Browse Items (25 total)

Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful paramount chief of the Algonquin Indians in eastern Virginia, which the Indigenous Virginians called Tsenacomoco. She was about eleven years old when the English colonists arrived in 1607.…

Relations between Virgina's Indigenous peoples and the colonists who wanted to settle on their land were often contentious and violent. Virginia's colonial government passed multiple laws in the 17th century to regulate the actions of settlers and…

After a public notice appeared in a Richmond newspaper in October 1842 that a petition would be presented to the Virginia General Assembly to sell King William County property known as "Indian town lands," members of the Pamunkey tribe took action.…

Indigenous peoples, including Virginia Indian tribes, were not considered American citizens even after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Between 1880 and 1920, many tribes established their own schools, as Black citizens did, likely for…

This photograph shows a deerskin mantle that was believed to have been presented by Paramount Chief Powhatan (whose given name was Wahunsonacock) to Captain Christopher Newport of the Virginia Company in 1608. The mantle is embroidered with shells…

On January 20, 1843, a petition from residents of King William County was presented to the House of Delegates. The men who signed it asked the General Assembly to sell the lands that the royal government had set aside for the Pamunkey Indians by…

Indigenous Virginians and the English colonists conceived landownership in different ways. Tribal members did not "own" land individually, but lived in small communities and hunted, planted, and gathered food or other materials in the larger…

Alexander Spotswood served from 1710 to 1722 as lieutenant governor of Virginia, in the place of the royal governor who never came to the colony. During his tenure Spotswood sought to improve the colony's security and economy and relations with…

Black Hawk, born in 1767 and known in his native language as Makataimeshekiakiak, was a Sauk warrior and tribal leader. The Sauk lived on the Rock River, a tributary of the Mississippi, in what is now Illinois, and fought against the United States…

William Berkeley (1605–1677) was the longest-serving royal governor of Virginia. He served as a Crown governor (an appointee of the King) between 1642 until 1652 and again from 1660 until his death in 1677. In his late twenties, Berkeley was a part…