressed, and those tribal members who developed the tribal history pages included here. Thanks also to the members of the Vir- ginia Council on Indians for their help in envisioning this project during the past three years.

Special thanks to Robert Llewellyn for photographic images used throughout this booklet, a number of which were first published in Empires in the Forest (2006) by Avery Chenowith (text) and Robert Llewellyn (photography), University of Virginia Press, with partial funding from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. To David Bearinger, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities,

for assistance with development and review and for thoughtful advice at difficult times. To Keith Damiani, Sequoia Design, and Mathias Tornqvist, design photographer.

Thanks also to Deanna Beacham, Program Specialist, Virginia Council on Indians, for contributing biographical vignettes, text review, and early super- vision of this project. To Robert Chris French, Rhyannon Berkowitz, and Buck Woodard, Heritage Trail reviewers, for insightful analysis of interpretive sites throughout the state. To staff members of those sites for their assistance.

To the members of the Virginia Indian Nations Summit on Higher Education for inspiration over the years. To Betsy Barton, Virginia Department of Education, for enthusiastic support.

as you explore the Virginia Indian cultures and the sites in this book, take advantage of the unique lodging, restaurants and other attractions along the way. For more information about traveling in Virginia, visit www.virginia.org

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities 145 Ednam drive Charlottesville, Virginia 22903 (434) 924-3296 phone (434) 296-4714 fax www.virginiafoundation.org

contents

• VIRGINIA VIEWPOINTS
• Foreword by Chief Kenneth Adams (Upper Mattaponi)
• a Place for the native Voice by Rhyannon Berkowitz (Creek)
• Associate Professor, Department of Archaeology, University of Virginia Virginia Indian archaeology by Jeffrey Hantman,
• Director, Virginia Indian Heritage Program Virginia Indians: our Story by Karenne Wood (Monacan),
• Director of Grants and Public Programs, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities The Legacy of a Complex anniversary by David Bearinger,
• Celebration or Commemoration? Vignettes
• Who Was Powhatan?
• Who Was opechancanough?
• Who Was Pocahontas?
• Who Was amoroleck?
• Who Was Cockacoeske?
• Who Was Bearskin?
• THE TRIBES OF VIRGINIA
• Introduction
• Chickahominy Tribe
• Eastern Chickahominy Tribe
• Mattaponi Tribe
• Monacan Indian nation
• nansemond Tribe
• Pamunkey Tribe
• rappahannock Tribe
• Upper Mattaponi Tribe
• GUIDE TO THE SITES
• Introduction
• Key to Historical Eras
• Tribal Sites
• Interpretive Sites
• RESOURcES
• Writing and Thinking about Virginia Indians
• Suggested readings
• Virginia Indian resources
• 2008 Virginia Indian Calendar of Events

Virginia

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As Americans, we are taught to respect our heritage. As Amer- ican indians, our heritage spans more than 10,000 years. Yet, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, there has been a meager respect for the contributions of such a lengthy history. to the average Virginian, Virginia indian history began in 1607 and ended in 1700. A 10,000 year history has been compressed into fewer than 100 years.

there is so much more to the Virginia indian story. the Heri- tage trail will help immensely in filling this historic void. As a people we were respectful to our environment, living in har- mony with the land and our Creator in several hundred vibrant communities in this land some called Tsenacomoco. in those communities were places of worship, places of recreation, and land set aside for agriculture. there were large houses fit for kings and smaller houses where several families lived. even so, most Americans have read we were savages, and we have been portrayed throughout history as a people to be conquered and tossed aside.

We have an opportunity with this trail to portray the Virginia indian in a proper light. Our heritage is due respect as well as any other heritage. Our history needs to be told as well as any other history. We cannot continue to be the forgot- ten people in the Virginia history books or on the landmarks across this Commonwealth. Our Creator placed us here as the gatekeepers of this land, and our magnificent story can- not and will not be buried.

ForEWord

by Chief kenneth f. adams (upper mattaponi)

In 1607, the first permanent Eng- lish settlement in North America was founded on a small island that came to be known as Jamestown. Combined with Spanish forces in the Florida terri- tory and French colonialists in Canada, the British occupation of Virginia had a devastating impact on the indigenous peoples of this land. This came not just in the form of physical and overt violence; often it was much more sub- tle. Perhaps most appalling was the attempt to simply write American Indi- ans out of existence.

