Symposium Speech #1

Chief Arthur Leonard "Lone Wolf" Adkins
Chickahominy Tribe

I'll tell you some things that I have on my mind and some that I've gotten out of books and also you'll probably hear a humorous story every now and then. My wife always gets after me about telling these, not off-color jokes, but just humorous ones.

We are not newcomers. We've been here more than twelve thousand years, so we're not a "new kid on the block". So that is the point I'm taking now is that we came across the Bering Straight into North America, following game for food and clothing and shelter. That is why the North America is now populated with Indians in so many places.

Different Indian tribes have different reasons or different ways of obtaining a living or customs and life styles. And most of the time, because of television, you've seen the tipis. Well, that is television for you. There are tribes that did live in teepees; we did not. We lived in the wigwam or the "long house" and it was a permanent structure; so nobody was going to get up and move anywhere. We were farmers, so we cultivated the land and we took good care of the land. We always go on the assumption that "if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you." If you don't go out and abuse it, it will still take care of you. So that's the point that I'm trying to make.

And in this settlement here in Jamestown (that we now know as Jamestown), originally the river was the Powhatan River. After the colonist came, they wanted to honor their king, so they named it Jamestown. So that's where that name came from. Excuse me: They named it the James River and of course Jamestown is the town that was established by the colonists when they first came. The colonists, I'm sure, tried to do what they could; but somehow or another they didn't. Misunderstandings, language, customs, styles, all of those things contributed to the disagreements, warfare and all other things that might have happened. Unfortunately, some of the first who came didn't want to get their hands dirty, so that made them kind of hard to get a living going. And so the native people, the Chickahominy people in particular, helped them through those starving times of sixteen nine and ten (1619) when they probably would have starved to death had it not been for the Indians. Because we knew how to take care of ourselves, then we helped them over the hump and then tried to show them how to take care of themselves so this wouldn't occur again. So that is one of the things that we consider a great contribution to these people that came from across the waters.

The Jamestown settlement was the first permanent English settlement. But before that, the Spanish had made an attempt to come; the Italians had made an attempt. So, you know, people had been coming all along and I think that's why the settlement at Jamestown probably got such a poor reception: because they had been poorly treated by those who came before them. So they said, "All right now, I'm going to wait for you and when you come the next time, I'm going to be ready for you". So I think that's part of the reason for that.

The Spanish came in 1570, (even as early as that) and they captured one of the Indian boys. I don't know which tribe he came from; but they took him back to Spain. He was educated as a Spanish nobleman. So he was really high up there and he came back and he convinced them: "Let me go and establish a our mission among my people." And they agreed to that. So Don Luis (is what his name had been changed to) stayed here with the Jesuit Priests and the supply ship went back. I think it was two years before they ever got back. In the meantime, Don Luis kind of backed out on his plan and when the supply ship came back two years later, here they found all these Indians wearing priests' garments. And they said, "Something has gone wrong!" And they never found the Jesuit Priests. I don't know where they went to and so the supply ship officer said, "Now you've got to find Don Luis and if you don't find him, we're going to hang every Indian, or kill every Indian we can find." So they went out for a two- or three-day search (I believe it was three days, they were supposed to come back.) If you don't find him, we going to hang every one we can find. But Don Luis never came back; nobody knows where he went to -- unless he just went, dug a hole and got in it or something. But anyhow, they couldn't find Don Luis so they rounded up all the Indians they could catch. (I think it was only twelve.) They hanged them on the yardarm of the ship. So that was the end of the Spanish invasion of this country.

You might remember or might have heard it before, that with all this exploration that they did not get a very fair welcome when the people came to Jamestown. And so that's where the problem started to come in; and then the indentured servants that came from Africa in 1619, again different language, different culture, different styles that made disagreements, too. The English said, "Well we going to do something with these Indian people. Let's educate them, Christianize them." (you know) 'Cause we were heathens in their estimation because my religion might have been different from theirs -- that's making me a heathen. And because I didn't have a formal education (I'm talking in the past tense) we were uneducated. But then you could ask one of them, "What is the name of that tree over there?" I don't know. We (Indians) knew that. "What is that animal trotting across there?" I don't know; but we (Indians) knew that. So what I'm saying is that when you're educated, most of the time, you're educated in a certain area. Ms. Clayton built up that big long thing about me; I was educated in the elementary school education program. And so that was my place that I taught most all of my years --in the elementary school. If you put me in the high school now, I'd be lost completely. I don't know anything about the foreign languages, chemistry is poor, and biology is probably almost as poor as that. But anyhow, that's the thing we're talking about here.

