Gloucester County, Virginia: History
=== Prehistoric ===
This area was inhabited for thousands of years by successive cultures of hunter-gatherer Indian peoples; artifacts have been dated to at least the late Woodland Period (c. AD 1000).
An important village site known as Werowocomoco was occupied by c. AD 1200 by the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the numerous emerging tribes in the area. Before the late 16th century, the Powhatan Confederacy had been formed. At the time of English contact it was made up of about 30 tribes in the Tidewater region and was led by a Mamanatowick, Powhatan. The Powhatan Confederacy was estimated to total 12,000 to 15,000 people across the coastal region of present-day Virginia. Werowocomoco was the stronghold and capital of this confederacy, located on the north side of the York River in what is now Gloucester.
This complex, stratified society had developed in part due to the cultivation and processing by women of varieties of maize, beans and squash. With these crops, the women produced a surplus that, together with the game and fish collected by the men, supported a dense population in a number of settlements. The people also gathered nuts, berries and other foods of the region.
Around 1570, Spanish Jesuits attempted to establish what was known as the Ajacan Mission on the south shore of the York River across from Gloucester. They were killed by natives led by a Christian convert named Don Luis, who was affiliated with a village known as Chiskiack (Naval Weapons Station Yorktown much later was developed at this site in present-day York County; the historic village site has been preserved.)
When English settlers founded Jamestown in 1607 on the James River to the north, they soon came into conflict with local Indians. The newcomers competed for land, game and other resources in the Powhatan territory, and the two cultures did not understand each other's concepts of property, particularly in land use.
In late 1607, John Smith was captured and taken to Chief Powhatan at Werowocomoco, his eastern capital. According to legend, Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas saved John Smith from being executed by the natives; however, some historians question the accuracy of much of Smith's account of that incident. Smith was accompanied by other Englishmen when he returned in a later visit to the Powhatan at Werowocomoco. …