Native Americans Preparing for a Feast
Source: Indians of North America - Theodore De Bry Copper Plate Engravings
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Virginia has a diversity of people, people who came from different places and cultures - dating back 15,000 or so years.
People who were "native" to the area when the Europeans arrived were not all the same. Virginia's "Indians" spoke different languages and lived different lifestyles. Be careful when you hear someone say "All the Indians..." The tribes were different and competitive with each other - that's why the Europeans discovered Native American villages with palisades. In 1607, there may have been 13,000 Algonquian-speaking Native Americans within the Coastal Plain territory claimed by Powhatan, and 15,000 Siouan-speaking Monacans/Manahoacs in the Piedmont. The separation of the two groups dates back to 200 A.D., based on archeological studies that identify when the "shared ceramic tradition" east and west of the Fall Line diverged and different pottery types emerged.1 In addition, there was an unknown number of Algonquians north of the Rappahannock River watershed outside of Powhatan's control, more Siouan-speaking tribes such as the Tutelo, Occaneechi, and Saponi, plus an unknown number of Iroquoian-speaking tribes in the Blackwater/Nottoway and Cherokees in southwestern Virginia. The earliest European settlers in Virginia came from different cultures within England, and then from other nations. Some were poor men looking for a steady wage from the Virginia Company, willing to accept a term of service as an indentured laborer in order to have the opportunity to own land in Virginia. Others were "gentlemen," already-wealthy venture capitalists who adventured their person and risked their health in the new colony (as well as their wealth). Conflict in early Jamestown resulted in execution of "spies" presumed to be Catholics. Starting in 1619, slaves from Africa became part of the cultural mix. In the 18th Century, groups of Protestants from continental Europe were encouraged to settle in Virginia. At the end of the 19th Century, mine ownes in Appalachia initiated another round of recruiting workers from various places. Virginia has never been homogenous, and has never lacked cultural conflicts. Today, those Virginians who are related to the early English colonists are proud to identify their genealogical links to the Randolphs, the Carters, the Lees. Some have a connection even to the original residents, the original First Families of Virginia. Numerous First Families of Virginia (FFV's) today, especially those in the Bolling family, can trace their ancestry back to the son of Pocahontas and John Rolfe.
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That connection to Pocahontas affected the implementation of de jure (legal) racial discrimination in the 1920's. Racially-biased Virginia officials tried to classify all Virginians with "one drop" of non-white blood as "colored." Native Americans objected to being reclassified and forced to attend segregated schools with black students, and even today the discrimination of the 20th Century complicates efforts of tribes to receive Federal reciognition.
"An Act to Preserve Racial Integrity" in 1924 established that white persons could have more than one drop of Native American blood, in order to accomodate the descendants of Pocahontas:2
However, the 20th Century FFV's with a family connection to the most famous Native American from Virginia complicated that approach. Those wealthy and influential FFV's may not have celebrated cultural diversity and may not have supported desegregation, but they were proud of their one-drop connection to Pocahontas.
Why bother with categorizing Virginians? Today we can categorize the 8 million or so Virginians in different ways - by gender, by ancestry, by income, by residence, etc. Discrimination based on race is prohibited by Federal law, but selective marketing based on clear business criteria rather than racial prejudice is common.
Defining a "target audience" is essential for a business trying to match their product with their customers, but until recently businesses used to blanket a community with advertising, even if that requires wasting money on some households, in order to be sure they reached all potential customers. Advertisers placed commercials on all channels at the same time. Telemarketers used to call every phone number. AOL used to send a disk to every household - even those without a computer, just to ensure every potential subscriber got the marketing materials.
Today, those telemarking phone calls, "junk mail" invitations for credit cards, and "get out the vote" solicitations just before an election are based on sophisticated slicing and dicing of demographic data. After all, the Republicans don't want to encourage the Democrats to vote, or vice-versa. Companies trying to sell diapers want their advertising to be directed to neighborhoods with lots of young couple, not to retirement homes. As social media replaces direct mail, the refinements in identifying customer interests offer advertisers even more opportunities to discriminate - legally.
Knowing the audience of potential customers can make the difference between a successful business and a bankrupt business. The Hummer dealerships were not located at random across the state; they were concentrated near wealth, because Hummers were luxury items. In October 2007, there were only 4 Hummer dealerships in Virginia. Two were in Northern Virginia (Vienna and Chantilly), one in Richmond, and one in Virginia Beach.
