Powhatan inherited control over the Mattaponi tribe as well as the Pamunkey and four others, long before John Smith arrived in 1607.
The Mattaponi lived along the river bearing their name, near the boundary of fresh and brackish water.
The location of the Native American towns were not selected at random. All lived on floodplain soils that were excellent for growing corn, near freshwater marshes that provided tuckahoe and other food that could be gathered throughout the year, and near uplands that were rich in deer and other game animals.
After the Third Anglo-Powhatan War which started in 1644, lands for the Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes were reserved from sale to colonists. The size of the reservations was insufficient to allow the traditional hunting and gathering, or to protect all sites of major cultural significance.
In 2023, the Mattaponi were able to acquire 866 acres of ancestral lands with almost two miles of frontage along the Mattaponi River. Most of the necessary funding for the purchase came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).1
in 1670 Augustine Herrman documented colonial settlement along the Rappahannock River to the Fall Line, but Native Americans still controlled the Middle Peninsula to the Mattaponi River
Source: John Carter Brown Library, Virginia and Maryland As it is planted and Inhabited this present Year 1670 (by Augustine Herrman, 1670)
during the Civil War, Union cartographers showed where the Mattaponi were living
Source: US War Department, Atlas to accompany the official records of the Union and Confederate armies, Southeastern Virginia and Fort Monroe Showing the Approaches to Richmond and Petersburg (1862)
Mattaponi girls in the 1920's
Source: Museum of the American Indian, Chapters on the ethnology of the Powhatan tribes of Virginia (p.263)
Mattaponi boys in the 1920's
Source: Museum of the American Indian, Chapters on the ethnology of the Powhatan tribes of Virginia (p.264)
the Spirit Crow Group elected new leadership on March 26, 2022, but the existing tribal government claimed the election was unauthorized
Source: MattaponiTribe.org, Tribal Government
the incumbent tribal government denied the legitimacy of the March 26, 2022 election
Source: Mattaponi Tribe, Statement from Mattaponi Tribal Council