"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 were not literate. They left virtually no written materials about their culture. 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 (also called Wahunsenacawh or Wahunsunacock, as recorded by the English immigrants in the early 1600's - documentation 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...

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. The first Virginians did not sail here from Spain, England, or other nations on the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean.

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 challenge the right of immigrants from foreign nations to enter the modern United States - remember that Virginia was discovered and occupied about 10-15,000 years ago by Asians who did not speak English.

The first Americans could have entered the New World as long as 25,000 years ago. Sea level was lower then because so much water was captured in the ice blanketing the continents, exposing the land now under the Bering Sea that connected Alaska with Russia. The Asians who crossed the Bering Land Bridge 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.

The exact origins of humans in North America is still disputed. The traditional view, that Asians walked across a land "bridge" hundreds of miles wide known as Beringea, is being re-examined. 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 whether "white people" could have been among the earliest settlers in North America, thousands of years before Columbus.

In the scientific community, race is treated as a cultural definition defined in different ways by different groups. Forensic scientists can categorize bones by race on TV shows, but comparing modern bones to 9,000 year old skeletons may be comparing apples to oranges. Long debates over how to categorize people from mixed parentage (such as the golfer Tiger Woods) continue, but in practice Americans can define their own race - the official forms used in the 2000 Census once again allowed individuals to choose from a set of choices or rather than use any official standards.

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

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

Geography of Virginia