There are about 300 enrolled members of a tribe that, at the time of Capt. John Smith’s visit in August 1608, probably numbered in the thousands. That summer there would have been a thriving population (Smith calls them Toppahanocks in his journal) along the Rappahannock River and into what is now the Northern Neck. “At that time there were 15 villages. Each would have had maybe 100 bowmen,” says G. Anne Richardson, chief of the Rappahannock Tribe Inc. There would have been up to 20 women and children for each bowman. “We were probably living in longhouses,” hut-like structures made of wood and thatch, “and there would have been families living with extended families,” she said. Much of what is known today about the Indians who inhabited Virginia from prehistoric times was passed down from generation to generation. A typical village would have had a dozen or more structures for communal eating, sleeping and ritual use, and may have been protected by palisades—trees sharpened to a point and buried upright around the perimeter to keep enemies out. Corn, beans and squash—called the “three sisters”—would have been planted on fertile land nearby. Each village would have had a priest and a king. Because of constant warring and raids among tribes, “life expectancy was very short. If you lived to be 30 or 40, you were doing good,” Richardson said. That summer, when Smith’s small sailing barge made its way upriver, the men would have been out hunting and fishing, while women took care of the homes, cooking chores and the children.
Margaret Huber, chair of the department of sociology and anthropology at Mary Washington College and an authority on Powhatan Indians, said summer dress would have been simple and practical. “A woman would have worn long hair, probably loose, and a deerskin apron, with nothing in back. If they were well off, they might have a headband or beads around the neck. Men would wear the same kind of apron and a gorget that could be shells or copper. Little kids had part of their heads shaved and were naked. ” Huber noted that historical accounts from Jamestown had 12-year-old Pocahontas cavorting around the fort in the buff. Huber is working on a book about Powhatan that’s due out in October. According to Huber, the Rappahannocks were on the fringe of Powhatan’s empire, which was concentrated in the Tidewater area. “Powhatan was trying to bring all this area under his control.” Richardson says the appearance of Smith’s boat on the river was a provocation because a year earlier an English ship sailed in, killing a Rappahannock king and kidnapping some villagers. “So the Rappahannocks were naturally hostile about [more] white people coming in,” she said. When Smith arrived, the situation was somewhat more complicated because Smith by then had been “adopted” by Powhatan—after Pocahontas’ intervention—and therefore was technically under Powhatan’s protection. The Rappahannocks far outnumbered the English. But what the white men lacked in manpower, they made up for in technology—they were armed with cannon and pistol. The warriors had bow and arrow and club. When the smoke cleared, Indians lay dead. But Smith was looking for corn to supply the hungry Jamestown settlers, and the Rappahannocks wanted whatever Smith had to trade, so they were able to reach an accommodation. “He had tools, guns, copper, all these great things,” Richardson said. The Rappahannocks were under no illusions that, with trade, the conflict would end. “It became apparent very early” that the English were there to stay, Richardson said. “Powhatan had a vision that these people would come like the sands of the sea.” By 1683, the Rappahannocks had come into full alliance with Powhatan. By then, they had moved off the river around Cat Point Creek, to Portobago, and to Indian Neck by the early 1700s.
“When John Smith arrived, the Rappahannocks were in all of the Northern Neck”—the peninsula of land between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers. Bordering them were the Doags and Cuttawoman. “We were the dominant tribe on the river,” Richardson said. MWC’s Huber says the English view of Indians as a society of savages was way off the mark. “What you get in Smith’s accountis that there were no towns, no cultivated foods, no common language,” she said, which was hardly the case. Tribes moved according to the seasons. “It looked like wilderness, but it really wasn’t. There’s periodic burning of underbrush, encouragement of plants that they could use, or to attract animals, such as deer, that they were dependent upon.” There were villages, farms and organized society, though it did not appear that way though English eyes. By the 1800s, the Rappahannocks were living on a designated reservation and, like native peoples all along the Atlantic coast, were in the process of being assimilated by white settlers. Later they would be the victims of a form of ethnic cleansing in which Virginia bureaucrats in the 1920s decreed that there would officially be two races—black and white. Many Indians officially became non-persons and later were forbidden to marry whites, Richardson said. The paradox is that everything—and nothing—has changed for the Rappahannocks and other tribes, she said. “The challenges today are many of the same ones in the 1600s,” namely, “coming to terms with the powers that be, and trying to get equal status.” The Rappahannock tribe was officially recognized by the state in 1983. Now it’s hoping to get federal recognition. The Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Mattaponi, Upper Mattaponi, Monacan, Nansemond and Pamunkey tribes are also state-recognized. Richardson, 44, grew up on Indian Neck. She went to the local high school and attended community college, earning a business degree. She worked in a bank for nine years, then began working for nonprofits. Richardson is executive director of Mattaponi Pamunkey Monacan Inc., an economic- development arm of the tribes. Her grandfather Otho S. Nelson was chief; her grandmother Susie was tribal secretary. The tribe maintains a cultural center at Indian Neck and also has a farm where it plans to have a museum and model of a full-scale village in place by 2007, Jamestown’s 400th anniversary, Richardson said. Reminders of the region’s Indian heritage are everywhere: On maps, 1600s-era villages are now place names: Tappahannock (Toppahanock in Smith’s journal), Morattico (Moraughtacund). But Richardson believes that Indians’ cultural contributions to the nation—such as corn, herbal medicine, even tribal government—have been generally ignored. “We want to depict Virginia history from the Native American perspective.” | |||||||||
NDIAN NECK—On 150 acres of hardwood forest and rolling farmland is what’s left of the Rappahannocks’ ancestral home.