Whether it was through colonial disen- franchisement edicts, scholarly writings that convinced adherents of the inevi- table disappearance of Virginia’s Native people, the passage of laws such as the 1924 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity, or policies which attempted to erase Indian identity, the effect has been to exclude Virginia Indians from history and confine them to the distant past.

Yet they have not disappeared. In fact, Virginia Indians have survived and flour- ished; today, the eight recognized tribes

in the Commonwealth are strong politi- cal and cultural forces. Perhaps most importantly, Virginia Indians are now finally being allowed—even asked—to tell their own stories.

The importance of including Native voices in the presentation of Virginia his- tory cannot be overstated. No longer will Virginia’s Native peoples be viewed as disembodied objects relegated to the past; now, they will be seen as living peo- ples with vibrant and thriving cultures. Their voices will enrich the history of this state, allowing citizens and visitors alike to gain a deeper understanding of past historical occurrences, both good and bad, that have brought us to the pres- ent and that will continue to affect us well into the future.

a place for

the natiVe Voice

by rhyannon berkowitz (Creek) Graduate Student, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Native peoples recognize not only the connection between the past, present, and future, but also the innate connection we have to each other as people.

Native peoples recognize not only the connection between the past, present, and future, but also the innate connec- tion we have to each other as people. While Virginia Indian stories relate experiences that were lived by tribal members, that history is not exclusive;

for better or for worse, the history of Virginia Indians is our history. As more stories are told, as more of our shared history is learned, we will begin to create an understanding of who we are today, not only as Virginians and Americans, but as human beings.

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Archaeology of American Indian sites in Virginia is almost always done today in collaboration with Virginia’s Indian nations and the Virginia Council on Indians, in contrast to the way it was usually done in the past. More and more archaeologists are learning that artifacts and sites are not impersonal scientific objects but are part of the lives of the ancestors of Virginia’s first people, as well as their descendants. Collaborative archaeology provides an alternative voice in the writing of Vir- ginia’s Indian history. This voice is one that fills the long silences spanning the millennia before Europeans arrived, as well as the critical silences that exist within colonial-era documents. A brief review of some archaeological sites illustrates how archaeology helps to fill in the silences of history to offer new perspectives on Virginia’s past.

We can start at what some might call the beginning, if there is such a moment. Cactus Hill, on the Notto- way River in southeast Virginia, is an archaeological site that challenges a long-held orthodoxy that Indian peo-

ple throughout America first entered the continent from the west at 10, BC, crossing over the Bering Land Bridge into Alaska. Many Native peo- ple have challenged this model, based on their religious beliefs and oral histo- ries regarding migrations.

The artifacts at the site are 5000 years older than the Bering Land Bridge theory would allow. Along with several other contemporaneous sites in the

archaeology and

Virginia indian history

by Jeffrey L. hantman, ph.d. Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology Director, Interdisciplinary Program in Archaeology University of Virginia

Eastern U.S., Cactus Hill opens new questions about where the first Indian people came from, if they did arrive from someplace else; about how they arrived (by boat?); and lends a voice to those who would push the history of Virginia’s first people into a much deeper, if not timeless, past.

Archaeological sites in Virginia also confront a long-held and unfounded stereotype that portrayed Indians as part of nature, adapting passively to, rather than actually creating, the ecosystem of which they were a part. English colonists wrote that the Virginia environ- ment they encountered in the seventeenth century was a primeval (undis- turbed) forest. This was a powerful and self-serving myth, because the English believed unimproved land was not owned and there- fore open for the taking. They did not recognize the improvements and investments that had already been made to the land they took.

Archaeological sites bear testimony to how Virginia Indians culturally trans- formed their environment. They burned the forest systematically to increase pro- ductivity for both hunting and gathering. They enhanced the growth of local native starchy plants which became food staples, such as chenopodium (goosefoot). They successfully adopted

non-local plants such as squash, corn and beans to their soils and into their diets. And, they maintained population levels in balance with their chang- ing economies. Cultures of dynamic sustainability and choice, rather than passivity and dependence, can be read in the thousands of American Indian sites dotting the Virginia landscape in the many millennia following the first known settlements.

