Warren’s Heritage: Native American History – Virginia’s Eight State Recognized Tribes

Between 2004 and 2009 The Warren Sentinel — Warren County’s newspaper since 1869 — ran a column for the Warren Heritage Society under the heading “Warren’s Heritage.” The column
was most often written by the Society’s executive director, Patrick Farris who occasionally coauthored pieces with the Society archivists during those years: Tom Blumer, Chuck Pomeroy and Judith Pfeiffer.

The column also carried reprints of historical texts composed by Laura Virginia Hale and others, and in general served as a means for educating The Warren Sentinel’s readership on local history and informing the public the Warren Heritage Society’s activities, museums and exhibits.

This series of the Warren’s Heritage Journal is the collection of that five-year column series of the same name. The articles are not organized chronologically, but are assembled thematically, as certain topics of historical interest were revisited over the six years spanning the column’s publication. Each thematic heading appears beneath the Warren’s Heritage heading, collecting together for the reader all articles covering the same topic or set of related topics.

The Warren Heritage Society hope this collection of Warren County history will contribute to the greater awareness and appreciation of the broad and colorful tapestry of the story of Warren County’s past.

Warren’s Heritage: Native American History, Virginia’s Eight State Recognized Tribes

Mattaponi
The Mattaponi and Pamunkey are the only two of the eight state recognized tribes to still have official reservation lands. The Mattaponi reservation is located in King William County along the
Mattaponi River that is the northern boundary of that county. The village of Mattaponi, a clearing in the woods overlooking the Mattaponi River from a cliff, has about 60 residents, although the
tribe’s membership roster has over 450 members. A small museum and cultural programming help maintain the Mattaponi sense of community identity.

One of the most well-known members of the Mattaponi tribe, incidentally, is singer and entertainer Wayne Newton. An interesting feature of the tribe’s name, given to the river of their ancestral home, is that as one traces the origins of the Mattaponi River upstream from King William County, the tributaries of the river become named for syllables of the Mattaponi name. The first division of the river is into the Matta and Poni Rivers in Caroline County and ultimately in Spotsylvania County into the Mat, the Ta, the Po and the Ni Rivers.

Pamunkey
The Pamunkey reservation, also in King William County in a wide bend of the Pamunkey River, is a much larger reservation in acres but has a smaller permanent resident population, as most of the land is bottom land under cultivation. About 32 families live on or own land in the reservation. The Pamunkey Reservation has a museum as well with artifacts recovered from archaeological digs in the area, and on the reservation is the burial place of and monument to the mighty Powhatan, father of the legendary Pocahontas and lord of the Powhatan Confederacy at the dawn of Jamestown’s settlement in the early 1600s. The Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers meet at the town of West Point at the eastern end of King William County, where they become the York River. Both the Mattaponi and Pamunkey received official state recognition in 1983.

Upper Mattaponi
Closely related to the Mattaponi and Pamunkey are the Upper Mattaponi and Rappahannock tribes, also descended from the Algonquin speaking Powhatan Confederacy and also receiving state recognition in 1983. The Upper Mattaponi are descended from a group of Mattaponi living in the Adamstown area of King William County, where during the early 1700s they had an official British interpreter (by the name of Adams) living amongst them. The Upper Mattaponi incorporated with the state as a tribal entity in 1921, although not receiving state recognition for another 62 years. They do not have a formal reservation but have set aside acreage that serves their community as communally held lands.

Rappahannock
The Rappahannock today, like the Upper Mattaponi, hold a private land trust for their community in lieu of a reservation. In the late 1600s, however, they did briefly have a legally recognized and granted 4000 acre reservation along the Rappahannock River set aside for them by the colonial government, this land being abandoned and ceasing to exist as a separate reservation during disruptive raids by the Iroquois.

The Rappahannock were in Captain John Smith’s time a large and prosperous tribe of the Powhatan Confederacy, occupying 13 known towns along the  Rappahannock River. Today’s Rappahannock tribe, recognized in 1983 by the state, is in King and Queen County which lies just north of King William County in between the Mattaponi and Rappahannock Rivers.

