Patawomeck Tribe seeks state recognition

2-12-2010

Last week, a bill for the state recognition of the Patawomeck [Potomac] Indian Tribe has started making its way through the Virginia General Assembly.  I have been asked to write about the history of the Patawomeck Tribe in our area and the background efforts resulting in the birth of this bill.  My name is William L. Deyo, known to most as “Bill.”  I have been the tribal historian of the Patawomeck Tribe since its reorganization over a decade ago.

When the English colonists settled Jamestown in 1607, the Patawomeck Tribe was a very large tribe of the Powhatan Federation.  They quickly made friends with the English colonists and eventually even became their allies, refusing to help the leader of the Powhatan Federation, Chief Opechancanough, younger brother of Powhatan, who tried to obliterate the English in the great massacres of 1622 and 1644.  Without the help of the Patawomeck Tribe, the settlement of Jamestown would almost certainly have failed to survive.  The Patawomecks supplied the Jamestown settlement with corn and other food when they were starving.

In 1607, the Patawomeck Tribe was settled in the areas we now know as Stafford and King George Counties.  The English pronounced the name of the tribe as “Potomac,” from which the Potomac River derived its name.  Their chief, called the “Great King of Potomac” by the English, appears to have married the sister of the Great Chief Powhatan.  The Great King’s next younger brother, I-Oppassus, or “Japasaw,” as the English called him, was the Lesser Chief of the Tribe.  Japasaw was known as “Chief Passapatanzy,” as that was where he made his home.  The famous Indian princess Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, was visiting Japasaw’s family at the time that she was taken captive by the English, who had hoped to use her as a bargaining chip to force her father to release the English captives that he had.

Pocahontas had many family ties to the Patawomecks.  Her mother has long been thought by historians to have been a member of the Patawomeck Tribe.  Also, one of Japasaw’s two wives was a sister of Pocahontas, and the first husband of Pocahontas was Kocoum, the younger brother of Japasaw.

The rule of the Patawomeck Tribe eventually fell to Japasaw’s son, Wahanganoche, sometimes called “Whipsewasin” by the English.  Those were very troubled times for the Patawomecks, as several influential colonists tried to take away the land of the chief by making false accusations against the tribe for the murders of certain colonists.  Chief Wahanganoche was taken prisoner by the English and was forced to stand trial in Williamsburg.  The chief was acquitted of any wrong doing, much to the dismay of the greedy colonists who wanted his land.  In 1663, on his way home from Williamsburg, Chief Wahanganoche lost his life.  From implications in a letter written by Col. John Catlett, it appears that the chief was ambushed and murdered in Caroline County near the Camden Plantation.  It is ironic that his silver badge, given to him in Williamsburg by authority of the King of England, for safe passage over English territory, was found 200 years later at Camden, where it had apparently been lost as a result of the chief’s murder.

Shortly after the death of the chief, in 1666, the English launched a full-scale massacre against the Patawomecks and other area Virginia Indian tribes.  Most of the men of the Patawomeck Tribe were killed, and the women and children were placed in servitude.  Two of the chief’s sons made it across the river to Maryland but were captured by an enemy tribe and were turned over to the English.  A few of the Patawomeck children, who were orphaned by the 1666 massacre, were taken in by area colonists.

Chief Wahanganoche was very shrewd in allowing a number of his daughters to marry well-to-do English colonists in the area.  He must have been careful to instruct them to pass on the Indian ways to their children.  It is because of the children of those daughters and some of the orphan children of 1666, who also married English colonists, that the Patawomeck Indians and their culture survived.  The descendants of these Patawomeck children intermarried with each other, and many of their descendants have continued to marry cousins of Patawomeck descent to keep the blood strong.  They passed on the Indian ways of agriculture and of hunting and fishing that have been used up to the present day in Stafford County.  Some of the current tribal members are still able to construct the intricate eel baskets just like their Patawomeck ancestors did more than 400 years ago.

The descendants of the Patawomeck Tribe banded together in the 1700s in the White Oak area of Stafford, which was in King George County until the county boundaries changed in the late 1770s.  This was in walking distance from the Passapatanzy area, where many of the descendants also still live.