Northern Virginia, Richmond, and Hampton Roads are the three areas of Virginia with high population density as well as high population totals. Surprise! That's where the Hummer dealers were most likely to find enough wealthy customers willing to buy their vehicles. A Hummer dealership in Cumberland Gap would not have generated enough business...
Fast food restaurants are located at highway intersections and in urban areas for a reason - that's where the customers are concentrated. There are exceptions to every rule, of course. A few restaurants in out-of-the-way locations may become popular, such as the Inn at Little Washington (in Rappahannock County) and the restaurant at the Chateau Morrisette winery (in Floyd County). Those restaurants have become intentional destinations for the traveller, and the inconvenient location is outweighed by the quality of the food and dining experience.
The 2010 Census located 8 million people in Virginia (the "mean center" is in southeastern Louisa County). At that time, the United States had nearly 310 million people and the world population was approaching 7 billion:
 Blue Ridge vista from Buffalo Mountain in Floyd County |
 "downtown" Newport in Montgomery County |
The physical geography of a place used to provide the primary context for the culture of the people who lived in that place. Climate shaped how people dressed, and the foods they could raise. Mountains and other physical barriers isolated groups of people, and they developed different languages, different styles of clothing, different religious beliefs, and different shapes of "points" and other tools. Rivers also blocked communication and trade - until the residents developed rafts, canoes, and finally ships that could move against the currents and the wind.
Until 500 years ago, Native Americans and Europeans were unfamiliar with the culture and the technology on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. European discovery of Virginia did not lead immediately to European settlement in Virginia. It took over a century from the time Columbus "sailed the ocean blue" before Europeans successfully established a colony in Virginia.
When it finally occured, European settlement of Virginia displaced the native culture that had evolved over 10,000-plus years and dramatically transformed the natural landscape. The Europeans incorporated a few aboriginal place names (such as Quantico) and agricultural crops (such as corn) into their culture, but discarded most of the rest of Native American culture while replacing forests with farms.
Often, cultural change is driven by technology brought by a competing group, or developed within a society. The creation of new transportation and communication technologies - sailing ships, railroads, the telegraph, radio, television, and now the Internet - have made it far easier to experience other cultures in person or virtually. We can travel vast distances in a day compared to just 400 years ago, when the Jamestown colonists spent five months (December 1606-April, 1607) trying to cross the Atlantic from England to the Chesapeake Bay.
Prior to European settlement in Virginia, the tribal lifestyles were closely integrated with the resources available in a particular area at a particular time. The Algonquian-speaking Powhatans, with access to seafood, lived differently than the Monacans. Today we can conquer seasonal limitations on food through modern shipping. Supermarkets offer fresh vegetables from California, Chile, etc. throughout the year, even in January. As a result, Virginians tend to forget the basic connections between land and latitude that were so essential in defining "Virginia" vs. "elsewhere" until very recently.
The National Park Service now manages certain places in national parks to protect spiritual values (i.e., by limiting climbing on Devil's Tower in Wyoming). That mananagement sensitivity reflects the recognition that certain places have meaning far beyond the provision of food and shelter. Of course, not every claim of cultural "specialness" results in government action to preserve the place without modification. In Virginia, the Mattaponi tribe claimed the King William Reservoir would destroy a secret sacred site, but local and state agencies brushed aside that concern.
Do you automatically get a sense of place because you are connected through a bloodline to people who once lived there? Perhaps not, but others do. A sense of personal connection to the "family farm" or "family home" may continue, long after the place was sold to strangers. The repatriation process for excavated human remains and artifacts defined in the the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act suggests that the one-time occupants of a location (such as Kennewick Man) have a special connection to a place, and their skeletons should be returned to the tribes who live there now for reburial.
Isolation allowed distinctly different cultures develop over time... and now isolation is rare on earth. Physical isolation has been overcome by technology, including radio and now the Internet. Cultural isolation has become rare, as governments discover they can no longer block their citizens from accessing information.
Clothing styles and musical fads are now global. As modern communications and transportation systems make it easier to understand events across the globe, what will cause cultures to maintain their special identity? Are we destined to end up homogenized, with one global language? Already, airline pilots are required to understand English in order to communicate with aviation controllers.
What changes lie in the future? Will easy access to information make it inevitable that every country will migrate to a common political system based on the "democratic principles" espoused by Greek and Scottish philosophers, then implementented most clearly in the United States after the American Revolution? If you think we are destined to have one form of government and "democracy is inevitable," do you also think different political and religious beliefs will be able to withstand globalization and homogenization?
