one possible route of Batte and Hallom, stopping short of climbing over East River Mountain into modern West Virginia
Source: Clarence Walworth Alvord, The first explorations of the Trans-Allegheny region by the Virginians, 1650-1674 (1912)
one possible route of Batte and Hallom, stopping short of climbing over East River Mountain into modern West Virginia
Source: Clarence Walworth Alvord, The first explorations of the Trans-Allegheny region by the Virginians, 1650-1674 (1912)
Abraham Wood established his trading center at the falls on the Appomattox River, the edge of colonial settlement after William Berkeley was restored as the colonial governor in 1660. Wood was a fur trader. He sent agents to negotiate for deerskins and other furs from as far away as the Cherokees living on the Tennessee River.
Fur trading was not a routine business operation. Doing business with the tribes required an understanding of what each society valued and, in case of a contract dispute, what each society feared.
To obtain intelligence about the tribes and the territories in which they hunted, and perhaps to identify the location of valuable minerals and other natural resources, in 1671 Abraham Wood sent Thomas Batte and Robert Hallom together with Thomas Wood (possibly Abraham Wood's son) to explore inland. English spelling was not standardized at the time, and the surviving copies of Hallom's journal mis-spelled the last names of Batte and Hallom as "Batts" and "Fallam."1
Abraham Wood may have already been far enough west to see the New River in 1654, but the earliest "discovery" documented by colonists is the 1671 trip by Thomas Batte and Robert Hallom. Between 1669-1670, John Lederer had traveled west three times. He apparently reached the Roanoke River and climbed the Blue Ridge twice, once west of the modern town of Orange and once near Front Royal.2
The starting point of the journey was Fort Henry, Abraham Wood's trading base on the Appomattox River near modern Petersburg. A guide from the Apppomattox tribe, known as Penecute or Perecute, led them west across the Roanoke or Staunton River. They recruited additional Siouan-speaking Appomattox and Saponi guides there. Thomas Wood dropped out of the expedition; he was "dangerously sick of the Flux" and soon died.
The guides led them across Blue Ridge, choosing a gap about 15 miles south of where the river cut through the mountains. They reached Totero Town, where they were "exceedingly civilly entertain'd" and left their horses.
The explorers and guides then crossed the Eastern Watershed Divide, climbing over Christiansburg Mountain into the New River Valley. They moved downstream from near modern-day Radford to East River Mountain, climbing various ridges before re-encountering the river. They may have stopped at Pearisburg, or gone across East River Mountain as far as 50 miles into West Virginia to the Tug Fork, or perhaps to the Falls of the Kanawha River.
Navigating through the Ridge and Valley physiographic province using the sun and dead reckoning, going up and down "mountains and Hills as if piled one upon another" following trails that were recognized only by the Native American guides, must have been very challenging.
If they did choose to climb 1,200 feet up East River Mountain, the sight of repetitive ridges to the west rather than the Pacific Ocean must have been disappointing. They had expected that North America was a narrow continent, and somehow convinced themselves that the water in the river was affected by ocean tides.3
Batte and Hallom traveled over steep mountain ridges in 1671
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS Online
Batte and Hallom left Fort Henry on September 1, 1671. They returned a month later on October 1, having traveled by horse and foot roughly 200 miles to the west.
They discovered when they returned back to Totero Town that William Byrd, a rival fur trader based at Fort Charles near modern-day Richmond, was exploring nearby. The financial driver for sending Batte, Hallom, and others on western expeditions was not the search for minerals or the Northwest Passage, but a desire to expand access to deerskins and other furs.
Wood and Byrd had to deal with Governor William Berkeley's attempts to control the fur trade and manage trade in order to minimize a potential war with the Native Americans. Byrd was so frustrated that he initially joined Nathaniel Bacon in his 1676 rebellion against Governor Berkeley.
Whether or not Abraham Wood had been to te Roanoke River or even the New River first, Batte and Hallam were not the first English to cross into the Mississippi River watershed. They found trees marked by a previous explorer using coal to show "MANI," and "MA" had been carved into a tree with a knife or sharp rock. Batte and Hallom brought marking irons and scarred four trees with symbols to honor King Charles II, Governor William Berkeley, Abraham Wood, abd their guide Perceute.
One Native American told Batte and Hallam that the trip from Totero Town to the Tug Fork has halfway to his town, where there was an "abundance of salt" and "a great company of Indians that lived upon the great Water." The optimism of Batte to spot the Pacific Ocean was recorded by Hallom in his journal, after they reached one mountain crest and looked across a series of other ridgetops:4
Source: Salem Museum,
350 Years Ago: Batts and Fallam Meet the Totero