"Indians" of Virginia - The Real First Families of Virginia

NOTE: It is difficult to describe Virginia's aboriginal cultures without violating some aspect of modern political correctness. This Web site uses "Native Americans," "First Virginians," "Indians," and other terms. Inevitably, some readers may take umbrage at one or more of the labels. Perhaps in the future, we'll reach a stage in our own cultural development where examination of the patterns of other societies will be considered a way of honoring another culture. The reader is requested to suspend efforts to find fault with inadequate terminology, and emphasize instead an appreciation of the effort required to understand the differences and appreciate the similarities among cultures.

The first human residents of Virginia left virtually no written materials about their culture. We don't have the diaries, reports, or other records of a "literate" society as source material for understanding a different culture, in a different time. We have to evaluate other evidence to determine - or guess - at their religious beliefs, political boundaries, population levels, family life, and other social patterns. The physical evidence still available for study - shards of pottery, animal bones, postholes of houses, etc.- are subject to interpretation.

English listeners recorded the words spoken by Powhatan. (He was also called Wahunsenacawh or Wahunsunacock, as recorded by the English immigrants in the early 1600's - spelling of the original Virginia names by the English is not 100% consistent.) His words are not first-hand records; they were not written directly by Powhatan himself. In addition to the inevitable errors in translation, the written records of the Europeans must be viewed in the context of the 1500's and 1600's rather than the first decade of the 21st Century. The early English were not necessarily "New Age, sensitive kinds of guys" who made anthropologically-neutral observations. The first Europeans to explore Virginia filtered what they saw through their world view.

The vast majority of English explorers and colonists were Protestants and nationalists. The idea that there should be a separation between church and state, that government should be secular and individuals left free to choose their own personal faith, was far in the future. The Europeans who arrived in Virginia considered it a natural way of life that the English would displace the Native Americans, as well as prevent settlement in Virginia by French and Spanish Catholics.

The "pagan" culture of the Natives was described by those educated enough to read and write in the early 1600's. Those recorders were not 100% neutral. They had been thoroughly exposed to the religious and political bias of their time. The descriptions of the early explorers include overt and hidden value judgements that shade our current understanding of the lifestyles of the First Virginians. When you read the original documents, try to anticipate the source material that was omitted as well as the way the recorded material was morphed by the biases of the colonial times.

Modern historians and scientists are affected by cultural biases as well. For example, do you assume the ability to read and write (literacy) is fundamental to intelligence? If so, then you may be consciously or unconsciously assuming that the Native Americans were not intelligent. If so, be consistent and assume Shakespeare was not intelligent - because his spelling was inconsistent...

If you visit one of the colonial Virginia mansions, tour guides will talk about the Carters, Randolphs, Lees, Bollings, and even the Grymes family as "First Families of Virginia." The FFV's were the gentry - the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant gentry - who governed the economic, social, and political life of colonial Virginia between 1607-1776. ("Colonial" is the time between when Jamestown was settled in 1607 and 1776, when a special convention of colonial leaders declared Virginia to be an independent state.)

In the 1600's and 1700's, members of the gentry families established plantations, purchased slaves, grew tobacco, and built brick mansions such as Gunston Hall, Stratford Hall and Berkeley Plantation. In my family there was even a "Grymesby on the Piankatank" - what a mixture of Native and English names...

Stratford Hall, ancestral home of the Lee family
Stratford Hall, ancestral home of the Lee family

The men controlled the House of Burgesses; no women and no slaves (male or female) could vote. When the sons and daughters of FFV families married sons and daughters of other FFV's, their inherited wealth - primarily land and slaves, both considered necessary property for growing tobacco that was shipped to Europe - stayed in the family. Political and economic power was not shared or spread around any more than necessary. The oldest male son inherited the majority of the family wealth, a pattern known as "primogeniture." Inherited land was controlled for generations ("entailed") by the wills of long-dead ancestors.

In modern Virginia, especially in rural areas of Tidewater and Southside and in the West End suburbs of Richmond, being related to one of the early colonial families is a badge of honor. These FFV's think "To be a Virginian either by Birth, Marriage, Adoption, or even on one's Mother's side is an Introduction to any State in the Union, a Passport to any Foreign Country, and a Benediction from Above."

However, the real FFV's were not from England and did not speak with a British accent. The very first human residents in Virginia probably walked here from Asia through Alaska, after crossing the Bering Land Bridge. There's a small chance that the first Virginians sailed here from the Solutre region of France about 15,000 years ago, but the first Virginians certainly did not arrive in the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery in 1607.

