Pre-Colonial History
The only surviving Virginia Algonquian creation narrative that the English recorded during the early period of colonization came from the Patawomeck weroance Japazaw, also called Iopassus, who relayed the story to Virginia colonist and military captain Samuel Argall. In 1610, historian William Strachey recorded this version of the story. It outlines the origins of the Patawomeck people, their long-term connection to the land, and their spiritual beliefs. In the story, Ahone, a great spirit who takes the form of a hare, creates the world and everything in it, including humans. Ahone acts as the protector of humankind from giants and other spirits, ultimately placing people all over the world who give rise to varied nations. The story goes on to say that when Patawomeck people die they go to live with Ahone where they dance, sing, and feast until they grow old. When they have lived a lifetime in the abode of the great hare, their last breath in the afterlife is transformed into a new Patawomeck who is born again into the world. Archaeological evidence from along the shores of Potomac Creek and the surrounding area shows that humans have continuously lived in the Patawomeck homeland for at least 15,000 years. For much of that time, ancestral Patawomeck people lived in relatively small and mobile bands who relied on seasonal resources, such as migrating fish, waterfowl, and mammals, and wild plants. As time passed, territory size decreased and group size increased, with people adapting to changing environments.
Around AD 1300, a group of migrants made their way into the lower Potomac River Valley and established several villages and hamlets in what would become Virginia and Maryland, including along Potomac Creek. Archaeological evidence suggests that these migrants originated in either the upper Potomac River Piedmont or modern-day western New York. Oral history, documented in the middle of the seventeenth century, however, suggests connections to the Eastern Shore, in modern-day Maryland and Delaware. Influence from all these areas is likely, since migration and movement were commonplace prior to the arrival of Europeans.
These newcomers established a major village on the peninsula between Accokeek and Potomac creeks, likely combining themselves with at least some Patawomeck ancestors already living in the area. The village that they constructed, known as Potomac Creek by archaeologists, was enclosed by a set of ditches and palisades that were constantly rebuilt and reconfigured throughout the site’s occupation from around 1300–1550. During the period of maximum extent, the ditch and palisade encircled a village that measured roughly 280 feet in diameter. The presence of several smaller, co-occurring, settlements along Potomac Creek suggests that this site was not fully occupied year-round, but that it likely acted as the seat of power for the Patawomeck weroance, chiefly nobility, and religious leaders. Seasonal movement to take advantage of specific natural resources would still have been essential to the economies of most Patawomeck people, as indicated by the scattered occupations along the creek. In addition to the numerous artifacts and architectural remains recovered from the Potomac Creek site, hundreds of Patawomeck ancestors were buried at this site in large communal graves called ossuaries. Due to the presence of these burials at Potomac Creek and the site’s long-term connection to the Patawomeck community, it is one of the most sacred landscapes for the tribe.
Around 1550, the Patawomecks living in the ancestral village of Potomac Creek relocated nearby to the juncture of Potomac and Accokeek creeks. The site of this new village is known as Patawomeke or Indian Point. As the members of the community moved a little less than a half mile away, the former site at Potomac Creek continued as a final resting place for the dead. Shortly before sustained English contact, the Patawomecks had two primary villages along Potomac Creek: Patawomeke on the north bank and the village at Passapatanzy on the south bank.
Early Colonial History
The first well-documented contact between the Patawomeck and the English occurred in the summer of 1608 when John Smith was exploring the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. Smith visited and mapped several Patawomeck villages and hamlets, including Patawomeke, Passapatanzy, and Quiyough, estimating a total of 160 bowmen in the tribe, the largest of the northern Chesapeake Algonquian groups that he encountered. These early interactions led to a decades-long trading relationship between the Patawomeck and the English at Jamestown. Specifically, the Patawomeck used these trading relationships to bolster their autonomy and sovereignty, since they were at the fringes of Powhatan’s political influence and were pressured by the Piscataway across the Potomac River in addition to the Iroquoian groups further north. At that time, the Patawomeck likely could not have imagined the onslaught of English colonists that would make their way up the Potomac Valley a little more than forty years after Smith’s first visit.
