Politics, Politics

It turns out that four hundred years ago, Captain John Smith was the first (recorded) European to cruise up the Potomac. In doing so, he met lots of Native American tribes. The first lived on the south bank of the river, and down Chesapeake Bay. These Indians were part of the Powhatan Confederacy, with whom Europeans had been in contact for some time. Powhatan himself was suspicious of the English, and had (according to Smith, anyway) laid an ambush for the explorer on the banks of the Potomac. The intended attackers, however, did a poor job concealing themselves, and when Smith called them on their ruse, they came out, confessed that they had meant to attack the English, and went on their way.

Continuing up the river, Smith found that the other tribes he encountered were friendly without trying to kill him first. These Indians, on the north bank between the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay, were the Piscataway. Smith came to understand that these Native Americans were friendly for a reason: not only was the Powhatan Confederacy pressing north onto their side of the river, but the Susquehannocs upriver were aggressive as well. As such, the Piscataway, wedged as they were between two expansionist tribes, were anxious to find allies in their struggle along the banks of the Potomac.

Smith did not fail to make note of this, and thus it was that the English settlers of the region landed on Piscataway land. Aiding the Piscataway, the English colonists made enemies, but had the friendly tribes as a sort of buffer between them and the hostile Susquehannocs to the north. When Powhatan died, chaos in the region ensued, and the colonists supported a range of tribes, most of whom were warring with each other in the aftermath of the disintegration of Powhatan's Confederacy. Thus, the colonists effectively manipulated the shifting political balance of the region in order to keep the surrounding tribes weak as they adjusted to the land and grew stronger.

Political turmoil must flow along the Potomac.

Oh, by the way, the Potomac is named not after any one Native American tribe, but after the nature of the region. Situated at the confluence of a river that flowed past mountains, forest, and valleys alike, the settlers were among Indians who valued trade. The word, "potomac" was Algonquin (the root language of all the area's Indians) for "something brought," as in "something brought to be traded."

Source: Frederick Gutheim, The Potomac (New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1949), 21-31.
Image Source: http://thinkorthwim.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/jamestown-map.png

Bizarre Bites, Part I

A few strange tidbits from the annals of Washington, DC history:

On June 5, 1663, a man named Francis Pope laid out a plantation on the land that is now the heart of the capital, stretching 17 blocks west from where the Capitol building stands today. The western boundary of this property was a creek (now gone) called the Tiber. As though having a man named Pope living on the Tiber was not enough, he also named his estate "Room." Thus, it can be said that where Washington now stands, there was once a Pope in Room on the Tiber. Ironically acting the prophet, it seems Pope was also the first to predict that a great city would one day stand on that very ground.

If you thought moving the nation's capital to southern Maryland was the last word in Congressional relocation, you are sadly mistaken. After the Confederacy's attempt to establish a wholly new capital 100 miles to the south in Richmond, a new relocation effort was led by a veteran of the Civil War, General John Logan. Logan and the good people of Missouri believed that moving the capital to St. Louis would acknowledge and include the people of the burgeoning West. The people of St. Louis adopted several resolutions but, alas, could not convince enough people in the East to disassemble the capital, ship the pieces to St. Louis, and reassemble them there.

Washington, DC was named not by Congress, or Charles L'Enfant, the city planner, or popular opinion, but by the unilateral decision of three men. These men, the first commissioners of the city, charged by congress to oversee the construction of the new capital, wrote a letter to L'Enfant on September 9, 1791 declaring that "We have agreed that the Federal District shall be called the 'Territory of Columbia,' and the Federal City the 'City of Washington.'" Apparently, everyone else simply followed suit and the city became "Washington."

Source: George Rothwell Brown, Washington: A Not Too Serious History (Baltimore: Norman Publishing Company, 1930), 3-4, 42-43, 106.

DC in the BC...and Later

Below: John Smith's Map of Virginia, 1612.

It was the end of the Ice Age, and things were looking up. The glaciers were receding, causing the rising sea levels that would form the Chesapeake Bay. The climate was warming. By ten thousand BC, the first Washingtonians settled into the area. Over the next few thousand years field and forest developed.

The surrounding land of present-day Washington was rich with game and stone to make tools. Around 800 CE, experiment with agriculture began with the growing of maize. Squash, beans, and potatoes were later added to the diet. By 1500, the people around the Potomac River had become so numerous that both hunting and farming were necessary in sustaining the population of the region. The people who had settled into the area were of the Piscataway Conoy Nation, a collection of tribes unified during the 16th century in order to ward off Iroquois invaders. These Eastern Algonquian-speaking Native Americans developed a system of chiefdom whereby the leader of a village, a werowance, was subject to a single supreme chief, known as the tayac.

One of the larger villages in the region was located in present day Anacostia. Identified by Captain John Smith in his 1612 Map of Virginia, the village and people were referred to as the Nacotchtank. Smith estimated the village population to be at around 200, with 60 warriors. The village encompassed the area from Bolling Air Force Base, following the Anacostia River to Anacostia Park. The word Nacotchtank has been translated to mean "a trading town," and this town along with the Patawomeke village were the two larger villages in the region. These towns served as "gateway communities," allowing the tayac to control long-distance trade, such as beaver pelts from the north. The Nacotchtanks were variably referred to as Nacostins or Analostans, deriving the name Anacostia.

Not much is known of daily life among the Nacotchtank. What we do know is that in 1622, the English colonists burned and plundered the Nactochtank village, in order to obtain corn. The following year, Captain Henry Spelman led a group of Englishmen on trading mission along the Potomac. Spelman was an interpreter for the British and presumed himself to be in good standing with the local Native Americans. However, whilst traveling Spelman and 19 of his men were killed by the Nacostins, with one survivor, Henry Fleet, becoming captive at the Nacotchtank village.

What happened to the Nacotchtank? Escaping 5 years later, Fleet later became a skilled trader and interpreter as Spelman had been before him. Fleet's writings mention that by the 1640s the Nacotchtanks were located at a small village in the Georgetown area. A fragment population had inhabited Analostan Island, later named Mason's Island and even later referred to as Theodore Roosevelt Island. Within 40 years of contact with the Europeans, the population of the Piscataway Conoys had dwindled to one quarter of what it was when Smith first greeted them in 1608. Violence and disease had taken its toll on the Nacotchtanks who faded into obscurity by the 1680s; their lands soon covered by farm, plantation and town.

Of Interest: Captain John Smith National Historic Water Trail, http://www.nps.gov/cajo/

Sources: National Park Service, "Civil War Defenses of Washington: The Native People, " Available online: http://www.nps.gov/cwdw/historyculture/the-native-peoples.htm (March 2009).

Piscataway Conoy Tribe of Maryland, "History," Avaiable online: http://piscatawayconoy.com/content/learn/history.html (March 2009).

Stephen R. Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1993).

John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia (London: Printed by I.D. and I.H. for Michael Sparkes, 1624).

Photo Source: John Smith, "Map of Virginia," Library of Congress, 1612.