Even if cultural differences result in different forms of government, will certain ethical values end up being codified into law and accepted by all judicial systems, in order for global trade to be conducted by a common set of rules? Will World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations mandating environmental and labor standards inevitably push different societies in different places to become more similar?
Place and culture are connected... but how tightly do you feel your perspectives have been shaped by where you live? Has there been enough time for a new "Virginia culture" to develop in just 400 years after Jamestown? As one author asked:3
Someday, even more transportation improvements may allow new "ships" to travel through space and reach other planets and galaxies. When space travel is available to more than just a few well-trained specialists and very rich tourists, what will happen to our culture? We could see a fusion, merging the best characteristics of society on Earth with elements from some extraterrestrial culture... or the current Virginia culture could be displaced yet again.
The best evidence still suggests that the ancestors of the first immigrants to Virginia crossed the Bering land bridge about 15,000 years ago - though it is possible that the Native Americans are descendants of people who paddled across the Atlantic Ocean and arrived from the east. The traditional story is that Virginia was settled from the west, by hunter/gatherers who walked up river valleys. They crossed what we now call the Missisippi River and entered what we now call Virginia - long before there were kings or queens in England, long before anyone named Columbus sailed westward towards India, and long before we assigne the current names to places in North America.
While the original settlement of Virginia is still unclear, we know that European settlement into Tidewater and Piedmont Virginia came from the east. In the Shenandoah Valley and the rest of the Valley and Ridge physiographic province, stretching to Cumberland Gap, most European settlement arrived from the north rather than the east, due to the barrier of the Blue Ridge.
Some settlers migrating south through the valleys west of the Blue Ridge crossed to the east side of the Blue Ridge at modern-day Roanoke, reaching the Piedmont west of Lynchburg. Some of the settlers who walked south through the Shenandoah Valley, then went east at the Roanoke River gap, kept moving south and occupied the Piedmont of North Carolina. For example, Daniel Boone's family, and the Moravians who initially settled Winston-Salem, migrated through that gap at Roanoke on their way to the Yadkin River valley in North Carolina - a century or so before the city of Roanoke was founded as a railroad city in the 1880's.
As far back as the 1720's, Governor Spottswood purposefully encouraged settlement of the Shenandoah Valley by non-English immigrants. When Spottwood started serving as governor, the Piedmont (east of the Blue Ridge) was just being settled by immigrants from England. The English immigrants developed farms beween the Fall Line and the Blue Ridge, but settlement was moving slowly upstream into the Piedmont and not sweeping westward over the Blue Ridge.
Spottswood had bad maps. He thought the French forts on the Great Lakes were less than a 1-week march from the Blue Ridge. Governor Spotswood identified the most likely military threat to the western frontier of Virginia to be from the French in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys, just as a century earlier the first colonists at Jamestown had considered the Spanish and other European rivals to be the most significant military threat. If the French forces in Canada and the Ohio River Valley allied with hostile tribes, they could block English settlement at the Blue Ridge - and even threaten settlements in the Piedmont.
The first European country to occupy lands between the Blue Ridge and the Ohio River would control that territory. Spottswood recruited Germans and Scotch-Irish who arrived at Philadelphia to settle in Virginia, between the Blue Ridge and the French. The first colonists to settle Virginia west of the Blue Ridge walked from Philadelphia into the Shenandoah Valley, where they established settlements that would serve as a buffer and a trip wire to alert the Virginians about western incursions. Later, some English-descended colonists crossed the Piedmont and then the Blue Ridge from the east, but by then the culture of the Shenandoah Valley was already dominated by the Scotch-Irish and the Pennsylvania Deutsch ("Dutch") immigrants. (Spottswood's strategy was validated in part in the 1750's, when settlements in the Valley and Ridge province all the way south to the New River were attacked during the French and Indian War.)
European culture has spread completely across Virginia and the North American continent in the last 400 years. The "frontier" of settlement, the line between territory that was settled and land that was "unsettled" (except by Indians), was no longer obvious by the 1890 Census.
However, for the first 200 years of colonization, most of the immigrant (colonist...) population lived near the Atlantic Ocean. Settlers were slow to move inland from the Atlantic Ocean coastline. Half of all the people in America lived east of the new capital of Washington DC when it was founded in 1800. Why? Ships could no longer sail once settlers moved further west, past the Fall Line. Transportation by wagon was far more expensive than shipping directly from a Tidewater wharf, so farmers living west of the Fall Line spent much of their "profit" on the cost of getting their goods to port cities such as Charleston, Alexandria, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Only in 1860 did the center of population move west of Virginia, across the Ohio River.