Within the first decade of English involvement with the Patawomeck, two major events occurred that have colored the popular knowledge of the tribe’s history. The first was the residence of a young English boy named Henry Spellman, with the Patawomeck leader Japazaw at Passapatanzy in 1609. During his stay with the Patawomecks, Spellman became adept at speaking Algonquian and later wrote an account of his time with the Patawomeck. His account provides important information about Patawomeck customs and lifeways. Additionally, Spellman was the interpreter who translated the Patawomeck creation story when Japazaw shared it with Argall, who served as deputy governor of the colony from 1617 to 1618.
The second major event within that first decade of Smith’s visit was the kidnapping of Pocahontas in 1613. The English accounts of this event state that Chief Japazaw sold Pocahontas to Argall for “a small copper kettle and some other less valuable toies,” often leading to the demonization of the Patawomeck in this narrative. However, this event is better understood as an abduction or assault rather than a sale or exchange. Japazaw was coerced into allowing the abduction to take place due to the English display of force at Passapatanzy and the threat of violence from English ships and English guns. This threat was especially real in 1613 with the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614) raging in and around Jamestown, showing that the English were ready to kill Indigenous people without hesitation and with little to no cause.
By 1619, the English began to engage in treaties with the Patawomeck. The first, made in that year, is referenced in a letter stating that the English traders on Potomac Creek “made a firme peace againe wth Japazons.” The second, referenced in a 1624 letter, states that there “was an agrement made the last yeere by mr. Threasurer wth the Patomacks, our ancyent allies…to asiste us in that revenge… [and] to accompany us and bee our guides in a warr against the Pomunkeys,” showing how the Patawomeck used alliances to assert their own place in the political struggles of the Chesapeake in the early seventeenth century. Nevertheless, these agreements suggest the English acknowledged Patawomeck sovereignty from an early time.
By 1642, Father Andrew White, a Jesuit missionary involved with the founding of the Maryland colony, had baptized the Patawomeck weroance and other members of the tribe’s chiefly lineage. Only seven years later, English families were establishing plantations adjacent to Patawomeke, as shown through land deed records indicating transfer of the land to the English by Wahanganoche, the weroance at the time. It was also around this time that some Patawomeck began to interact more closely with the English by laboring on their plantations, hunting and fishing for them, trading with them, and likely living and intermarrying with them.
The increasing English settlement around and within the Patawomeck homeland led to increasing conflict between the two groups. By the 1660s, English colonizers, including Giles Brent and George Mason, were actively trying to displace the Patawomeck from their homeland, going so far as to falsely accuse the Patawomeck werowance of murder. This increased tension between English settlers and local Indigenous groups eventually led the Virginia General Assembly to pass the 1662 act “Concerning Indians” that acknowledged the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and addressed land claims and legal rights, including due process of law. The act did not identify individual Indigenous signatories, but physical evidence and later events confirm that it extended to the Patawomeck.
As a form of passport, the 1662 act required “badges (vizt.) silver plates and copper plates with the name of the town graved upon them, be given to all the adjacent kings within our protection.” This act reinforced the 1646 treaty ending the Third Anglo-Powhatan War (1644–1646) that required Indigenous “messengers” to wear badges and other forms of bodily adornment for safe passage when traveling outside of their designated lands. The badge given to Wahanganoche, king of the Patawomeck in the 1660s, was uncovered from a field in Caroline County in 1832, where it was likely lost or discarded by the werowance. This badge proves Patawomeck involvement in the 1662 treaty and the recognition of Patawomeck sovereignty by the colony of Virginia and, by extension, the English royal government. The treaty had pledged that “noe person of what quality soever presume to imprison any Indian King without spetiall warrant.” When Wahanganoche was accused of murder in March 1662, he was not only acquitted but compensated, with his detainers fined and barred from future office. These developments further demonstrate that the legislative act’s terms applied to the Patawomeck.