My paternal grandfather, Leonard Madison Hudson, was born in Passapatanzy.  His family carried down the traditional tales of their Patawomeck ancestor, Chief Passapatanzy [Japasaw] and of the Indian ways.  He married Elizabeth Zane Roberson, of White Oak, a multiple descendant of the Patawomeck Indian girls, Ka-Okee and Ontonah.  My grandfather’s lineage also crossed into descents from Ka-Okee.  The many stories of my ancestral Indian heritage that I was told as a child created a deep interest in obtaining all of the knowledge that I could of my ancestors.  Even in my early teens, I tried to construct my family tree from the verbal information that the elders gave to me.  When I went to college at the University of Richmond, I learned how to do genealogical research and have been following my passion for genealogy ever since.

My Patawomeck relatives in Stafford knew that they were of “Potomac Indian” heritage but did not know their exact descent from colonial times.  The current Patawomeck Chief, Robert “Two Eagles” Green, attended the same high school and college that I did.  He contacted me about 15 years ago, as he had heard about my genealogical research.  He was proud of his Patawomeck heritage, but just as my family had instructed me, he had been told by his grandfather that we should not speak of our Indian blood to “outsiders.”

With the stigma of being an Indian finally having been lifted, Robert Green had questioned the Smithsonian Institution about releasing the more than 100 skeletal remains of our Patawomeck ancestors, which they had in storage.  It was his dream to rebury our ancestors and early members of the tribe, but the Smithsonian stated that they would only release the remains if our Patawomeck Tribe obtained state recognition.  Robert Green wanted to officially reorganize the tribe with the hope of obtaining state recognition.  State recognition would allow us to finally lay our Patawomeck forebears to rest and would help us to preserve our Patawomeck heritage for future generations.

When Robert Green contacted me about this, he asked for my help in proving our Patawomeck descent.  That was something that I had been working on for more than 30 years.  I already knew much of our genealogical descent from the early Patawomeck Indians and was glad to share my knowledge with my Indian relatives.  We were able to get a large group of Patawomeck descendants together at the library in Fredericksburg to talk about our common goal of officially reorganizing the tribe.  It was like a great relief for many to finally be able to talk openly about their heritage, and the support was overwhelming.

I prepared a booklet at that time to be distributed among the group in which our ancestry was displayed for all to see.  We started having formal meetings in which we ratified a constitution for the tribe and elected officers.  I prepared documentation for our tribe to present to the Virginia Council on Indians.  Chief Robert Green, Vice Chief (now called “Lesser Chief” like our ancestor, Japasaw) Gary Cooke, and I (elected as Tribal Historian) headed down to Richmond to present the documentation to the Virginia Council on Indians.

The Virginia Council was made up of representatives of the existing state-recognized tribes and was the “stepping stone” to the state legislature to obtain state recognition.  We had not been given the criteria for state recognition by the Council beforehand.  Even without knowing the criteria, the documentation that we presented met five of the six criteria.  The only one that was not met was to show that our tribe had acted together as a group up to the present time, and that was something that we did not address.  We were told to come back with additional information.  We worked diligently to prepare documentation to address this one additional factor through historical records of churches, schools, census information, newspaper accounts, maps, and statements of our many activities as a group.  We took the additional information to the Virginia Council and were again told to come back with more.  As we were later trying to compile more information to satisfy the council, the criteria for state recognition was changed to require information that was too strict for anyone to meet.  We made the decision to go directly to the state legislature to try to obtain state recognition.

On Feb. 2, 2010, a group of faithful Patawomeck members car-pooled down to Richmond to sit in on the House Rules Committee, which was assembled to vote on various bills, including our bill for state recognition.  Testimonies were given by Chief Robert Green and by our distinguished tribal member and celebrity, Wayne Newton.  The House Rules Committee voted unanimously in favor of our bill for state recognition.  It still has a long road to travel to become law, but we are hopeful that the legislature will see the importance of preserving the Patawomeck heritage and will act fairly in their consideration of passing the bill.

William L. “Night Owl” Deyo, former president of the Virginia Genealogical Society, serves as the Patawomeck Tribal Historian.

http://www.journalpress.com/community-news/1399-patawomeck-tribe-seeks-state-recognition