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Bridges by Early Virginia Indians, Uses of

Early Virginia Indians built bridges in various places in eastern Virginia, although perhaps not very many. This was in part due to the fact that Indians used stone tools and did not domesticate draft...

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Cooking in Early Virginia Indian Society

Early Virginia Indians hunted, fished, and collected wild grains and berries, which they prepared in various ways. Meats were roasted, while grains and tubers were pounded into ashcakes and then baked....

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Fire by Early Virginia Indians, Uses of

For early Virginia Indians, fire was difficult to make, requiring a stick, a small piece of wood, and a lot of arm strength. As such, the Powhatans tended to keep their household fires going year round...

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Political Organization in Early Virginia Indian Society

Political organization in early Virginia Indian society likely was similar across the several distinct and culturally diverse groups that lived in the area; however, due to the records left by the...

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Paint Lick Mountain Pictograph Archaeological Site

The Paint Lick Mountain Pictograph Archaeological Site in Tazewell County consists of a group of twenty pictographs on a rock cliff. First investigated by archaeologists late in the nineteenth century,...

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Personal Names by Early Virginia Indians, Uses of

Early Virginia Indians—the Algonquian-speaking Powhatans, in particular, and possibly other groups—used multiple personal names. Although these names had specific meanings, most were not translated by...

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Manners and Politeness in Early Virginia Indian Society

Manners and politeness, as dictated by custom, were an important aspect of early Virginia Indian society. What is known about the subject is limited to the observations of Jamestown colonists, visiting...

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Hygiene Among Early Virginia Indians, Personal

Early Virginia Indians practiced personal hygiene that included daily baths in all seasons and all weather. They also engaged in occasional sweat baths in sweat lodges, which likely were presided over...

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Huskanaw

The huskanaw was a rite of passage by which boys become men. While such rituals were common among American Indian societies, the huskanaw was conducted by, among others, the Algonquian-speaking...

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Opechancanough (d. 1646)

Opechancanough was paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, a political alliance of Virginia Indians, and famously led massive assaults against the English colonists in 1622 and 1644. The younger brother (or...

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Chauco (fl. 1622–1623)

Chauco was one of several Virginia Indians who saved the lives of English colonists by warning of Opechancanough's plans to attack their settlements on March 22, 1622. He is named in no more than two...

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Late Woodland Period (AD 900–1650)

The Late Woodland Period lasted from AD 900 until 1650. It was a time when Virginia Indian societies underwent important social and cultural transformations. It traditionally has been dated from the...

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Cockacoeske (d. by July 1, 1686)

Cockacoeske, also known as Cockacoeweske, was a Pamunkey chief, and a descendant of Opechancanough, brother of the paramount chief Powhatan. After the death of her husband, Totopotomoy, chief of the...

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Ceramics, Virginia Indian

Indians have made ceramics continuously in Virginia for more than 3,200 years. Pottery manufacture in North America first arose more than 4,200 years ago in the coastal plain of Georgia and spread...

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Domesticated Animals by Early Virginia Indians, Uses of

Virginia Indians did not domesticate animals, in large part, because good candidates for domestication did not live in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. The one exception was wolves, which the...

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Games by Early Virginia Indians, Uses of

Early Virginia Indians played a variety of games, with some of these games reserved especially for men and others for women, girls, and boys. The men and boys had wrestling, footraces, and a game that...

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Divorce in Early Virginia Indian Society

Divorce was permitted, if not common, in early Virginia Indian society. What is known of the practice is limited to the observations of Jamestown colonists, visiting English observers, and later...

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Powhatan (d. 1618)

Powhatan, whose given name was Wahunsonacock, was the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, a political alliance of Virginia Indians whose core six groups all settled along the James, Mattaponi, and Pamunkey...

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Diet in Early Virginia Indian Society

Diet in early Virginia Indian society changed significantly from the Ice Age to the English colonists' landing at Jamestown in 1607, from initially relying more on meat to over time increasingly...

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Marriage in Early Virginia Indian Society

What is known of marriage in early Virginia Indian society is limited to the observations of Jamestown colonists, visiting English observers, and later American historians, and is mostly applicable to...

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Plants in Early Virginia Indian Society, Domesticated

Virginia Indians began domesticating plants to be used as a food source following the Ice Age. As the climate warmed, their lives became less nomadic and the conditions improved for husbanding certain...

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The Huskanaw Ritual; an excerpt from The History of Virginia by Robert...

In this excerpt from The History of Virginia (1722)—an expansion of History and Present State of Virginia (1705)—Robert Beverley describes the male-initiation rite known as the huskanaw among the...

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"In wishing him well, he killed him"; excerpt from Relation of Juan Rogel...

This excerpt, translated from the Spanish, is from the "Relation of Juan Rogel," the original manuscript of which was lost but can be found paraphrased by Father Juan Sánchez Vaquero (b. 1548) in his...

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Paleoindian Period (16,000–8000 BC)

The Paleoindian Period (16,000–8000 BC) came toward the end of the Ice Age, a time when the climate warmed and the largest mammals became extinct. Likely having originally migrated from Asia, the first...