Despite the rights guaranteed by the 1662 treaty, the English’s continued suspicion and desire for Patawomeck lands led to a drastic approach by the English government. On July 10, 1666, Virginia’s governor and council ordered that “the whole nation of the Doegs and Potomacks be forthwith p[ros]ecuted with war to their utter destruction if possible and that their women and children and their goods or as much of it as shall be taken be disposed of according to such instructions as shall be issued from the Right Honourable the Governor.” This order declaring war on the Patawomecks and the Doeg, another Indigenous group, not only authorized murder but allowed English colonizers to enslave or sell into servitude women and children and confiscate possessions.
Despite the 1666 order, the Patawomeck people were not destroyed. Some Patawomeck moved away from English-occupied lands, some were already living among English households, and others joined nearby Indigenous groups, such as the Doeg, Rappahannock, Matchotic, Nanzemun, Nanzatico, or Portobago. Artifacts recovered from settlements near the freshes of the Rappahannock River, around modern-day Port Royal, confirm this diaspora. Ceramic types and decorative motifs on pipes recovered from several of these sites occupied in the middle and latter decades of the seventeenth century reveal multiple Indigenous learning communities originating in the Potomac River and Potomac Creek regions, as well as in the lower reaches of the Rappahannock River. Additionally, silver badges issued to the weroances of the Patawomeck and Matchotic tribes were both recovered from a single site, Camden, a mid- to late-seventeenth-century settlement located just downstream of Port Royal.
As residents of these coalescent communities, Patawomeck were implicated in the 1669 Act for Destroying Wolves, which established an annual quota of wolves for specific Indigenous groups to kill to protect English colonial property. The act lists three Native entities in Rappahannock County, which included portions of modern-day King George County: the “Portobaccoes,” “Nanzcattico,” and “Mattehatique.” By this time, these entities are best understood as coalescent towns of multiple Indigenous communities from the surrounding region (Mattehatique is probably a corruption of Matchotic, which archaeological evidence links with the Patawomecks via Camden). The diasporic Patawomeck community was also encompassed by the 1677 Treaty of Middle Plantation, when the 1680 addendum to the treaty was signed by Pattanochus, king of the Nanzaticos, Portobagos, and Nanzemunds (not to be confused with the Nansemonds), with whom Patawomecks were living. By the close of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century, references to Indigenous peoples in the Patawomeck homeland become less prominent as English populations increased and Native communities held less political power within the broader region. Nevertheless, scattered references point to a continued Indigenous presence in both Stafford and King George counties, representing Patawomeck ancestors.
The Continuing Impact of Colonialism
By the middle of the 1700s, most Patawomecks had adopted English dress and some customs through intermarriage with colonists. At this point, most Patawomeck held small land plots or were tenants who maintained the subsistence lifestyle based on raising crops, fishing, and hunting that they practiced before English arrival. Intermarriage between families with Patawomeck heritage in this period, and through the next two centuries, helped to keep tribal traditions alive and maintain community cohesion.
Around 1789, White Oak Church was established in Stafford County. This church, which still stands, became a significant space that facilitated the continued interaction of members of the community. Generations of Patawomeck attended White Oak Church well into the 1900s, passing down and maintaining tribal knowledge and traditions, meeting suitable Patawomeck marriage partners, and conducting formal and informal business. As a testament to the importance of this church, generations of Patawomeck account for the vast majority of the interments in the cemetery.
Patawomeck lifeways persisted in much the same way they had for the previous century until the middle of the 1800s. However, the American Civil War (1861–1865) led to major disruptions. The proximity to Washington, D.C., and Richmond placed the Patawomeck community at the heart of the nation’s bloody struggle. During the war, the population of troops within the county numbered more than 200,000, which was exponentially higher than the local population of just over 8,000 people in 1860. Many of these soldiers camped in southern Stafford County, in and around core Patawomeck territory. They established a major landing at Belle Plains, across Potomac Creek from the Patawomeck ancestral villages. White Oak Church was used as a field hospital and the local headquarters for the United States Christian Commission, which distributed bibles and supplies to troops nearby. The armies also commandeered crops and livestock for sustenance and cut down most of the trees in the area for fuel and shelter. The local land and economy were devastated when the war concluded in 1865.
