Click here to go back to Home Page.
The Indians of Westmoreland County were the Tauxnent, Potomac, Onaiwmainent, Secacawoni, Wicocomico, Cuttatawomen I, Passaiec, Rappahannock, Moraiughtosund, Cuttatawomen II, Uttamussamacoma.
This is Captain John Smiths description of his first encounter with Westmoreland indians in 1608. The area was heavily populated with indians from numerous chiefdoms of Algonquain Indians.
Prior to the early 1600's human occupants of the Westmoreland area were the Paleo-Indians from 13,000-8,000 B.C. These Indians were hunter-gatherers. Most of the Indian sites of the Paleo-Indians are now under water levels as the weather warmed and water levels rose. Some artifacts however, have been found on higher ground such as some hunting utensils.
With the rise of sea-level waters oysters and crabs because available to natives as a good source of additional nutrition. Several sites are found at the estuaries of the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers.
Pottery was introduced around 1300 B.C. and crop planting, especially maze, around 1000 A.D. With these changed more permanent and complex villages and societies developed.
When Captain John Smith arrived the Algonquines had begun to live in larger villages of 10-50 longhouses with carpets or mats along river banks and streams. They had fields of maize, beans, pumpkins, and tobacco.
Smaller villages for food gathering of one or more houses existed also. All villages were ruled by a chief, or werowauce, and his advisors and priests. Archeologists have identified several werowances villages used by prehistoric and early Indians. The Matchotic village of Onawmauient was located on the west bank of Nomini Creek and Pissasec Indians at a site near Leedstown, Virginia.
In 1588, Captain Vincete Gonzalez sailed up the Potomac river to a site near Washington, D.C. and is believed to have had the first contact with Westmoreland Indians. In 1604 the next Europeans appeared when a ship sailed to Rappahannock River. The ships captain was either Bartholomew Gilbert or Christopher Newport. The captain ordered a werowance of Rappahannocks killed and other natives captured.
Powhatan was the chief of all Virginia Algonquains although his influence in the Westmoreland county area was marginal while local chiefs acted with a great deal of autonomy. During the next 30 or so years Powhatan and his successor, Opechancanough, lived in relative peace with the English settlers and did not participate in the Powhatan uprisings of 1622 and 1644. As for Opechancanough, he was shot in the back by an English soldier in the streets of Jamestown in 1644, at the approximate age of 100. His executioners remained unaware that their prisoner was a literate and well traveled man. Opechancanough never revealed his past to the English. It was only much later that historians learned of it from Spanish records and pieced the account together. Bridenbaugh makes use of these records and others, including Indian stories and legends, to put together a plausible explanation of a puzzling event. Not all of his conclusions can be proven, but his account makes sense of events that otherwise have no explanation.
In the mid 1600's trouble began as Indians felt pressure of more and more settlers and were charged with various crimes causing unrest. Various fights, shootings and hangings along with intermarriage between Indians, Whites, and Blacks disperced Indians until most tribes disappeared. The only local tribe left in the are are the Rappahannocks.
In 1675, after an Englishman was killed by Indians, the militia retaliated by killing a number of Indians. However, they mistakenly killed friendly Susquehannocks, resulting in those Indians taking to the warpath, so that it was necessary to raise a body of Militia from the Northern Neck of the County. Records show that John 2nd served as Sergeant during this Susquehannock War.
The Sekakawon and lower Cuttawomen tribe were both forced by the encroaching European settlers to join the Wicocomico by 1656. The united tribes, all referred too afterward as Wicocomico, were moved onto a 4,000 - 5,000 acre reservation in northern Lancaster Co., VA in 1655/56.
David Bushnell, author of "The Manahoac Tribes in Virginia", noted that the Indian beads which he discovered at Leedstown in Westmoreland county had an international and inter-tribal character. Similar beads were found all along the East coast. The source of them was thought to be a glasshouse in Spain.
By 1670, there were only ten Appomatox Indians left in Westmoreland county.
By 1678, there were no indians left on the ancient Possaseck village site on the banks of the Rappahannock River near Leedstown. As of the 1990 census, there were 16,391 Native Americans currently residing in Virginia. Some are members of Virginia's recognized tribes. Representatives from tribes all over the United States now consider Virginia home.
There is one religious rite of the local indians which apparently interested the early historians because they describe it rather fully.
Smith and Strachey speak of it as a "sacrifice of children" which was made once every ten or so years and whose purpose was twofold:
to subject boys to a severe test in order to determine if they should be trained for the priesthood, and to make a sacrifice to their god Okee and other gods.
The strange ceremony was reserved for fifteen promising boys between ten and fifteen years of age. In the morning of the first day of the ceremony, the boys were painted white and brought forth. The people danced and sang about them with rattles until the afternoon. At that time, the children were placed at the foot of a tree around which stood a guard of the ablest of the men, each "having a bastinado in his hand made of reeds bound together." Then the guards formed a lane, through which five appointed young men were to run to "fetch those children."
Each young man ran in turn through the lane and brought back a child, and as he ran the guards rained unmerciful blows upon his body with which he protected the child.
During this time, the women were looking on from a distance, crying out and weeping. After the children had been carried through the double row of guards, the latter tore the tree completely apart and made garlands for their heads of its branches and leaves. The children were then "cast on a heap in a valley, as dead," and a great and solemn feast was prepared there for the whole company.
The colonists were never permitted to witness the rest of the ceremony. However, according to Smith's account "The wereowance being demanded the meaning of this scarifice, answered that the children were not al dead, but (only) that the Oke or Divell did sucke the blood from their left breast (of those), who chanced to be his by lot, till they were dead. But the rest were kept in the wildernesse by the yong men till nine moneths were expired, during which time they must not converse with any: and of these, were made their priests and conjurers." The wereowance continued by saying that the sacrifice was considered to be so necessary, that if it were omitted, "their Oke of divel" and all the other gods would not let the people have "deare, turkies, corne, nor fish: and yet besides, hee would make great slaughter amongst them."
Beverly thinks the sacrifice of children, described by Smith and Strachey, was the Huskanaw, as he calls it, or a hardening ceremony with which he was familiar in the latter part of the century. It was practiced only once every fourteen or sixteen years, or when the young men grew up. Beverly does not associate it with the priesthood, but declares that it was a form of disapline and testing to determine which of the youths would make worthy candidates for admission to the ranks of great men, or counselors of the nation.
The young men to be huskanawed were kept in an enclosure in the woods for several months, and were given a concoction made from roots which drove then "starking staring mad." They were kept in this "raving condition" for eighteen or twenty days, after which the intoxicating diet was gradually reduced. But they were brought to the village while they were "still wild and crazy." As a result of this huskanawing, the young men were suppose to forget, or pretend to forget, everything in their past--their wealth, parents, tongue, etc., and learn "All things perfectly over again. Thus they unlived their former lives, and commence men, by forgetting that they ever have been boys." If they indicated they remembered their past, they would be huskanawed again. No doubt, if they did remember, they made every effort to concel it. Beverly also adds that occasionally a young man did not survive the experience.