In the centuries just before the English arrived, surplus agricultural production, population growth, and the development of social hierarchies all became part of Virginia Indian society. It is a question as to how and why those changes came about. In the Virginia Algonquian world of the coastal plain, this hierarchical society has often been viewed as the rapid centralization of power by one man--known to the English as the para- mount chief Powhatan. Native beliefs and ethnography question the idea that one individual in Indian society would have such unchecked authority. Native experts note, for instance, that priests provided a critical check and balance of power in those times. Archaeological study of Werowocomoco, Powhatan’s town at the time of European arrival, has provided some new perspectives.

Studies at Werowocomoco uncovered a landscape marked by the distinctive

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construction of seven hundred feet of ditches, which divided the town into separate spheres. These ditches were culturally meaningful markers demar- cating the power of and within the place. Significantly, the ditches were first built in the thirteenth century. The archaeological evidence suggests that Powhatan moved to Werowocomoco not to create a seat of authority, but more likely to inhabit an already con- secrated place of power.

Colonial observations were particu- larly skewed in their descriptions of Indian people with whom they had little interaction—such as the Mona- can of the Virginia interior. Based on second-hand information, the Mona- can were portrayed as few in number, dispersed, non-agricultural, and hos- tile. But, archaeological surveys in the interior show this region to have been densely occupied, and the ancient towns yield evidence of maize and squash agriculture. Most importantly, the Piedmont and Blue Ridge regions of Virginia were marked by the pres- ence of earthen burial mounds, unlike any others found in Virginia. These mounds are the heart of the Monacan homeland. They are sacred places in which the bones of the ancestors were ritually buried in ceremonies that took place periodically over centuries, building the mound higher and higher over time.

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson transformed one of these mounds into the first scien- tifically studied archaeological site in

North America. Jefferson was inter- ested in how and why the mounds were constructed, and he used archae- ological methods to make sense of this place in his own terms. However, it was not an archaeological site to the Monacan people whom Jefferson observed performing mournful cer- emonies there in the 1750s. And it was not an archaeological site to the Monacan people who returned again to this place in 2001 and conducted a blessing ritual. To these Monacan tribal members, past and present, the mound remains first a place of and for the ancestors. No further excavations will take place there, and human remains from nearby mound sites, long held in museums, have been returned to the Monacan people for reburial, with the help of archaeologists. These mounds, like all Virginia Indian archaeological sites, must be given the respect due to the ancestors, and spoken for by their descendants. Only then, working collaboratively and respectfully, can archaeology fulfill its formidable chal- lenge to help fill in the silences that for too long have shaped and distorted so much of Virginia’s Indian history.

arCHaEoLogy and VIrgInIa IndIan HISTory

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Native peoples have lived in the area we now call Virginia for as many as 17,000 years, according to archeol- ogists. However, if you ask Virginia Indians how long our people have been here, they will probably say, “We have always been here.” Our histories, our ancestral connections, and our tradi- tions are intertwined with the land called Tsenacomoco by Virginia Algon- quian peoples. It is a bountiful land, given to us by the Creator as the place most fitting for us to live.

The early inhabitants of Virginia were hunter-gatherers who followed migra- tory patterns of animals, but over time,

they settled into specific areas, usu- ally along the riverbanks, and outlined their territories. Our people developed intimate, balanced relationships with the animals, plants, and geographic formations that characterized our homelands. History books seldom refer to the sophisticated agricultural tech- niques we practiced for more than 900 years or to the managed landscapes we developed, where hunting and fishing areas alternated with townships and croplands arranged along the water- ways. They seldom note that Native nutrition was far superior to what was available in Europe before the colonial era, or that our knowledge of astron-

