Warren’s Heritage: Native American History-Part 2

So who has made the roster of officially recognized tribes in the Commonwealth of Virginia? The first two have already been mentioned in this column, and they are the Mattaponi and
Pamunkey, 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 — look for this odd phenomenon the next time you are on 1-95 between Fredericksburg and Richmond, as the river names are noted on interstate road signs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. Today the tribe maintains 25,000 acres of land and has a 750 member community living within a five-mile radius of one another.