Monacan Millennium

A Collaborative Archaeology and History of a Virginia Indian People

Jeffrey L. Hantman

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780813941486
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

While Jamestown and colonial settlements dominate narratives of Virginia's earliest days, the land's oldest history belongs to its native people. Monacan Millennium tells the story of the Monacan Indian people of Virginia, stretching from 1000 A.D. through the moment of colonial contact in 1607 and into the present.

Written from an anthropological perspective and informed by ethnohistory, archaeology, and indigenous tribal perspectives, this comprehensive study reframes the Chesapeake's early colonial period—and its deep precolonial history—by viewing it through a Monacan lens. Shifting focus to the Monacans, Hantman reveals a group whose ritual practices bespeak centuries of politically and culturally dynamic history. This insightful volume draws on archeology, English colonial archives, Spanish sources, and early cartography to put the Monacans back on the map. By examining representations of the tribe in colonial, postcolonial, and contemporary texts, the author fosters a dynamic, unfolding understanding of who the Monacan people were and are.

ONE

The Monacan Indians as the Europeans Saw Them, 1570–1612

WHAT DID COASTAL DWELLERS (both European and Indian) know of people and events in the interior of the Chesapeake watershed and beyond? In this chapter I will review colonial-era narratives and provide answers to that question.

Archaeological studies show that from the time of the Clovisera occupation of North America (ca. 9500–8700 B.C.), structured paths of communication and exchange linked people living across the entire continent in a down-the-line or leapfrog manner (Anderson and Gillam 2000). Scholars of this period in American history debate how much variation there is in the style of the index fossil of the time: the Clovis spear point. Over a brief time span of several hundred years, that stylistically distinctive spear point, distinct from tools used before and after, was shared by people across North America. By their age, form, and carefully bounded radiocarbon associations, the spear points offer dramatic evidence for the presence of long-distance interactions, shared information, and shared ritual processes that transcended local, clearly fluid boundaries.

Over ten millennia that followed, from 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1600, stylistic variation in both quotidian and ritual objects show that new boundaries developed between peoples who may have called themselves by different names and spoken increasingly diversified languages. But exchange ties, migration, marriage alliances, adoption, and the fluidity of native languages (especially and essentially at boundaries) made the American Indian landscape a distinctly open one across space and time (Bollwerk 2012; Sassaman 2010; Stewart 1989). As ritual objects and people moved, so too did information. And this archaeologically documented pattern was the norm at the moment of first European contacts. Ethnohistoric documents confirm this.

When Europeans arrived in the Chesapeake region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and asked about the people of the interior, they received knowledgeable responses based on real, historical relations. These relations between coastal and interior polities would have affected the content and tone of what was said by the former about the latter, as was the case with Powhatans describing Monacans to the English. But the use of stereotypical imagery and language can be carefully parsed. Predictably, there is more emphasis on difference rather than similarity, and on a history of enmity. Those relations were assumed by European observers to be timeless, given their presumption that Indians lacked the kind of dynamic history which Europeans granted themselves.

Colonists asked frequently about the interior, not because they were ethnographically motivated but because they sought a river passage across the American continent as well as alternative trade and political alliances. Most critically, they knew that the Virginia uplands contained the minerals they expected to find and use to build their own wealth. The descriptions of interior polities received from coastal people were diffracted through a lens in which information was indeed a source of power—to control information about others, about strangers, offered an advantage in the crosscultural and intertribal negotiations of early contacts. Information did not always flow freely between Indians and colonists but was instead parsed out in bits and pieces, perhaps at times with purposeful deceit in mind. But the recorded responses of coastal peoples are certainly from a people with detailed and intimate knowledge of their Monacan neighbors to the west.

These descriptions come to us through yet another lens. Colonists were typically writing for a royal patron or a private investment company (such as the Virginia Company), all of which had specific hopes and expectations for the “New World.” Colonists’ accounts had to be engaging and reassuring about the people among whom they were settling on the Atlantic coast. If the accounts were alarming or mystifying, few additional English settlers would have come. Such a calming effect was not equally essential in describing people of the interior. In fact, European visions of the native “wild man” were expected from those deeper reaches, such that coastal people served to gain by enhancing their own civility in comparison with others. An essential review of the primary authors of the English colonial texts comes from Helen C. Rountree (1989: 3–7), who provides brief biographies of key English observers and authors such as John Smith, William Strachey, and Gabriel Archer, among others. Those three receive particular attention in the chapter that follows. They each had very different backgrounds in terms of class and association with the Virginia Company, and differences between them, and potential invidual biases that manifest themselves in their writing, should receive consideration. Margaret Holmes Williamson (2003) crafted a highly original and important book-length study of Powhatan “Lords” that began with the premise that English observations of political power and authority have been read in the seventeenth century and in the twenty-first century through a too-casual translation of Renaissance and Elizabethan worldviews and language. It is not enough, Williamson comments, to translate the English word “king” to the English gloss “chief,” or to translate from “priest” to “shaman.” The words are not equivalents (2003: 1–14). While I use the gloss of “chief” in this text and quote the original reference to indigenous “kings,” ultimately I follow Williamson’s guide and look for the structural differences in leadership positions of power and authority (separately conceived) that a simple translation does not allow. Sources for Spanish colonization are best evaluated in the writing of Clifford M. Lewis and Albert J. Loomie (1953) and C. M. Gradie (1993). Seth Mallios (2006) considers the cultural perspectives, and the ensuing cultural misunderstandings between Spanish and Roanoke English colonists.