Virginia indians:

our story

by karenne wood (monaCan) Director, Virginia Indian Heritage Program

The founding of the Jamestown Colony in May 1607 marked the first successful settle- ment of the English on this continent. It was not the beginning of democracy or of free enterprise, both of which existed among some indigenous tribes before Europeans arrived. It began a developmental process that created the United States of america and, much later, equal opportunity. It also began the processes of american Indian marginalization, racism, and environmental depredation that followed. For Virginia Indians, the quadricentennial is a time to reflect on our ancestors’ sacri- fices and our survival, an opportunity to examine our collective past and to plan for the future of unborn generations. It is a time for honest assessment. Would Powha- tan or John Smith be pleased to see what Virginia has become? How can we ensure that during the next 400 years we will hoor the contributions of all our communities and protect the environmental gifts that surround us?

cElEBRATION or cOmmEmORATION?

omy informed our farming calendars as well as navigation by night. Native peoples developed complex social and religious systems as well as vast trade networks that extended thousands of miles. Monacan people built impres- sive burial mounds throughout their homeland, and the Powhatan devel- oped a complicated tributary system that influenced political and social rela- tionships. Virginia was not a wilderness to us; it was a known and loved home place, and we shared our resources with strangers as well as within our commu- nities. That is the Native way.

The English were not the first Euro- peans to visit the Chesapeake Bay region. Spanish ships began exploring its waterways during the early 1500s and occasionally captured Native boys. The “lost colony” of Roanoke was established by the English in the 1580s but failed within a few years. An English ship was attacked by Indi- ans on the Bay in 1603, and the ship’s captain was killed. Sometime shortly thereafter, European sailors—most

likely English—were welcomed by the Rappahannock chief, whom they killed. They then took several Indian prisoners and left. These may have been the same Indian men who were seen demonstrating dugout canoes on the Thames River in England.

When the English colonists arrived in our homeland in the spring of 1607, perhaps 20,000 Algonquian-speak- ing peoples were incorporated into several paramount chiefdoms such as the Powhatan and Patawomeke, or into independent tribes such as the Chicka- hominy and Rappahannock. A similar number of Siouan-speaking people were located to the west, in the pied- mont and mountain regions of Virginia, members of a loosely confederated alliance that included the Monacan, Mannahoac, Saponi, Nahyssan, Occa- neechi, and Tutelo (Totero) tribes. There were also Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee in the southwestern area, as well as the Nottoway and Meherrin tribes south of Powhatan’s domain. Within a century, the Algonquian tribes

VIrgInIa IndIanS: oUr STory

NATIVE lANGUAGES AND cORRESPONDING VIRGINIA TRIBES

shifting tribal groups iroquoian siouan Algonquian

When the English arrived in Virginia in 1607, Powhatan, whose informal name was Wahunsunacock, was the acknowl- edged paramount chief, or mamanatowick, of more than 32 tribes, with more than 150 towns. These tribes ranged from the Potomac river in the north to just south of the James river in the south, and from the fall line of the rivers in the west to the atlantic ocean. Powhatan, who was probably in his 60s when he first met the English, had acquired leadership of these tribes through inheritance and coercion that was frequently reinforced with family or marriage ties. He held his position not only through military strength but also through great personal and spiritual charisma as well as a complex system of social rules not fully understood by the English. The tribes under Powhatan’s leadership paid tribute to his treasury in food and goods, which were then used for redistribution, trade, rewards, and cere- monial display. In the early years of the English colony, Powhatan’s first intent was probably to incorporate the English into his polity as another tribe. Thwarted by the Eng- lish, who had another agenda, he retired from leadership around 1616 and died in april 1618.

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were reduced to just several hundred individuals. Similar depopulations occurred among other indigenous peoples throughout the East coast and inland regions as European set- tlements spread westward. Through disease and then warfare, Native peo- ples of this continent were decimated, and their lands were taken from them. It has been estimated that, in some areas, as much as ninety percent of the Native population succumbed to European diseases such as smallpox, to which the people had developed no immunity.

Initially, the settlers were welcomed, first by the Kecoughtan at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and then by the Paspahegh, who became the clos- est neighbors to Jamestown. Relations deteriorated quickly, however, due to cultural misunderstandings and deceptions on both sides. Indian raids on the English started within a short time of their arrival, and from then on, relations alternated between uneasy truces and outright hostilities. Mean- while, the starving English attempted to trade for corn with several tribes, and when they were refused, they took it by force. The first real English war

with Virginia Algonquian tribes began in 1610, when Lord de la Warr ordered attacks on the Kecoughtan and the Paspahegh, and the English soldiers brutally killed Indian women and chil- dren as well as the fighting men. This was a shock to the Virginia Indian peoples, who did not kill women and children during warfare but incorpo- rated them into the tribe that prevailed. After Pocahontas was captured by the English in 1613, and then through her marriage to John Rolfe and subse- quent visit to England, several years of peace occurred.

