The Indian tribes who settled east of the Mississippi River became skilful in mound-building, sculpture, and other accomplishments. They were generally clever and dexterous peoples. In the areas covered by Virginia and the other southeastern states the life of the natives had an exotic flavor. Their graceful and courtly manner was noted by the first European explorers.
At the time of the white settlement in 1607, the land of Virginia was occupied by three main linguistic groups: first, the Algonquian, which included the Powhatan Confederacy in tidewater north of the James River, and the gentle Accowmacks and Accohannocks on the Eastern Shore; second, the Siouan, located in Piedmont Virginia above the falls of the James, that is, west of Richmond—a group of Indians which included the Monacan and Manahoac Confederacies; third, the Iroquoian, which included the Cherokees and the Nottaways, both tribes of which lived south and southeast of the James River.
In 1607 there were altogether about 17,000 Indians in Virginia between the mountains and the sea. It has been estimated that they lived in about two hundred settlements, called "towns," and in some four thousand dwelling-houses.
Their architecture, as has been mentioned, was for the most part a perishable one. At this time, three hundred and fifty years after 1607, not one American Indian wooden structure has remained above Virginia ground. By such complete destruction we and our descendants are forever deprived of the physical background which would continuously remind us of the Indian past, in the way that the city of Rome reminds Italians of their Roman past.
i. The Towns
In the Old Dominion, Indian towns were small, usually covering about an acre of ground and containing ten or twelve buildings—seldom more than thirty. They were always built on or near a river or other body of water. One of these settlements by the name of "Kecoughtan," the present Hampton, possessed in 1607 only eighteen Indian buildings.
The towns themselves may be grouped into three kinds: open, fortified, and partially fortified.
The first group, the open towns, comprised those settlements which were laid out irregularly, with the buildings generally arranged loosely on either side of a central avenue or cleared space. Footpaths criss-crossed this open area.
The fortified or walled towns were, as far as is known, built on two designs, round and square. The chief constructional method of fortification was the palisade-and-moat, or to put it another way, the stockade-and-ditch. This architectural arrangement, it may be mentioned, was employed by some of the peoples of prehistoric Europe, and by the Romans, and Anglo-Saxons, and others abroad. But the American Indian developed the method entirely independently of Europeans.
The palisades thus built by the Indians in Virginia usually were tree trunks or heavy timbers, from five inches to eight in diameter. Sometimes, as at "Patawomeke" or "Potomac" village, the posts were only three to four inches across. Corner posts were generally larger, being ten inches thick or thereabouts. The timbers, usually with the branches uncut, were for the most part set vertically in the bank of earth thrown up by excavating the moat or trench. They reached two or three feet underground, and rose seven to twelve feet above the earth. At times, the posts leaned outward to make scaling them more difficult. The ditch was usually outside the palisade.