When the Library of Virginia wanted to broaden the public’s understanding of historic documents in their collection beginning with the founding of the Virginia colony, they went to the descendants of the people who were here when John Smith landed.
The reactions and interpretations to the documents by members of the 11 federally and state-recognized tribes in Virginia are a major part of the library’s new multi-media exhibition, “Indigenous Perspectives.” Work to develop the exhibition began in 2022, when the library set out to develop an ongoing partnership with the Virginia tribes.
What’s known as the John Smith map, a documentation of the colonizer’s research in the New World, elicited what may seem like an unexpected reaction from local tribe members: gratitude.
Wayne Adkins, the first assistant chief of the Chickahominy tribe, found it amazing for the documentation it provided of tribes and Indigenous villages that no longer exist. Chickahominy Chief Stephen Adkins says, “There’s a deep thirst and hunger in my soul to be able to reacquire those lands that our ancestors fished and hunted or lived on for millennia before the advent of that thing we call colonization.”
Featuring excerpts from video interviews with members of Virginia’s tribes, the exhibition also showcases archival records from the collections and objects contributed by the tribes to reflect their traditions and culture. But the heart and soul of the exhibition are the video interviews and quotes used on display from tribe members.
As the exhibit points out, Indigenous people have traditionally been introduced in Virginia history books at the point of contact with European colonists, and subsequently they disappear, leading to assumptions that they became extinct or played no further role. “Indigenous Perspectives” allows their voices and experiences to be at the center of an examination of the library’s holdings, which include maps, treaties, land records and other governing documents.
A 1920s letter from the district supervisor of the Census Bureau explains that when the census taker spoke to the first few tribal families, all went well. But when she got to Chief Custalow, he writes, the census worker was “treated rather rudely and was told that since the people there were wards of the state, they were under no obligation to supply the requested information.” It isn’t a stretch to sense the supervisor’s indignation at the audacity of this displaced chief to stonewall the mighty –and undoubtedly very white– Census Bureau.
The Europeans who encountered the Indigenous people in what is now Virginia brought with them European biases. Instead of seeing people who had successfully established towns and fields, people who traded up and down the East Coast and into the interior, people with their own rituals and beliefs, they saw impediments to their goals of settler colonization.
White pressure notwithstanding, the exhibition shows how tribes worked to preserve aspects of their culture such as powwows, which continue to this day and pull from multiple states. A flyer from a 1990 Upper Mattaponi Tribal Powwow took place at Sharon Indian School in Prince William County, one of at least 14 different Virginia schools that educated Indigenous students over the course of three centuries.
Other tribal customs that help maintain identity have been revived, such as the making of items like beaded leggings and wampum belts, crafting eel pots, bark bags and nets, and pottery-making.
The exhibit includes bowls crafted by Bernice Bradby Langston, one of the original members of the Pamunkey Pottery Guild, established in 1932 by a group of Pamunkey women to manage the potters, production and marketing. Their wares were sold at a trading post located near the entrance to the reservation until 1959, when the trading post was moved to the reservation’s one room school building.
For many people, “Indigenous Perspectives” may be the closest thing to a lesson in Native history they’ve experienced. Virginia’s Indigenous people signed treaties as sovereign nations with governments from colonial to state to federal, acknowledging the government’s authority in exchange for protection. And while the treaties were ignored, they were never revoked, either.
The result is that the tribes have used those treaties to reassert their sovereign status for 400-plus years now. Rappahannock Indian Tribe Chief Robert Gray is quoted in the exhibit as saying, “I would add that native tribes are political entities. We’re not just an ancestry tree. The basis of our recognition is our existence as a government entity and tribal community.”
The history of Indigenous people has always been passed down through oral traditions. The beauty of “Indigenous Perspectives” is how it gives a present-day voice to European documents, offering visitors a fresh viewpoint on a key part of American history.
“Indigenous Perspectives” runs through August 2024 at the Library of Virginia, 800 E. Broad Street, lva.virginia.gov