Pocahontas died in England in 1617, and Powhatan died the following year. Within a few short years, the col- ony was at war again. During the first Great Attack, led by Opechancanough in 1622, about one third of the Eng- lish were killed. The second attack, in 1644, was followed by the capture and murder of Opechancanough. The Treaty of 1646 established English dominion over the Lower Peninsula and the requirement that Indian tribes pay tribute to the Governor of Virginia, a practice that continues today among the Pamunkey and Mat- taponi tribes in the form of the Annual Treaty Tribute ceremony, which is held at the Governor’s Mansion on the day before Thanksgiving.

In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon sparked a rebellion against Governor Berkeley, during which he raided the friendly Pamunkey, killing many of the people. Bacon attacked other Virginia Algon- quian tribes as well. He also betrayed his Occaneechi allies, a branch of the Siouan confederation to the west, kill- ing most of them after they had helped him to defeat a Susquehannock group. The 1677 Treaty that followed, signed by the powerful Pamunkey werowan- squa Cockacoeske and other Indian leaders, established the signatory tribes as subjects of the King of Eng- land and required that they hold their lands by patent of the Crown. No Eng- lish were to settle within three miles of an Indian town, a law that was subse- quently violated innumerable times. The travel and trade of Indian nations was heavily regulated.

VIrgInIa IndIanS: oUr STory

opechancanough, a leading chief or werowance of the Pamunkey nation, was a maternal relative of the paramount chief Powhatan. Identified as one of Powhatan’s successors to the paramount chiefdom, he also acted as war chief or military leader for Powhatan. opechan- canough was leading the party of Indians who captured Captain John Smith when Smith went on an exploratory venture up the Chickahominy river late in 1607. It was opechancanough who organized the attacks against the English colonists living outside of Jamestown in 1622, in an attempt to punish them for encroaching on lands that Powhatan had not granted them. The English interpreted these attacks as an attempt to oust them from Virginia, and they retaliated with hostilities against the Indians for several years. after opechancanough became par- amount chief in 1629, he organized similar attacks in 1644. He was unable to walk and was carried on a hurdle to the ensuing skirmishes. Shortly thereaf- ter, when he was nearly 100 years old, he was captured by the English and impris- oned at Jamestown, where he was killed when a prison guard shot him in the back. opechancanough is still revered today by Virginia Indians as a hero and early pro- tector of our lands.

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In 1691, the Brafferton School at the College of William and Mary began to educate young Indian men. Another Indian school, primarily for Saponi youth, was established at Fort Christanna in 1714. Fort Christanna served as a center for trade between the colony and tribes located farther south and as an important security buffer for the colonial settlements. After the Fort closed, some Saponi students attended the Brafferton School. This practice of

educating Indian children as an assimi- lation attempt was later bureaucratized by the United States into the boarding schools where Indian children from throughout the country were sent. One of these schools served African-Amer- icans and Indians separately; it was located in Hampton, Virginia.

Throughout the 18th and 19th cen- turies, Virginia Indian people found themselves policed by the colonial

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government, reduced to poverty as their landholdings eroded or were sto- len outright. The Tutelo, a branch of the Monacan confederacy, left the area to ally with the Iroquois to the north, and a number of other tribes moved out of Vir- ginia and other neighboring states. The remaining Indians’ cultures changed slowly over the years; tribal members adopted European tools and farming techniques, hunted for the deerskin and fur trade as well as subsistence, and were introduced to Christianity and early American customs.

Virginia Indians have defended their homelands in every war in which the U.S. has engaged. Tribal members fought in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, sometimes on opposing sides, and some emerged as early activists during these difficult times. The Upper

Mattaponi and Monacan tribes have maintained oral histories of several Revolutionary War veterans. In 1829, the South Carolina court of appeals rejected the appeal of a Pamunkey Indian, a veteran of the Continental Army, who received a federal pension and had petitioned for the right to vote.

