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Concept
Native American tribes in Virginia
Summary
The Native American tribes in Virginia are the indigenous tribes who currently live or have historically lived in what is now the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States of America.
All of the Commonwealth of Virginia used to be Virginia Indian territory. Indigenous peoples have occupied the region for at least 12,000 years. Their population has been estimated to have been about 50,000 at the time of European colonization. At contact, Virginian tribes belonged to tribes and spoke languages belonging to three major language families: roughly, Algonquian along the coast and Tidewater region, Siouan in the Piedmont region above the Fall Line, and Iroquoian in the interior, particularly the mountains. About 30 Algonquian tribes were allied in the powerful Powhatan paramount chiefdom along the coast, which was estimated to include 15,000 people at the time of English colonization.
Few written documents assess the traditions and quality of life of some of the various early tribes that populated the Virginia region. One account lists the observations of an Englishman who encountered groups of Native peoples during his time in Virginia. The author notes the Virginia Natives' diet depended on cultivated corn, meat and fish from hunting, and gathered fruits. He noted they believed in an afterlife, and recorded differences in characteristics among Native nations based on region and the size of population.
Due to the early and extended history, by the post-Civil War period, most tribes had lost their lands and many had suffered decades of disruption and high mortality due to epidemics of infectious diseases. Because the Native Americans generally lacked reservations and some had intermarried with Europeans and African Americans, many colonists and later European-American residents of Virginia assumed that the Native Americans were disappearing. They did not understand that mixed-race descendants could be brought up as fully culturally Native American.
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