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Fishing and Shellfishing by Early Virginia Indians

Virginia Indians living around the Chesapeake Bay and other people living along the bays and rivers of the Chesapeake region have long relied on harvesting fish and shellfish. Lacking long-handled...

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Law and Justice in Early Virginia Indian Society

Law and justice in early Virginia Indian society were not well understood by English observers, whose main concern was replacing the native system with their own. William Strachey wrote that the...

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Cactus Hill Archaeological Site

The Cactus Hill Archaeological Site is located on a wind-deposited (eolian) terrace of the Nottoway River in Sussex County. The site gets its name from the prickly pear cacti commonly found growing on...

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Languages and Interpreters in Early Virginia Indian Society

Early Virginia Indians spoke dialects of Algic, Iroquoian, or Siouan, three large linguistic families that include many of the more than eight hundred indigenous languages in North America. Among...

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Religion in Early Virginia Indian Society

Knowledge of religion in early Virginia Indian society largely comes from English colonists like Captain John Smith, who stated that all Indians had "religion, Deare, and Bow and Arrowes." Because...

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Bermuda Hundred During the Colonial Period

Bermuda Hundred was established by Sir Thomas Dale in 1613 at the confluence of the James and Appomattox rivers. Virginia Indians had occupied the site for at least 10,000 years before Dale planted a...

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Gift Exchange in Early Virginia Indian Society

Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians during the Late Woodland Period (AD 900–1650) practiced a gift-exchange economy. All Indians were required to give, accept, and, at a later date, reciprocate;...

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Tsenacomoco (Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom)

Tsenacomoco, otherwise known as the Powhatan paramount chiefdom, was a political alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians that occupied the area first settled by the English at Jamestown. The...

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Education, Early Virginia Indian

Early Virginia Indians educated their children for the purpose of preparing them to be adults. Boys and girls were expected to absorb the community's values, including stoicism in the face of hardship,...

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"The people of America crye oute unto us"; an excerpt from Discourse on...

In these excerpts from the first three chapters of Discourse on Western Planting, Richard Hakluyt (the younger) argues why England should compete with Spain in colonizing the America. Specifically, he...

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Pocahontas (d. 1617)

Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, paramount chief of an alliance of Virginia Indians in Tidewater Virginia. An iconic figure in American history, Pocahontas is largely known for saving the life...

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Don Luís de Velasco / Paquiquineo (fl. 1561–1571)

Paquiquineo, later Don Luís de Velasco, likely was a Paspahegh Indian who encountered Spanish explorers on the Chesapeake Bay in 1561 and volunteered to return to Spain with them. There, he appeared...

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Houses in Early Virginia Indian Society

Houses in early Virginia Indian society became necessary after the Ice Age, when the Indians began depending less on the hunt for survival. Among the Powhatan Indians, especially, but elsewhere in the...

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Monacan Indian Nation

The Monacan Indian Nation is a state-recognized Indian tribe whose tribal area is located near Bear Mountain in Amherst County. The original territory of the Siouan-speaking tribe and its allies...

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Nansemond Tribe

The Nansemond tribe is a state-recognized Indian tribe whose members live mostly in the cities of Chesapeake and Suffolk. In 2009 about 200 Nansemond tribal members were registered in Virginia.Fri, 05...

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Rappahannock Tribe

The Rappahannock tribe is a state-recognized Indian tribe whose tribal area is located in Indian Neck in King and Queen County. In the late twentieth century, the tribe owned 140.5 acres of land and...

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Pamunkey Tribe

The Pamunkey tribe is a state-recognized Indian tribe with a reservation, located on the Pamunkey River in King William County, that is one of the nation's oldest. Of the reservation's 1,200 acres, 500...

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Relation of Bartolomé Martínez (October 24, 1610)

In these excerpts from a memoir, dated October 24, 1610, at Potosí in present-day Bolivia, Bartolomé Martínez recounts the story of the Virginia Indian Don Luís de Velasco (Paquiquineo). Martínez was a...

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Patawomeck Tribe

The Patawomeck tribe is a state-recognized Indian tribe based in Fredericksburg. Dating its presence on the south bank of the Potomac River to about AD 1300, the tribe lived relatively far from the...

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Little Ice Age and Colonial Virginia, The

The Little Ice Age was a climatic period, lasting from about 1300 to 1750, when worldwide temperatures cooled slightly, leading to extreme weather that, in turn, affected the colonizing ventures of...

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Towns and Town Life in Early Virginia Indian Society

Much of what is known about towns and town life in early Virginia Indian society is drawn from archaeological investigation, the observations of English settlers, and the work of Captain John Smith,...

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Indians in Virginia

Indians have lived in the area now known as Virginia for thousands of years. Their histories, ancestral connections, and traditions are intertwined with the 6,000 square miles of Tidewater land the...

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Howell, Henry E. (1920–1997)

Henry E. Howell served in the House of Delegates (1960–1962, 1964–1965) and the Senate of Virginia (1966–1971), representing the Norfolk area. He was lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1971 to 1974....

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Crab Orchard Archaeological Site

The Crab Orchard Archaeological Site is located in the mountainous area of Southwest Virginia near Pisgah, on the Clinch River, about four miles west of Tazewell, in Tazewell County. Taking its name...

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