There was no guarantee that English settlement to the west would be successful. (If you do believe in Manifest Destiny, how do you explain the failure of the Americans to settle Mexico and the prairies of Canada?) The French could have succeeded in occupying the Ohio River valley, establishing a line of settlements from New Orleans to Quebec and restricting the British to a strip on colonies along the Atlantic Ocean.
| 1790 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1800 | 1810 | 1820 | 1830 | 1840 | 1850 | 1860 | 1870 | 1880 | 1890 |
| 1900 | 1910 | 1920 | 1930 | 1940 | 1950 | 1960 | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 |
| 2000 | 2010 |
Think the population of Virginia has always been growing, especially the counties in Northern Virginia?
The historical census data for Virginia tells some tales. Just after the Revolutionary War (as recorded in the 1790 Census), Virginia had:
- 292,627 "slaves"
- 12,866 "all Other Free Persons"
- 442,117 "White" people
for a population total of 747,550.
Just before the Civil War (in the 1860 Census), the state population had grown to a total of 1,596,206, including:
- 490,865"slaves"
- 58,042 "free coloreds"
- 1,047,299 "whites"
Contrast that with Prince William County. In 1790, the county had:
- 4,704 "slaves"
- 167 "all Other Free Persons"
- 6,744 "Whites"
for a total of 11,615 people.
Just before the Civil War (in the 1860 Census), the county population had dropped to only 8,565, including:
- 2,356 "slaves"
- 519 "free coloreds"
- 5,690 "whites"
Obviously Prince William lost population (over 25% decline...) while the state population more than doubled during those 70 years. The agricultural potential - and low cost - of new lands in Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, and further west drew farmers from the worn-out tobacco plantations of the Piedmont. Population growth in Virginia is not steady, or spread evenly across all sections. The increasing population and cultural diversity of Prince William since 1960 is in clear contrast to the county's demographic patterns between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
In 1790, 19% of the national population lived in Virginia. Virginia remained the most populous state for 20 more years through the 1810 census, but its percentage of the total population of the United States dropped steadily:
| Year | Virginia % of
Total Population |
States With the Most People |
|---|---|---|
| 1790 | 18% | VA, PA, NC |
| 1800 | 17% | VA, PA, NY |
| 1810 | 14% | VA, NY, PA |
| 1820 | 11% | PA, NY, VA |
| 1830 | 9% | NY, PA, VA |
| 1840 | 7% | NY, PA, OH, VA |
| 1850 | 6% | NY, PA, OH, VA |
| 1860 | 5% | NY, PA, OH, IL, VA |
| 1870 | 3% | NY, PA, OH, IL, MO,
IN, MA, KY, TN, VA |
At the start of the United States, Virginia had the largest population of any state. In 1790, nearly one out of every 5 Americans was a Virginian. Four of the first five presidents were Virginians - Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. The "Virginia Dynasty" dominated the national political life for the first 35 years of the United States, until President James Monroe's second term ended in 1824.
Virginia had 19% of the national population in 1790, but that state did not elect 19% of the House of Representatives. Why not? In 1790, 40% of the people in Virginia were slaves in bondage.
Under the Constitution ratified in 1788, only three-fifths of the slave population was counted when determining the number of members for each state in the House of Representatives. That formula helped the northern, non-slave states ensure that the southern states could not buy votes when they bought slaves. Even today, some people argue that the Constitution defined each slave to be just 60% of a person, but the "three-fifths" formula for counting slaves was not designed to diminish the importance of individual slaves. Instead, the formula dimished the political power of slaveowners.
Nowadays, California is the most populous state and has the greatest number of electoral votes. Politicians campaign extensively in that state and rarely visited Virginia, until Virginia became a political battleground in the 2008 presidential election. According to the 2000 Census, California today is not as dominant as Virginia was in 1790. California has only 12% of the total national population now, while Virginia in 1790 had 19% of the national population.
Alexandria had more people per square mile than any other jurisdiction in Virginia, according to the Census 2000 4 That distinction enabled the 2002 General Assembly to pass legislation to protect trees, but restrict the authority to just densely-populated areas such as Arlington:
§ 15.2-961. Replacement of trees during development process in certain localities.A. Any locality with a population density of at least 75 persons per square mile may adopt an ordinance providing for the planting and replacement of trees during the development process pursuant to the provisions of this section. Population density shall be based upon the latest population estimates of the Cooper Center for Public Service of the University of Virginia.