In this chapter, I summarize the available ethnohistoric information about the Monacans, a documentary record that begins in 1570, almost forty years before the Jamestown colony settlement. These descriptions of both momentary encounters and specific “interviews” constitute the full sum of what is known about Monacan or Piedmont interior culture and history from the colonialera documentary record. My description of references to the Monacans or other interior people of the Piedmont attempts to be comprehensive and is organized chronologically rather than thematically. The major themes characterizing the interior people are summarized following the presentation of data.

The first source examined is the Spanish Jesuit mission to Virginia, called Ajacan by the Spanish, that took place in 1570 (Lewis and Loomie 1953). Following that, I review the insights gained at the Roanoke colony (Quinn 1985). While this takes the focus just south of the James River and Chesapeake area, it provides an extremely useful source for examining regional narratives of coastal and interior peoples. The bulk of the presentation comes from the Jamestown colony, principally the collected writings of Captain John Smith (Barbour 1986). Colonial encounters specifically discussing the Monacans are presented from the three attempts the English colonists made to venture into Monacan territory. In each, they queried their Powhatan hosts about the Monacans and received responses. In one instance, a man from the Virginia Piedmont was taken captive by the English and while captive offered the only firsthand account of the interior people recorded by the English. Finally, several remarkable conversations took place between the paramount chief Powhatan and leaders of the Jamestown colony. In these, the Monacans are described as a potential shared enemy, in purely political terms, within English-Powhatan political negotiations.

Alonso’s Testimony: A Possible First Mention of the Monacans, 1570

Sometime around 1560, a Spanish ship ventured north from the well-established Spanish colonies known as La Florida on the southeastern Atlantic coast of North America and arrived in the Chesapeake Bay. From there, the Spanish took with them an Algonquian Indian and traveled with him over a decade to Mexico, Spain, and finally “back” to Havana. He was baptized by the Spaniards as Don Luis de Velasco. Such kidnappings, adoptions, or exchanges were not uncommon in the early European colonial era. Among other things, the taking of an Indian gave the Europeans someone from whom they could learn language and geography and who could serve as an interpreter. In the colonial mindset, such an Indian was also thought likely to convert to Christianity and help teach his people to live as Christians.

Don Luis provided some of this for the Spanish. He converted and took on his Spanish name. He brought news of the Bahia de Santa Maria (the Spanish name for the Chesapeake) to the Spanish governors in the colonies and King Philip in Spain. In 1570, Don Luis, a group of eight Spanish Jesuit priests, and a young novice named Alonso returned to the Chesapeake Bay. Depending on Don Luis for direction, this effort succeeded in reaching the Chesapeake, and a small mission settlement was established on the York River in September 1570. The Spanish named the territory Ajacan (Mallios 2006).

A letter written from Ajacan to Juan de Hinistrosa, the royal treasurer of Cuba, contains the first mention of the geography of the upper James River. On September 12, 1570, Fathers Luis de Quiros and Juan Baptista de Segura wrote: “From some Indians whom we met farther down this river we have some information about the region farther inland. Three or four days journey from there lies the mountains. For two of these days one travels on a river. After crossing the mountains by another days journey or two, one can see another sea. If any new information can be had with more certainty and clarity, we will get it” (Lewis and Loomie 1953: 91). This brief mention warrants inclusion here because it confirms a recurring theme: European colonists asked almost immediately about the people, geography, and resources of the interior. Further, they were determined to learn more.

The Spanish mission did not last even a year. It appears that Don Luis connected independently with his kin and led or facilitated a Powhatan attack on the Jesuits with whom he had lived for a decade. All were killed by the Powhatans except one—the boy Alonso. Spanish supply ships returned in 1571. A Powhatan captive told the Spaniards that Alonso was still alive in the Algonquian village of Kecoughtan. The next year, 1572, Alonso was returned to the Spanish. Living in the Spanish colonial mission at Santa Elena (Georgia), Alonso provided his testimony of the events he had witnessed and the people with whom he had lived for two years.

It is from the testimony of Alonso that the first description of the Monacans is found in colonial-era documents. At Santa Elena, Alonso was befriended by Bartolome Martinez who wrote down the information about Ajacan that he heard from Alonso. Martinez wrote:

From Alonso I learned that Ajacan is a very fertile land, with gold and silver and pearls. He said that when he showed them a small gold cross, they bit it, and said it was plentiful in the mountains which reach to the other sea, and this should be as far as New Mexico. The Indians of this province wear some golden circlets on their brows and bracelets on their wrists and ear rings.

