From Nansemond to Monacan: The Legacy of the Pochick-Nansemond among the Bear Mountain Monacan

Abstract

In 1948, Library of Congress scholar William Gilbert wrote: "Indian blood still remains noticeable in our eastern States population in spite of the depletions arising from over 300 years of wars, invasions by disease and white men from Europe and black men from Africa."1 Noting that Virginia's surviving Indian groups tended to retain traditions of their Native origin, Gilbert identified several Indian groups along the Blue Ridge and Piedmont zones of the state. Stating these concentrations "beginning with Rappahannock County in the north and continuing southward along the Blue Ridge through Rockbridge and Amherst counties and striking directly southward to Halifax County on the North Carolina border," he gave definition to the geographical occupation of these interior Virginia tribal groups.2 Specifically he identified five hundred to six hundred mixed-bloods in central and the extreme western end of Amherst County near Bear Mountain and Tobacco Row Mountain of the Blue Ridge. Known locally as "issues," he describes these people as having "a very rich brunette with straight black hair and Caucasian features."3 Acknowledging a second group northwest of Amherst County, he further identified a population of over three hundred "Brown people" exhibiting "a mixture of white, Indian, and occasionally Negro blood." While self-identified as American Indians, these groups were locally considered to be "mulattos" but acknowledged as "a group apart from both whites and Negroes."4 Before proceeding with this history of a Pochick-Nansemond band among the Monacans, we would do well to acknowledge the derogatory nature of the racial epithets, such as "issues," "brown people," and "mulattoes" as they were inappropriately applied to these Native people. The [End Page 781] term mulatto, however, does have a legal history in the confines of Virginia law. As early as 1705, Virginia law held that "the child of an Indian and the child, grand child, or great grand child of a negro shall be deemed, accounted, held and taken to be a mulatto."5 The legislative intention was clearly to include Indians among the colony's colored population, thereby creating a biracial—white and colored—society. The mulatto definition inclusive of Indians was re-affirmed in the subsequent racial codes including the racial integrity acts of 1822 and 1924. Under the authority of Walter Ashby Plecker, M.D., registrar of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics, "there were only two races in Virginia: white and 'colored,' which to him and to most people meant black."6 As a consequence of this legislation, all Indians became legally mulattos, an ambiguous racial category in colonial folklore reflecting admixtures of race, including black-white, Indian-white, Indian-black. American Indians were, nonetheless, classified mulatto regardless of racial admixture, so that Virginia's full-blood Indians could be deemed mulatto under the terms of the racial codes. Mestizo, the Spanish folklore for Indian-white admixtures was never in use in Virginia.7 Consequently when one finds reference to a mulatto in a known Virginia Indian community, one cannot immediately assume that the mulatto referenced is a racially mixed person and by no means should one conclude that the possible admixture is solely black. In fact, evidence suggests that mulatto admixtures among the Virginia Indians were largely white beginning presumably with Thomas Rolfe. While the preceding brief summary exhausts the information supplied by Gilbert, it does not begin to manifest the social history and cultural significance of these surviving Virginia Piedmont and Blue Ridge Indian groups. In recent years, the scholarly consideration of the central Blue Ridge Indian communities has advanced considerably thanks to the work of Peter Houck. Houck's Indian Island in Amherst County (1984) manifests significant scholarly efforts in exploring and explicating the mystery and history of the Rockbridge-Amherst Indian communities that Gilbert noted in 1948.8 Indeed, Houck's work served as the benchmark for the state's formal...