Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: The Powhatans and other Woodland Indians as Travelers Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection Author: Helen C. Rountree # of Pages: 17 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2017-11-10 08:56:20 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 05:53:18 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:53:18

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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32 POWHATAN FOREIGN RELATIONS Ps f / ALE 3° J 4 h Fig. 1.2. Directions for easy river travel in the Chesapeake and surrounding regions dugouts, an advantage when pursuing or being pursued by enemies. Perhaps one reason the Massawomecks were so feared by the Powhatans and their neighbors was that, aside from their fighting ability, they descended on the Patawomecks and the people of the upper Chesapeake Bay using birchbark canoes.®? Such craft were capable of carrying tremendous loads; a small one could take five hundred pounds of goods, in addition to the paddlers. But their main disadvantage was that they needed continual repairs: they leaked through “little holes” in the bark, and they split if dropped or if they touched obstacles such as heavy floating debris or rocks in the rapids. In rivers carrying many dead trees, as often happened in the spring floods, birchbark canoes were unusable.} Dugouts were tougher, but they were also impossible to hau! over portages. Consequently, a traveler had to leave his dugout on the shore, where it might be stolen before its owner's return. A common The Powbatans as Travelers 33 solution was to hide the canoe. A really ingenious ploy, favored by the Creeks, was to make the canoe out of an especially rotten-looking log, with the bark left on, and then overturn and hide it near che landing place. Where streams were too rapid for easy ascent, they were likely to be used for descent only, with trails supplementing them for travel in the opposite direction. The James River was used that way by the “Tomahitans” in 1674, when they journeyed down to Monacan Town and back in Gabriel Arthur’s wake.** Likewise, some Indian travelers needed only to descend certain rivers because they planned to return by another route. In all such cases, the watercraft used were usually temporary and quickly made. There are accounts of Indians making log rafts and bullboats (hides stretched over a wooden framework), and the Creeks crossed streams they did not want to navigate by tying their goods up in skins and swimming across, pushing the buoyant packages ahead of them.** But bark canoes appear in the records most often. A canoe can be assembled rapidly (in about a day) from elm, cypress, or other bark. The method begins with finding a large tree and making a cut all around its circumference, both at the base and at a point fifteen to twenty feet up (that gives the length of the canoe). Slit along the length and detach the bark from the tree. Then cut a triangular picce out of each end, with the apex in the midline, so that when the bark is folded into a V-shaped hull the canoe will have a pointed prow and stern. Sew up the ends with sinew or young bark, propping the gunwales apart with sticks, and then waterproof the seams with deer fat. April is the best time of year for the operation, while the sap is up and the bark is more easily detachable. Canoes of hardwood bark were useful to Indian travelers, but they were still “awkward in the water and heavy on the portage.” 7 Footpaths were the alternative to waterways. Within the Virginia coastal plain, where the Powhatans lived, there were trails both along the rivers and across the necks between rivers, wherever there were pairs of Powhatan towns that needed connecting. The trails along the rivers were very likely set well back from the riverfront, with feeder paths to the waterfront towns, because they had to cross a myriad of tributary streams and estuaries, and it was easier to cross them higher up where they were narrow. When messages had to be transmitted fast upriver or across necks, then runners were probably used. The Powhatans also used trails, with fords over streams, to reach their trading partners to the south and southwest.** Indian trails extended in a huge network across North America (fig. 1.3). For some journeys, as for those running northeast-southwese along che coastal plain or piedmont perpendicular to the navigable rivers, they were