Eastern Chickahominy
South of King William County, across the Pamunkey River, are the counties of New Kent and Charles City, homes today to the Eastern Chickahominy and Chickahominy Tribes, respectively. The Eastern Chickahominy are a group of about 150 members who maintain in New Kent County educational and social events for their tribal membership, and received state recognition in 1983. The Eastern Chickahominy consider themselves a division of the Chickahominy, both tribes descending from the Powhatan Confederacy.

Chickahominy
Also receiving state recognition in 1983, the Chickahominy Tribe is centered in Charles City County in between the James River and Chickahominy River, about 25 miles east of Richmond. At one point in the early 1600s the tribe had a treaty obligation with the English colonists to provide soldiers in case of Spanish attack for the defense of Jamestown. The Chickahominy later in the 1600s migrated south of the James River when the colonists at Jamestown began expanding and confiscating more Indian land, but by the 1700s were migrating back to their ancestral home on the north banks of the James and along the Chickahominy River. Today the tribe maintains 25,000 acres of land and has a 750 member community living within a five-mile radius of one another.

Nansemond
The Nansemond Tribe today lives in the cities of Suffolk and Chesapeake (Suffolk City was Nansemond County before 1972). The Nansemond were a tribe of the Powhatan, and very early in the 1600s were driven away from their farmland along the Nansemond River. They held reservation lands in Virginia until 1792, at which point these lands reverted to the state and the Nansemond existed as a community, albeit unorganized, for the next 130 years. In the 1920s the Nansemond reorganized and today claim around 300 tribal members, and are planning a museum on the Nansemond River.

Monacans
The Monacan Indian Nation is the eighth and most recent Native American tribe in Virginia to receive state recognition, earning that officially in 1989. Centered at the community of Bear Mountain in Amherst County, Virginia, south of Charlottesville, the Monacans have a presence historically and still today in the counties of Nelson, Bedford, Albemarle and other adjoining counties. Not of the Algonquin speaking Powhatan, the Siouan speaking Monacan were related and/or allied to the Saponi and Occaneechi of southern Virginia and the Tuscarora of North Carolina. Today’s Saponi and Occaneechi tribes are centered in the northern piedmont of North Carolina and the Tuscarora removed almost completely to New York after loosing the Tuscarora War in 1714. In the 1700s some of the survivors of these marginalized tribes moved to live amongst the Monacans. The Monacans very likely also absorbed the Manahoacs, a tribe reported by John Smith in 1607 to be living along the headwaters of the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers, in what today are the western parts of Rappahannock and Fauquier Counties, bordering Warren County.

The Manahoacs in all probability traversed what is now Warren County — especially to gain access to the Flint Run area of the Fork District, where stone for arrow and spear points was quarried — and quite possibly resided here, making today’s Monacan Indian Nation a descendant population at some level of the original inhabitants of our immediate area. Always distrustful of the English, and living farther west in Virginia than the Powhatan, the Monacans avoided contact when possible with the colonists from their first contact in 1607 with Jamestown explorers to the 1760s, at which time settlement had encroached into every part of their homeland in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge along the James River.

Thomas Jefferson recorded a visit of Monacans to Monticello, the guests paying respects at a cemetery burial mound of their people that had become part of the Jefferson property. Jefferson eventually excavated this mound, acquiring in the process the reputation of being the “Father of Archaeology in America.” During the 1700s some Monacans migrated west or north, but a Monacan community along the upper James River always remained.

The Monacans worked tobacco near Lynchburg for generations in the 1800s, preserving their community identity all the while. In the 1920s Virginia passed laws that prohibited the intermarriage of Indians and Whites, and prohibited Indians from identifying themselves legally as Indians, driving many Monacans away from Virginia with those remaining no longer living as openly as Indians. The modern rebirth of the Monacan Nation is drawing attention to this fascinating Native American community in the heart of Virginia who, since recorded history in Virginia has occupied the same homeland along the upper James River.