The next time someone argues about the discovery of America by the Vikings from Scandinavia, or suggests the English had a legitimate claim on the area by "right of discovery" because it was unoccupied by any Christian prince, or challenges the presence of immigrants from foreign nations - remember that Virginia was discovered and occupied about 10-15,000 years ago by people (probably from Asia) who did not speak English.

The first Americans probably entered the New World at the end of the last ice age. The travelling band whose descendants ultimately occcupied North and South America may have been just 70 people. One family group may have been the source for all the "Indians" who were "discovered" by the Europeans.

15-20,000 years ago, so much water was captured in the ice blanketing the continents that sea level was 300' or more lower. The lower sea level exposed the land now under the Bering Sea, and there was wet-but-walkable ground that connected Alaska with Russia. Asians who crossed the Bering Land Bridge must have walked east and south, following new territory for hunting game, perhaps ranging 10 miles a day. Maybe they told tall tales to other bands of hunters, describing what they thought would be over the next ridge before anyone had explored the virgin lands.

Bering Straight, now and then
Bering Straight, now and then
Source: USGS Ecosystem and Climate History of Alaska

Our knowledge about the earliest Virginians is shifting. The traditional view, that Asians walked across a land "bridge" hundreds of miles wide known as Beringea, is being re-examined. We do not have enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt when humans first came to Virginia, or how they got here.

For over 50 years, most scholars thought the first artifacts of humans settling in North America were stone tools that reflect the styles of the Clovis culture, discovered in the 1930's (near Clovis, New Mexico) and dated to be about 13,000 years old. Recent studies in the last 30 years show clear evidence that there was a pre-Clovis culture, one that arrived in North America as early as 15,000 or so years ago.

What's less clear is whether any pre-Clovis immigrants settled in Virginia, or if the Paleoindian period (the first time of human ocupation) starts with immigrants from Asia who shaped stone in the form of Clovis points. Archeologists still debate if some items found at Cactus Hill in Sussex County, a few inches below Clovis-style artifacts, prove that Virginia was occupied by humans before the development of the distinctive stone tools of the Clovis culture. Use your own critical thinking skills when you hear someone state anything related to Virginia before 1600 as "true." What we know today may not be what we believe tomorrow.

In 1996, a skeleton was discovered on the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. "Kennewick Man" was radiocarbon dated at roughly 9,000 years old. The Federal government planned to turn over the bones to a local Native American tribe for burial, following the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. That law mandates that ancient human bones must be turned over to the most closely-allied tribe for reburial. However, anthropologists sued to block the reburial, demanding access to the bones for scientific research. The scientists challenged the assumption that all bones older than 1492 (when Columbus "sailed the ocean blue") must be connected with a modern Native American tribe.

One speculation is that the bones might suggest Polynesian or even European immigrants may have reached North America nearly 10,000 years ago.1 As a result, the lawsuit has generated extensive discussion on the definition of race and who were the earliest settlers in North America, thousands of years before Columbus.

Our perspectives on the past are changing fast. For example, A Quiet Revolution: Origins of Agriculture in Eastern North America, by the National Museum of Natural History Bulletin for Teachers, rebuts the assumption that corn imported from Mexico triggered the development of agriculture in Virginia:
- "Many textbooks today still assert that agriculture in the New World originated in Mesoamerica, and that maize and squash spread from Mexico to eastern North America. Only then, textbooks explain, did Native North Americans learn to cultivate maize and squash and also beans and a few indigenous seed crops such as sunflower."
- "Native North American women and men domesticated local plants, including the wild ancestor of squash and several highly nutritious seed crops, long before any domesticated plants were introduced from Mesoamerica. This revolutionary contribution of Native North Americans makes eastern North America one of the world's four major independent centers of plant domestication along with the Middle East, China, and Mesoamerica!"

Think the first Virginian resembled this individual? Remember the climate 11-15,000 years ago...
Think the first Virginian resembled this individual?
Remember the climate 11-15,000 years ago...
Source: Library of Congress

Virginia Archeology and Prehistory Links

The First Virginian

From Paleo-Indian to Woodland Cultures

The Three Linguistic Groups of Colonial Virginia

Contact Period

Native American Agriculture

How the Fall Line Shaped Powhatan's Empire

Pocahontas

Why Didn't Virginia's Natives Sail East to Europe, First?

Treaties Defining the Boundaries Separating English and Native American Territories

Where Are the Natives in Virginia Today?

Links

Sources

References

1Tom Paulson, "Officially, Kennewick Man expected to go Native," Seattle P-I.com, January 13, 2000

Geography of Virginia