The people of Tsenacomoco called the Europeans tassantass — strangers. Almost as soon as the strangers settled on the Chesapeake Bay, Indigenous people were pushed off their land and then faced laws that limited their rights and tried to erase their cultures. Despite that, they are still here, working as tribal nations and passing their cultures on.
The 1500s: before and at contact
Many tribes with their own languages and cultures lived in the watershed, linked by political alliances and busy trade networks. European arrival brought disease and upheaval.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1530 | The Spanish explore the Chesapeake coastline |
| 1550 | The people now known as the Susquehannocks move south into the lower Susquehanna Valley and absorb the "Shenk's Ferry" people already there, by force or peacefully |
| 1561 | The Spanish seize a Virginia Indian boy, Paquiquineo, and take him to Spain and Hispaniola. Years later he returns with Jesuit missionaries, soon leaves them to rejoin his people, and the Jesuits are killed |
| Late 1500s | Wahunsunacock — known to the English as Powhatan — inherits leadership of six tribes (Powhatan, Pamunkey, Appamattuck, Mattaponi, Youghtanund and Arrohateck) and gradually brings as many as 32 tribes under his influence |
The early 1600s: Jamestown and Powhatan
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| May 1607 | The Virginia Company of London sends 105 men and boys, who build Jamestown on an island in the territory of the Paspahegh, part of Powhatan's network. Skirmishes and trade both follow |
| December 1607 | Powhatan's brother Opechancanough captures Captain John Smith and brings him to Werowocomoco, where Powhatan symbolically adopts him as a leader under his authority. Smith misreads the ceremony, but trade follows — until Smith's refusal to hand over guns or cannons erodes Powhatan's trust |
| Summer 1608 | Smith makes two voyages around the bay seeking precious metals and a route to the Pacific, meeting many tribes, and later maps the bay and its Indigenous communities |
| September 1608 | Smith becomes president of the colony. Christopher Newport arrives to crown Powhatan on King James's behalf; Powhatan insists they come to him, and refuses to kneel |
| 1609 | Powhatan ends friendly trade, moves inland to Orapax and orders his people to drive the English out. Denied food, many colonists starve that winter. Violence rises through 1614 |
| 1614 | Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas marries colonist John Rolfe, bringing a brief peace |
| 1616 | Pocahontas, Rolfe, their son and a party of Virginia Indians go to London to raise money for the colony. Pocahontas dies of an unknown illness early in the voyage home. Powhatan dies some years later, and his brother Opitchapam leads |
| 1622 | Opechancanough leads a coordinated attack that kills between a quarter and a third of the colonists, opening a new round of war |
| 1634 | Leonard Calvert brings the Maryland colony, chartered by Lord Baltimore, to the bay. The Piscataway tayac (paramount chief), pressed on every side, answers noncommittally; Calvert buys land from the Yaocomico and founds St. Mary's City |
| 1644 | With English settlement still spreading, Opechancanough attacks again, killing more than in 1622 |
| 1646 | Opechancanough, thought to be nearly 100, is captured and killed while imprisoned at Jamestown. His successor Necotowance signs a treaty: his people keep land north of the York River but may not enter the land between the James and York on pain of death, the governors may appoint or approve their leaders, and they owe twenty beaver pelts a year |
The late 1600s: war and treaties
As Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania grew, war broke out where tribes met wealthy English planters, and many tribes signed treaties to protect what remained.
- 1666 — Maryland signs treaties with the Susquehannocks and twelve Algonquian nations, including the Piscataway, giving the governor power to choose new tayacs and confining tribes to reservations. Many leave Maryland instead.
- 1675 — Invited by Maryland governor Charles Calvert to move near the Potomac, the powerful Susquehannocks build a fort at the mouth of Piscataway Creek. When the Doegs, pushed upriver by Virginia planters, strike back, the fort is caught in the crossfire and besieged for six weeks. Maryland doesn't defend it, and war spreads.
- 1676–77 — Demanding harsher action against all Indians, Nathaniel Bacon leads a rebellion against Governor William Berkeley and burns Jamestown; it fades after Bacon dies of dysentery.
- 1677 — Pamunkey leader Cockacoeske signs the Articles of Peace for several former Powhatan tribes, pledging loyalty to the English Crown in exchange for land, hunting rights and protection from planters, slavery and taxes. The Susquehannocks, reduced to about 900 people at today's Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, make a treaty with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), and many are absorbed into other tribes.
- 1680 — For their loyalty, Charles Calvert grants the Piscataway land; they move from Moyaone to Zekiah Swamp for about 15 years.
The 1700s
Powhatan-descended tribes fall to about 1,000 people from a pre-contact 12,000, through disease, war and displacement. The Rappahannock, Chickahominy and Nansemond lose reservation lands, and many Native languages fall silent as people assimilate to survive.
- 1723 — The College of William & Mary builds the Brafferton as an "Indian School" to train young Indian men in Christianity.
- 1775–83 — Native people fight on both sides of the Revolution; the Treaty of Paris hands the U.S. all land east of the Mississippi and south of Canada, ignoring Indigenous lands.
The 1800s
Only two reservations remain in Virginia. Chesapeake Indians adapt but keep their ways, living as fishermen, trappers, farmers and craftspeople; selling goods like pottery keeps traditions alive.
- 1836 — Lawmakers seeking to drive all American Indians and freed African Americans from Virginia ask the General Assembly to dissolve the Pamunkey Reservation. The Pamunkey win; they and the Mattaponi are the only groups whose reservations survive today.
- 1861–65 — Some American Indians, including Pamunkey, serve in the Union Army.
- 1878 — Virginia's Hampton University, a historically Black university, begins admitting American Indian students.
The 1900s: erasure and revival
- 1920 — Chief George Major Cook, Paul Miles and George Nelson form the Second Powhatan Confederation; anthropologist Frank G. Speck, sponsored by collector George Gustav Heye, photographs Virginia Indian communities (the images are now at the National Museum of the American Indian).
- 1924 — Virginia's Racial Integrity Act, championed by eugenicist Walter Plecker and applauded by the Third Reich, bans interracial marriage and labels all non-whites "colored," erasing American Indians from official records.
- 1930 — Rappahannock Chief Otho Nelson and others press to be counted as Indian in the census; they partly succeed, but Plecker has an asterisk placed beside every person marked Indian to flag a possible error.
- 1967 — The Supreme Court's Loving v. Virginia decision strikes down the Racial Integrity Act.
- 1989 — Virginia recognizes eight tribes: Mattaponi, Pamunkey, Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Rappahannock, Upper Mattaponi, Nansemond and Monacan.
The 2000s: recognition
| Year | Recognition |
|---|---|
| 2010 | Virginia: Cheroenhaka Nottoway, Nottoway of Virginia, Patawomeck |
| 2012 | Maryland: Piscataway Conoy Tribe, Piscataway Indian Nation |
| 2015 | Federal: Pamunkey |
| 2016 | Virginia creates a Virginia Indian advisory board to counsel the state on tribes seeking recognition |
| 2017 | Maryland: Accohannock Indian Tribe, its third |
| 2018 | Federal: Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Rappahannock, Nansemond, Upper Mattaponi and Monacan; Delaware: Nanticoke Indian Tribe |
Sources
Based on "From Contact to Present: Indigenous Chesapeake," National Park Service, which draws on Rountree, Clark and Mountford, John Smith's Chesapeake Voyages (2007); Tayac and Schupman, We Have a Story to Tell (2006); and other works; a work of the United States government in the public domain.
In these publicationsChesapeake BayCaptain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail
LanguagesEnglish
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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