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The museum of the Jamestown Settlement has an instructive display (photo below) from which one can see the rapid displacement of Powhatan Indian communities in the 17th century as English settlements grew.  An article on Wednesday, November 21st, in the Washington Post cites new research challenging the prior understanding of the extent of Powhatan Indian towns in this same time period, and suggests that the Rappahannock tribe dominated the sites along the river of its name (the third river from the bottom in each map).
"Recent archaeological work, driven by 2018 data analytics, has unearthed evidence of the Rappahannock Tribe’s vast range along the river that bears its name. The findings suggest the Rappahannocks were a powerful tribe with equal standing to others that got more attention from European settlers. The emerging story undercuts what Western historians have asserted for 400 years about the shape of native culture when the Europeans arrived in America, and it restores the place of the Rappahannocks, who had nearly been erased from the record." For a link to the article, please click here. Comments are closed.
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