During the Civil War, a number of Pamunkey men chose to serve the Union Army as pilots, in an effort to protect their community from Vir- ginia authorities who had repeatedly attempted to disarm and dispossess them of their reservation. These men were thrown off the rolls of the Colosse Baptist church for serving the Yankees. The group included Terrill Bradby, who went on to become a Union spy and gunboat pilot, and who received a pen- sion for his war service. Bradby later worked with anthropologists James Mooney and Albert Gatschet, teaching them about Powhatan culture, and he

VIrgInIa IndIanS: oUr STory

Pocahontas, a daughter of the paramount chief Powhatan, was about 10 years old in 1607, when the captive John Smith was brought to her father’s headquarters at Werowocomoco. She was noted for being bright and curious. opinions differ as to whether the famous “rescue of John Smith” incident actually happened, but if it did, it was most likely a form of ritual misunderstood by Smith. during the next two years, Pocahontas sometimes accom- panied her father’s councilors on trips to Jamestown. In 1613, while she was visiting with the Patawomeke people in what is now Staf- ford County, the teenager was kidnapped by the English and held for ransom. dur- ing her captivity, Pocahontas met the Englishman John rolfe, who wanted to marry her. after the English made peace with her father, she agreed, with her father’s approval, to accept their reli- gion and marry rolfe. She took the name rebecca. The peace that followed lasted for several years, during which the Eng- lish steadily added to their land holdings from her people’s territory. In 1616, the rolfes went to England with their young son Thomas, where rebecca rolfe was presented to the English court. She died there of an unknown disease in 1617, and she was buried in gravesend. In 2006, a delegation of Virginia Indians vis- ited her grave and honored her as one of our ancestors who faced difficult decisions and did her best for her people.

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was sent to represent his people at the Columbian Exposition of the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893.

In Virginia Indian history, the first half of the 20th century is dominated by issues resulting from state-sanc- tioned racial policies. The first Race Laws were passed in Virginia in 1705; more followed in 1866, and the Racial Integrity Act passed in 1924. It prohib- ited marriage to whites by people of color, including Indians. In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it as unconstitutional. In 1912, Dr. Walter Plecker became the state registrar of

the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Rich- mond and remained in his position until 1946. He was a staunch advo- cate for eugenics, the pseudo-science of race. Plecker believed that there should be only two races of people in Virginia, white and “colored,” that white people were superior, and that people of “mixed” race would produce defec- tive children. By 1925 he had decided, based mainly on conjecture, that there were no “pure” Indians in Virginia. He developed a list of surnames, people he believed to be “mixed,” and he sent instructions to local clerks of courts, hospital personnel, school adminis- trators and others, informing them that persons with these names were not to associate with white people. He altered numerous birth certificates of Indian people, noting their race as “colored.” Plecker was challenged in court during the 1940s by two Monacan men, Roy and Winston Branham, who had been classified as colored for the draft, and by other Monacan people who ques- tioned his right to change their birth certificates. Ultimately, he was forced to admit that no evidence supported his actions.

Most of the current tribes in Virginia established churches and sometimes mission schools during the early years of the 20th century, and many of tthe people accepted Christianity. The schools provided up to a seventh- grade education for those children who were able to attend. Indians were not allowed to attend white schools, and they refused to attend black schools. Many Indian children were needed to

While exploring the upper reaches of the rappahannock river in 1608, near pres- ent-day Fredericksburg, John Smith and his men encountered a group of war- riors who fired arrows at them from the shoreline and then disappeared into the woods. Smith decided to investigate and encountered a wounded man who had been left behind. Smith’s Powhatan guide attempted to kill the man, declaring him to be an enemy, but Smith intervened and spoke with him through a translator. The wounded man identified himself as amoroleck, a member of the Man- nahoac alliance of Siouan-speaking tribes, who were hunting in the region. When asked about the worlds he knew, he described the Powhatan world, then his own, and a third nation of Indians who lived to the northwest—possibly the Haudenosaunee, later called Iroquois by Europeans. Smith asked why the Man- nahoac people had reacted with hostility when he was coming in friendship. amo- roleck replied, “We heard that you were a people come from the underworld, to take our world from us.” amoroleck conducted Smith and his men to his people’s hunting camp, where they were welcomed with a feast and dancing. When Smith returned, he boasted to Pow- hatan that the English had defeated his Mannahoac enemies.