They sustain themselves with fish, corn, and game; all three abound in Florida. There is no king or prince who lords it over them, but only in that a chief is recognized wherever one tongue is spoken, and there are many in that region. The Indians of the long wide valleys are the enemies of those in the mountains and in summer a savage war is waged. (Lewis and Loomie 1953: 161)

The Indians of the Coastal Plain and those of the interior are understood from this passage to be two different peoples. Alonso identifies no people by tribal names, but opposes the people of the “long side valleys” (the Coastal Plain) and “those in the mountains.” When Alonso describes the people of the coast as having “no prince or king who lords it over them” in 1570, one might interpret that to mean that the paramount chiefdom so clearly described by the English in 1607 was a recent development, or part of a pattern of chiefly cycling. If so, it puts into new perspective the long-term balance of power between the Powhatans and the Monacans that would be tested by the colonial presence.

Finally, Alonso noted the jewelry worn by the Indians. Ajacan is a fertile land “with gold, silver, and pearls,” which, he says, are “plentiful in the mountains.” In a wide-ranging speculation about the meaning of the name Ajacan, the historians Lewis and Loomie (1953: 246) consider the possibility that the meaning of the name may translate as “copper land people” or “beaten copper.” Of importance here is the observation that beyond the natural abundance of food and pearls in the Coastal Plain, other items of value noted by Alonso were items that had to be obtained from the interior. Gold and copper were available in the Piedmont, Blue Ridge, and Ridge and Valley regions of Virginia, all in Monacan territory.

The themes of Alonso’s reminiscence regarding the Chesapeake interior are those which appear again in subsequent colonial observations. This is a region that is: (1) of immediate interest, (2) home to a distinct polity that is at odds with coastal people, and (3) the source of prestige minerals.

The Roanoke Colony and the Mangoaks, 1584–1586

Remarkably, almost four and a half centuries later, the concepts found in Alonso’s testimony continue to frame discussion surrounding the historical construction of Monacan identity and Monacan relations with their neighbors. These themes are seen again in the accounts of the English at the Roanoke colony. While the Roanoke colonists of the late 1580s did not settle adjacent to Monacan territory, I include their observations for the insights they provide on the relationships between coastal and Piedmont or interior Indian polities beyond the Roanoke colony. In addition, the English colonists who came to Jamestown in 1607 were very aware of, and affected by, the surviving testimony of the Roanoke colonists.

AMADAS AND BARLOWE RECONNAISSANCE, 1584

In April 1584 Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe sailed a reconnaissance voyage to the barrier islands (Outer Banks) of the Virginia colony (now North Carolina). The voyage was sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh to provide training in navigation in preparation for the establishment of an English colony. The coastal islands were home to several Indian groups who were the southernmost of the vast spread of Algonquian-speaking people along the Atlantic coast and arcing west to the Great Lakes. These Algonquian tribes living in and around the Outer Banks were identified by the English as the Secotan, the Weapemeoc, and the Roanoak. Maps of the time indicate the presence of non-Algonquian tribes in the interior. Trade took place between the English and the Indians as early as 1584 (Mallios 2006). And yet this was not the first time Indians here had knowledge of Europeans. The Roanoke Indians had salvaged iron from Spanish wrecks off the coast of their territory (Quinn 1985: 31).

Exchange was carried out between the English and coastal Algonquians, and that cemented friendly relations for a time (Mallios 2006). For 20 deerskins, Granganimeo, a Roanoak Indian, “seized on a tin dish which he clapped on his breast, after making a hole in it, as a gorget. For 50 skins he obtained a copper kettle” (Quinn 1985: 35). The Roanoke historian David Beers Quinn (1985: 34–45) further notes that “this was not sharp trading, the metal being more than the Indians would have acquired in some years of trading in the interior.” Most of what is said about interior people concerns exchange. It is obvious from the recollections of this first English reconnaissance of the Atlantic coast that interior people and resources are key to understanding English and Indian relations on the coast itself, as early as the first reconnaissance. It is equally clear that interior people had access to goods and resources that were to be of great interest in subsequent colonial exchanges.

After one month Amadas and Barlowe left, taking back to London the deerskins for which they had traded as well as two Algonquian men: Manteo and Wanchese. These men were brought back to England to relate what they could about the political geography of the newly named Virginia as well as to provide instruction in the Algonquian language. It is unclear whether Englishmen were left with the Algonquians in exchange.

RALEIGH’S ROANOKE COLONY AND THE MANGOAKS, 1585

In 1585 Walter Raleigh established his ill-fated Roanoke colony...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Monacan Indians of Virginia, A.D. 1000–2000
• 1. The Monacan Indians as the Europeans Saw Them, 1570–1612
• 2. The Monacan Indians as Thomas Jefferson Saw Them, 1754–1787
• 3. The Archaeology of Ancestral Monacan Society
• 4. Colonial Entanglements: Why Was Jamestown “Allowed” to Survive?
• 5. The Myth of Monacan Disappearance: Diverse Responses to Colonialism after Jamestown
• 6. Monacan Perspectives on Monacan Archaeology and History
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index