I want to tell you a little about the topography of this area. As strange as it may seem, I've been here all my life and I didn't know all of this either. Up in Richmond is called the Fall Lines because that's the end of the navigational -- or navigable-- waterway was right in Richmond because of all the big rocks up there. So that's referred to as the fall line in most any book you read. So, right at Richmond. When you get to Norfolk, you go out on the water, sixty miles east of Norfolk, it drops off to 12,000 feet. So that's how deep that water is out there somewhere. So that's how rapidly the land surface changes from Richmond going into Norfolk. And of course, that was a navigable waterway and that is one of the things that was so important to the native people, because that was a form of transportation. If you didn't have some kind of transportation you were in bad shape because a lot of it was on foot. If you'll notice, those -- especially the county residents -- Route 5, you'll notice the proximity of that to the James River all the way to Richmond; they were never very far from water, even if they were on foot because that was one source of transportation; also a source of food if you got caught out there and couldn't make it back. So that's an important part of this colonization.

Also, there usually was a freshwater stream by for water (for drinking and probably for cooking). Normally, cooking was done on the outside and it was cooked and left there; people ate when they got ready -- not a set mealtime where you go and sit down to a table or something. You just picked up what you were going to eat and go.

Another thing, the towns were usually built on a high bluff overlooking the waterway and usually a bend in the river. If you had a bend going up this way, and you built on that bluff there, you could see from both directions. It's kind of hard to see if the river bends the other way, but if the river bends with you, you got a pretty good eye for anyone that might be creeping up on you. So that was an important factor, too.

Just recently, I picked up some pottery shards down there on the Chickahominy River and it was a fireplace stone there, too. Apparently, the fireplace stone was put there and the pot on it and the pot broke. That's what it appears and, of course, they just gave up everything and started all over again. But the shards of pottery, you know, are about that big and then the stones, you can tell that they were exposed to extreme heat.

Shell fish, that was an important food source as well as a trade item because you find all of these sea shells so far inland -- it's true the water level was much higher than it is now -- but all those sea shells didn't come there from that high water; somebody took them there as a trade item for food. So that's why you can find, a lot of times, sea shells on high mountains.

Before the introduction of steel, most of the tribes' tools were made out of wood, bone or stone, one of those three sources of materials. After the introduction of steel, then it was still hard to change, because after you get old, which I am -- I'm in that category now; you talk about senior citizens, that's me -- It's kind of hard to change to something new because you're satisfied with the old; so you say, "I'll stick with that a little while longer." So I think that's one of the reasons that some of the older people, it's mighty hard for them to break away from the old traditions: stone, bone and wood, as tools.

One of the things that the English wanted were canoes, and they would get the native people to make canoes for them and that is a hard job. And that was one of the most labor cost I guess in any of the things that the native people made was that canoe -- burning and scraping, burning and scraping and it took a long time; but that was one of the things the English people wanted because they needed something small to get up in these little narrow streams. So that was one of the things they wanted and of course, that was a real challenge to the native people. I'm sure you've heard this before and I'm sure people still use it: Canoes had fires built in them to attract fish to them, then you could spear them easier or catch them with your hands. People ask you, "Didn't it burn down? or Didn't it catch fire?" But you can build a mound of sand in the bottom of a boat and build a fire on it and it won't catch fire. It'll heat up. It'll get kind of warm down there, but it won't catch fire. I know a couple of people that use that. That's one of their ways of keeping warm when they're out there on the river. The only thing, they use a bucket and they put sand in it and they build a fire in it. That keeps them warm while they fish. If you've ever pulled up a net and your fingers get so cold that you don't know whether you've got the net in your hand or not. That's what they do; they warm their hands and then they pull up their nets.

I told you about the lean times with the colonists. Whether this is true or not I don't know, but I'll tell you about it anyhow. They say one of the colonists was so bent out of shape because he didn't have food that he killed his wife and salted her to eat during the winter. Whether that was true or not I don't know, but that's the story that was in the book about it. Course they found him before the winter came and they burned him at the stake. So, you know, he didn't have to worry about the winter coming on.

Our people were gardeners, raising crops. And this is a thought, maybe. Right now we use an lot of fertilizers (lime), fertilizing crops when the native people used fish for fertilizer. Putting corn and beans in the same hill is an advantage because we put a lot of nitrogen on corn to make it grow. Our people didn't know that beans and corn growing together -- that the beans put the nitrogen in the soil for the corn because it is a legume; but they knew it worked. So that's one of the things we sort of credit ourselves with: helping the people to survive; showing them how it worked. We couldn't tell them all about 'this is a legume and this goes with this and all this -- just that it works; try it.' (I forgot to ask just how much time I had.)

