Section of a historical map of the pre-colonial Chesapeake Bay Area. Map by G.S.

There was a time when the Potomac River was a political fault line dividing two great powers. Shifting alliances, political maneuvers, betrayals, and turnarounds – this was not the Civil War but the time of the Powhatan and Piscataway paramountcies and the tribes loyal (or not) to them. It was a time of kings and emperors, ambition and downfall. The English, when they landed at Jamestown in 1607, were stepping into a political morass, one which challenged, then helped, their settlement and conquest.

But this isn’t a story we usually think about. Maps of indigenous North America usually smear decades of history together, or conflate language, culture, and political affiliation. The pervasive myth that Native Americans had no concept of land ownership or land rights is often repeated without question, which leads non-natives to think colonial borders were the first borders drawn on the land.

Back in 2016, an anonymous blogger going by the name Chlopodo, but who prefers G.S. (after his blog’s name Gesta Septentrionalis or “Deeds of the North” in Latin), got tired of badly-made or frustratingly fuzzy maps of indigenous North America. “I remember at first looking for other people who had already done it. After looking for long enough I finally had a Thanos ‘Fine, I’ll do it myself’ moment,” he said in an interview.

The ‘it’ in this situation is making the most accurate political map of North America in 1600 that he could. After tackling Texas and the relationship between the Biloxi and Ofo, he started on the Chesapeake Bay. While not complete, what he’s created so far is absolutely stunning:

In his accompanying posts – Part 1 deals with the Western Shore, Part 2 with the Delmarva Peninsula, and Part 3a with the North Carolina coast – G.S. thoroughly cites his sources, teaching the reader about what we know about these polities, and how we know it. His full posts are worth a read, but to summarize:

The area around the Chesapeake Bay was dominated by Algonquians: the Virginia Algonquians, focused around the Powhatan Paramountcy; the Carolina Algonquians focused around Pamlico Sound, Albemarle Sound, and the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay; and the Nanticoke focused around the Delmarva Peninsula. To the north were the Susquehannock, an expansionist Iroquoian nation, and to the west were Iroqouian and Sioan-speakers, which G.S. hasn’t gotten to map just yet. (Almost none of these names would have been recognizable to the people they describe, but they describe people related by language and culture, a bit like discussing “Turkic” people.)

For Virginia, most of what we know is based on direct observations from John Smith and other settlers and explorers who were trying to better understand whose land they were living on. They needed to play the political game, so detailed maps and accounts were critical to their survival.

Dominating the political landscape was the Powhatan Paramountcy, more properly known as Tsenacomoco. This empire – and it was indeed an imperial project of its ruler, Wahunsenacawh – grew to be roughly the size of Belize, holding sway over more than 30 different tribes when the English landed. Wahunsenacawh held the title of mamanatowick, and he was able to appoint a weroance (or, if a woman, a weroansqua) over each tribe.

(As an aside, to English settlers accustomed to living under hereditary rulers, each tribe was clearly a kingdom and Tsenacomoco clearly an empire. So, rather than call these leaders chiefs, they translated weroance as king and mamanatowick as emperor. Only later did Western historians call them chiefs.)

The other paramountcies on G.S.’s map have similar political structures, though different titles. Over the District of Columbia, for instance, was the Piscataway, ruled by a tayac rather than a mamanatowick. Its capital was Moyaone, located in what is now Accokeek. The local weroance was over the Nacotchtank realm, labeled “Anacostan” on the map. (As a side note, Georgetown was built atop another trading town, Tohoga, which was part of this realm and loyal to Nacotchtank’s weroance.)

While Virginia was well-documented, the Delmarva Peninsula’s history is a bit more fuzzy. G.S. writes, “Usually with any particular region, I can find at least a couple of prior published maps for me to grumble and complain about being wrong, but which I can still use as a foundation to repair. But with Delmarva, I have yet to find a single map that even attempts to incorporate published information from the last century or so.” Nevertheless, he does find and map political boundaries using mostly secondary sources, identifying seven distinct realms: Tockwogh; Wicomiss; tiny Matapeke on Kent Island; Choptico; the Nanticoke Paramountcy; the Pocomoke-Assateague Paramountcy; and Great Siconese, a Lenape rather than Algonquian polity.

In North Carolina, things are even less clear. Here, settlement was done in two periods: an abortive effort in 1585, and a more successful effort that began around 1655. During neither period was there much effort made by the settlers to document the politics, cultures, or languages of the place, so G.S. dives deep into what can be found in archeology, tying known sites to those that were recorded by the handful of 400-year-old maps and accounts available, and tying those to their tribe. The constant flux of borders and disintegration of the polities over the coming century meant he had to “[balance] uncertainties on one end with other, different uncertainties on the other.”

For DC residents, whose city is built on politics and power, it’s important to understand that Europeans were not the first to look at this land with ambition and statecraft.

Today, though these countries are gone, their people and tribes are not. Chickahominy, Piscataway, Nansemond, Pamunkey, Rappahannock, Mattaponi, Nottoway, and Patawomeck people all live and work in our region, and all have or are seeking state and federal recognition for their tribes.

Better maps of yesterday yield a clearer picture of today

Maps and posts like G.S.’s bring forward these peoples’ complex history and write a piece of it directly onto our region’s landscape. Political dramas of borders, rivalries, tragedies, and war played out along the banks of these rivers and in the hillsides beyond. One hopes that G.S.’s maps will inspire some curiosity about just whose land this was, what they wanted then, and what they want now.

What’s next for G.S. is unclear. “After Virginia, I might move northwest and do some stuff in the Great Lakes area because that involves some groups that are little-talked about nowadays: the Massawomeck, Erie, Neutral, and so on. But it just depends on what I feel like at the time. I still just see my blog project as a hobby that I do whenever I am able to, and want to, do so. I don’t consider it to be a really major thing, and if I only get maybe 20 regular readers then honest-to-god I would be happy with that.”