John Smith's Discovery Part 3: On to Fredericksburg Encounter at the falls • For Indian fishing party, boat with white men and guns must have been an ominous sight Historic preservation • Smith, Indian site preservation an elusive goal Online extra • Audio: Journal entry from Falmouth Part 2: Rappahannock Indians Rappahannocks attack • With cliffs and stands of neck-high marsh grass, it was a parfect spot for an ambush Rappahannock Tribe • A proud, sad history Maps • Indian villages (1608) • Virginia Indians (1607) Online extras • More photos from the Rappahannock • Audio: Journal entry from Tappahannock Part 1: Stingray Point Fantastic Voyage • In August 1608, Capt. John Smith sailed up the Rappahannock on a quest to help launch a nation. An explorer with a knack for politics • Jamestown savior understood his role Timeline • Timeline of early American events Online extras • Audio: Journal entry from Stingray Point • Sources & Web links

DIGGING IT: Josh Duncan, with the Mary Washington College Center for Historic Preservation, trowels dirt from an excavation pit at Market Square downtown. The site is being re-examined as utility work is being done.

REDERICKSBURG and the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers have a rich trove of Indian sites, many linked to Capt. John Smith’s voyages on the Chesapeake Bay. But few have been thoroughly studied or marked—even as the state prepares for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown in 2007.

In Deltaville, at the mouth of the Rappahannock, where Smith nearly died after being stung by a stingray, there’s a historical marker describing the encounter that gave nearby Stingray Point its name. It’s one of the few places were there’s any public record of what happened.

In his journal, “General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles,” and on his map of Virginia, Smith describes over 40 Indian towns on the Rappahannock alone.

In June 1608, Smith is reported to have stopped at a Patawomeck village at what is now called Indian Point, near the mouth of Potomac Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River, where he traded for corn for hungry Jamestown settlers. Farther upriver, he investigated what appeared to be an Indian antimony mine on the headwaters of Aquia Creek. Antimony is a crystalline compound used in medicines and pigments.

Michael J. Klein, archaeologist and principal investigator for the Center for Historic Preservation at Mary Washington College, says that researchers have only begun to scratch the surface of potentially important sites here.

Part of the reason is that Fredericksburg, which bills itself as “America’s Most Historic City,” is the epicenter of many significant events in the nation’s history—from the early Colonial period to the Civil War. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of sites that might warrant a closer look. The city has catalogued sites of historical interest in its publication “Historic Resources Along the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers.”

The National Park Service and preservation groups have been working tirelessly to protect Civil War battlefields. Kenmore—the Colonial home of Fielding Lewis and Betty Washington Lewis—is a national shrine.

“Much of the earlier stuff is relatively little-known,” said Klein. At the Fielding Lewis Store downtown, for example, “Four feet below the level of the street we hit a buried topsoil surface that had some late-prehistoric pottery in it.”

LOOKING BACK: Margaret Huber, professor of anthropology at Mary Washington College, admires the fall line of the Rappahannock River in Falmouth.

Douglas Sanford, director of the MWC center, has been working for years at ongoing digs at Stratford Hall, Civil War Gen. Robert E. Lee’s birthplace on the Potomac in Westmoreland County. An Indian site with pottery and artifacts dating back to as early as 200 A.D. has been found there.

A crew from the MWC center has been digging at Market Square downtown to see what might turn up as a result of utility work. Six 18th-century burials related to St. George’s church were found in an earlier excavation.

In 1997, the center found evidence of a prehistoric dwelling in the Hunting Run area of Spotsylvania County.

“You could spend a lifetime trying to identify and investigating Smith’s map,” said Randolph Turner, director of the Portsmouth regional office of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

“If you had unlimited funds and could do a comprehensive survey of Virginia to identify every archaeological site, it would probably cost billions,” Turner said. The agency has only about $72,000 in its budget to investigate important, threatened archaeological sites statewide.

As for Smith sites, it’s been difficult for researchers to pinpoint exactly where the explorer landed, or the actual locations of Indian villages described on his map.

Most are on private land. Unless the landowner applies for some type of state or federal permit—say for a pier, bulkhead or boat ramp—there’s little that can be done to investigate or preserve the site.

“Some of these sites have been designated with landowner permission, but we’ve not gone out of our way to advertise them,” Turner said. “When you bring attention to important sites, you bring out vandals and trespassers—and it also annoys the landowner.”

Illegal relic hunting for valuable antiquities, Turner said, “is becoming a very serious crime—not only in Virginia, internationally as well.”

Development is another issue: Fredericksburg is situated in one of the fastest-growing parts of Virginia, and there is increasing pressure to build on land near the Rappahannock and Potomac.

That’s not necessarily bad, Turner says. “I’ve found that developers have been remarkably cooperative and interested” in sites of historical value. “More often than not, they’re willing to cooperate, and the history of their property can be a strong marketing tool.”