Despite the dire economic outlook of the Reconstruction era, members of the Patawomeck community persisted and rebuilt their lives by continuing to rely on the natural bounty of their homeland. Farming and fishing resumed as daily subsistence practices, with the commercial profitability of these pursuits greatly increased after the war as steamboat and rail transportation became more prominent in the region. This allowed the Patawomeck to ship fish and produce to large urban centers, including Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, and many members of the tribal community prospered during these uncertain times.
While incorporating contemporary technology, the seasonal work of the Patawomeck people mirrored ancient lifeways. Men did much of the fishing and selling of the catch in the spring, summer, and fall, while women and children would knit nets, tend gardens, and maintain household livestock. In the winter when the fishing was slow, men would cut wood to sell for railroad ties and entire families would repair and maintain fishing and farming equipment. Families that lived farther from Potomac Creek had a greater focus on farming but still a distinctly seasonal schedule of work and connection to the landscape.
The Twentieth Century
Scholarly interest in the Patawomeck began in earnest in the late 1910s and 1920s when anthropologist Frank Speck visited the community to take photographs, conduct interviews, and collect objects related to Indigenous heritage. During his visit, Speck noted that there were around 150 Patawomeck descendants, mostly living around Potomac Creek in Stafford and King George counties and that most were associated with the Newton and Green families who were predominantly fishers and farmers.
Interest in Native communities during the early 1900s was not all positive, however. During the same time that researchers like Speck were attempting to salvage and highlight the diversity of Indigenous Virginians, eugenicists such as Walter Plecker were working for the Commonwealth of Virginia and attempting to erase Indigenous people as a distinct group within the state by lumping them into a broad classification of “colored” residents. This almost completely removed the classification of “Indian” from public records in Virginia, which complicated efforts later in the century for tribes to receive legal recognition.
Through most of the 1900s, the Patawomeck remained a small, tight-knit, and isolated rural community of farmers and fishermen centered on Potomac Creek and White Oak in Stafford and King George counties. Development and the population of the region around the Patawomeck homeland increased due to the opening of the Interstate 95 corridor and commuter rail lines in the later part of the century, which facilitated access to jobs in Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. As a result, members of the Patawomeck community began pursuing higher-paying careers outside of farming and fishing, land was sold outside of the Patawomeck community, and outmarriage increased. Despite these changes, Patawomeck culture adapted to the times, maintaining Indigenous connections and knowledge.
The Modern Era
The era beginning in the 1990s has been one of great progress and growth for the Patawomeck people. In February 2010 the Patawomeck Indian Tribe achieved official recognition by the Commonwealth of Virginia after many years of hard work by tribal citizens and anthropologists at the College of William & Mary. Today, the tribe actively promotes tribal community cohesion, intertribal connections, and relations between the Patawomeck and non-Indigenous peoples. The tribe organizes events and programs that bring tribal citizens together and facilitate interaction, including an annual craft show, fundraisers, scholarships, tribal work days, and regular tribal meetings. The Patawomeck Indian Tribe conducts educational outreach, including traveling exhibits and lectures at local schools, libraries, and public events to share Patawomeck culture. Classes and workshops help to maintain cultural traditions within the community and educate those outside of the tribe on Patawomeck traditions. Among these are a class on culture and history for Patawomeck children, a class on the Patawomeck eel pot tradition, and an Algonquian language class, the first of its kind for any Virginia tribe, offered since 2008.
In 2019, Stafford County leased the Little Falls property to the Patawomeck Indian Tribe, and it now houses the Patawomeck Museum and Cultural Center. Most tribal citizens still live within ten miles of their ancestral villages on Potomac Creek. The tribe remains involved in protecting and stewarding the significant cultural and natural resources that they have relied on for thousands of years, including Potomac Creek, which tribal watermen still depend on for their livelihoods. Living in one of the fastest-growing regions in the United States also has underscored the importance of preserving cultural resources as suburban sprawl moves into the core of the Patawomeck homeland. The tribe collaborates with universities, non-profit organizations, local governments, and state and federal agencies to promote preservation and natural resource management and to ensure that Patawomeck perspectives are represented in decisions. Starting in the early 1900s and continuing to today, scholars from institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, the Smithsonian Institution, William & Mary, and American University have recorded and published on aspects of Patawomeck life and culture.