This is a real interesting occurrence. It was a treaty made in 1614 with the Chickahominy people. They made it with Sir Thomas Dale (You might have heard that name in History). And I'll read you a few sketches of what the Treaty said. But, Sir Thomas Dale was replaced with Captain Yeardley from England and when the time came for this Treaty to be honored, the Chickahominy people wouldn't honor it -- 'no, we made a treaty with Sir Dale, that's the only one we goin' deal with.' You know, so that brought on another skirmish. But the treaty said that they would forever be call Englishmen and subject to the King; that they wouldn't kill or detain any cattle that belonged to the English people, but would catch them and bring them back home; and they'd be ready to furnish 300 warriors against the Spanish if they ever came back. So apparently, the English people were more afraid of the Spanish than they were of the Indians. They didn't care anything about them, apparently. They said, 'They shall not enter our town, but to send word they are the Englishmen; and every fighting man, at the beginning of the harvest, would bring two bushels of corn, which they would receive just as many hatchets. I guess that was a real item then. And that the eight chiefs -- now when they said "the eight chiefs", the Chickahominy Tribe was ruled by eight Chiefs, eight governors, or eight whatever; they were the eight people that took care of tribal affairs -- but the eight chiefs would see that all of this was done and if it wasn't, they would receive the punishment. And for their loyalty and faithfulness in carrying out this, they would receive a red coat, a copper chain and a picture of King James to wear around their neck and be called a nobleman. So that was a real interesting treaty, I thought. Part of the treaty is still in force today. I think it's (the point of this story) probably the oldest treaty in United States history. I can't guarantee you that, so someone might be interested in looking that up.

One of the Spanish ships came in though, but he didn't tarry long. I don't know whether he felt like he wasn't welcome or what; but he brought the Carib Indians here and he put them off of a ship over in Jamestown. They ran away fortunately, or unfortunately, and they went to live among the Indian people because they were having a hard time. But the English ordered the Indians -- they said, "now you go find them Carib Indians and you bring them back, don't we goin' kill you. So they went out to look for them, but they didn't find them because they didn't look hard -- yeah, they were protecting them. And they'd come and say 'Have you seen them?' and they'd say, 'No, no, I haven't seen them anywhere. It's the same way it was when the settlers got as far as the Blue Ridge Mountains. They asked the Indians up there, said, "how far is it to," well, they called it the Big Waters, talking about the Pacific Ocean. "It's just over the mountain, just over the mountain." [chuckle] It is just over the mountain, but they didn't say how far over the mountain. But, you know, that's one of those things.

Another event in 1619 was that they built a school for the Indian people. Hoop-de-doo. [chuckle] They said they were going to educate them. But this is a bad mark on the Indian people in the county, in that before they could ever open the doors, we burned her down. Killed the headmaster, and that was the end of that school. I don't know whether they didn't trust anybody or what it was, but that is the story that goes with that. [chuckle]

When we get down into the period of 1700s, most of the people then could speak quite a bit of English. And so the interpreter that the Chickahominy Tribe had, they dismissed him. Very often they were un... (no, let's see, what do I want to say) they were - well, let's just call it like it is; they were big liars. [chuckle] You would tell them one thing, and they'd tell something else. I'm sure that happened many times, because I've seen it happen in another culture. Well, it was another tribe.

My roommate was a Navajo. He is an electrical engineer by education now. But before he finished college he went home to the Navajo reservation. They had this man in court for stealing sheep; and the judge was asking him, "did you steal the sheep?" And he'd tell him "yeah", and Peter was telling him "no, he didn't steal the sheep," you know. So I know these interpreters are bound to have been big liars. So anyhow, Peter lied enough to get him out of the sheep-stealing. So he says, anyhow. Peter was a big tale-teller, too, so... [chuckle] Unfortunately, he's in prison now. But that's another story.

The Treaty of 1677, that was made when Sir Governor... Sir... (I'll get it right in a minute) Governor Berkeley and Nathaniel Bacon had their clash. And they were going to move all the Indians to Aylett. And if you know where Aylett is, it's about 6,000 acres of land. All the Indians would be over there, never be disturbed again, and all these kinds of things, all these promises. And the people were not moving fast enough for Nathaniel Bacon, so he was going to try to get the heat on and get them moving. We want to expand, and we need some room to expand. But anyhow, that didn't last over there very long, and so the Chickahominy people, along with the other tribes, started migrating back in this area. Across the Pamunkey River, into the Chickahominy Valley, across the Chickahominy River, and then up on the Chickahominy Ridge. This is the place where we live now. It's one of the highest places between Richmond and Norfolk, so it's been told to me. But that is where we stand now, and I hope I've given you a little bit of an idea of what the last 200 years might have been like. And I want to turn it back over to you.