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VIrgInIa IndIanS: oUr STory

help at home or in the fields and could not finish even elementary school. Schools were operated for the tribes by the churches and were taught by white teachers. The Sappony Tribe received funding from North Carolina in 1911 for an Indian school; two years later, Sap- pony youth living on the Virginia side of the High Plains settlement were per- mitted to attend the school along with their fellow tribal members living on the North Carolina side.

High school education was not avail- able to Indians in Virginia. Those who wished to attend were required to leave the state. A number of the Virginia

Algonquian tribes sent their children to facilities such as the Bacone Indian School in Oklahoma, where they could complete high school and the equiva- lent of a community college degree. The trip to Bacone lasted 22 hours by train or bus, and children were rarely able to come home even for Christmas. Some of the graduates, such as Leonard and Marie Adkins, became teachers and leaders among their own people. About half of the Monacan families relocated during this time, many to Baltimore, Maryland. Mean- while, students from tribes in faraway states such as North and South Dakota were being sent to Hampton Institute.

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VIrgInIa IndIanS: oUr STory

Public schooling was not made avail- able to Virginia Indians until 1963, despite the decision of Brown v. Board of Education nine years earlier.

Beginning in the 1890s, many of the Vir- ginia Algonquian tribes were visited by anthropologists James Mooney and later Frank Speck, who took photographs and compiled descriptions of their commu- nities. With Speck’s encouragement, the tribes attempted to revive the “Powhatan Confederacy” in the 1920s, and the first efforts toward organized political activ- ism began. During the 1970s, various groups were organized, and tribes began working toward official state recognition. The Pamunkey Tribe successfully sued over a land claim involving reservation acreage they had lost during the Civil War. Eight tribes obtained official rec- ognition from the Commonwealth in the 1980s, although the Pamunkey and Mattaponi had retained their reserva- tions and had been observing their treaty relationship all along. The other state- recognized tribes are the Chickahominy,

the Chickahominy Eastern Division, the Monacan, the Nansemond, the Rappah- annock, and the Upper Mattaponi.

Among the Virginia Indian tribes, sev- eral traditional cultural forms are still practiced, and newer traditions have developed as well. Tribal artists work in beadwork, leather crafting, wood carving, pottery, and basket weaving. Tribal dancing continues, and Virginia Indians practice not only their own traditional dances, such as the Green Corn Dance and the Canoe Dance, but they also participate in intertribal powwow dancing as well. The Mat- taponi and Pamunkey maintain fish hatcheries on their rivers to protect the population of American shad, and most tribes host an annual powwow as well as other public events.

Since the 1980s, the tribes have worked diligently to retain and reclaim our cul- tural traditions and improve economic conditions for our people. Chiefs are elected from among the tribal mem-

STATE REcOGNIzED TRIBES

Eight tribes obtained formal recognition from the Commonwealth during the 1980s—The Chickahominy, Chickahominy Eastern Division, Mattaponi, Monacan, Nansemond, Pamunkey, Rappahannock, and the Upper Mattaponi. The Pamunkey and Mattaponi retained their reservations and have been observing their treaty relationships since 1677. Below is a map of the eight tribes’ tribal communities today.

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bers, and tribal councils meet regularly to address issues of concern and inter- est. Several tribes have established heritage classes for their young peo- ple and programs for elders. Almost all have purchased land in their homeland areas. Some are working on language reclamation. Six of the eight tribes have pursued federal acknowledgement through a bill introduced in Congress. Together the eight tribes worked to organize events for the Jamestown 2007 commemoration, and in 2006, fifty-five tribal delegates visited Kent

County, England, where Pocahontas is buried. It was the first time a delegation of Virginia Indians had visited England in almost 400 years.

Virginia Indian people are justifiably proud of our history, our traditions, our survival, and our record of contribu- tions to our state and country. We love our homelands, and we have fought to defend them over the centuries. We are made of this land, and we belong here. We come from this earth, this ground, and we will always be here.