Existing comment:
1. Nacotchtank Family at the Piney Branch Quarry, ca. 1600
In 1609 Captain John Smith sailed from the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia, and up the Potomac River as far as Little Falls. He found 13 Indian villages along the Potomac, including one called Nacotchtank. These villagers farmed small plots of corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers, and hunted and gathered from the surrounding forests.
The Potomac tribes often sided with the Powhatan Confederacy during its wars with the English. The Powhatan were defeated in 1646, and English settlements quickly expanded, reaching what is now Washington, DC, by 1675. Warfare, disease and loss of land led to the quick demise of the Potomac tribes. In the 1890s archaeologists discovered abandoned quarries along Piney Branch, a few blocks north of here, that had been used to make arrowheads and other tools. |