RIGHTING HISTORY

Following in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson, Jeffrey Hantman’s excavation of a Monacan Indian village is setting the historical record straight.

BY CHERYL PELLERIN

Captain John Smith and 104 of his fellow British colonists established the first permanent North American settlement at Jamestown in Virginia’s Tidewater region. History books invariably describe the Jamestown colonists as having initiated the first representative government in North America, imported the first slaves, and built the first Anglican church. There’s less information about how, in the late 16th century, at least two other groups— one English, one Spanish—tried, and failed, to establish colonies in the Tidewater area.

Given the rocky history of European intrusion in that region, many archaeologists and historians find the Jamestown colonists’ tolerant reception by Powhatan, chief of the Powhatan Indians of Tidewater, somewhat strange. Now, nearly 400 years later, the archaeological record has become a rich source of information on Virginia’s earliest years and much of America’s European past. The original Jamestown settlement, once thought lost to the James River, was identified in 1994.

Last year, archaeologist Jeffrey Hantman and his 20student crew spent most of the summer excavating units at an Indian village site on the Rivanna River just north of Charlottesville, Virginia. Hantman is an associate professor of anthropology and director of the archaeology program at the University of Virginia. His research interests include identifying the responses of indigenous people—particularly the Monacan and Powhatan cultures of Virginia—to colonialism.

The village site is a pasture in the floodplain of the Rivanna River.

“There’s nothing to see,” Hantman says. “It’s perfectly flat.”

The main portion of the village hugged the river’s edge, and a community burial mound was once in the field just across the river, which is also flat. Intensive farming that began in the 1700s destroyed any visible trace of a mound.

Based on findings from the excavation and related documentary evidence, Hantman believes the site is the Monacan village of Monasukapanough, which was included on a map of the Jamestown area drawn by John Smith in 1612.

“We confirmed several things about the village [last] summer,” Hantman says. “We now know that the midden—or village refuse heap—is here and extends into the field. The site contains rare artifacts that date firmly to the 15th to 17th centuries, and possibly later.”

Hantman says he wants to shift from digging occasional units to opening up a broad area to examine the structure of the village. This will be a long-term effort; it will take years of painstaking work to examine one of the largest villages in Monacan territory, and one of the few contemporary with the Jamestown settlement.

This 17th-century village is well preserved because European settlers moved in after the Monacans and cleared fields at the river. This increased flooding, and the flood waters deposited silt—in some places a foot or more of it—over the village.

“Very distinctive dark soil marks where the village was,” he says. “It’s called a buried A-horizon—meaning there’s a lot of organic material where people lived, collected trash, and used fires to cook or for heat.”

Radiocarbon dating puts the site between A.D. 1670 and 1700, which is “ contemporary with early European colonization.”

Hantman says he used to describe the site as “the village across from the mound. But that’s a Western worldview in which rivers separate things—they’re boundaries, they divide counties, separate property.” For several years he’s worked closely with the Monacan Indian Tribal Association, and his Indian collaborators and friends say the way to think about the river is as the middle of the village. Thirty or 40 yards downstream a natural ford, which would have connected the mound and village, lets people cross to the other side.

“I used to think we were looking at a different site than the one Jefferson studied, but I think now it’s the same site,” he says. “The river doesn’t separate anything; it’s all one.”

University of Virginia graduate student Jennifer Aultman sits on the edge of a trench. A small hole has been dug in the lower right corner of the trench to examine a post mold.

North America’s First Scientific Excavation

For religious reasons, the Monacan dead were buried in mounds, some of which reached a height of 15 or 20 feet and an even greater length. Twelve of their burial mounds, which date back 1,000 years, have been discovered. The Monacans were often buried where they died, their bones later dug up during ceremonies and placed in mass graves in the mounds, which were marked with ceremonial stones.

The settlers of North America’s East Coast encountered such ancient hillock-like mounds, whose numbers increased as the settlers moved west. Some of the mounds were opened by the settlers, who found old bones, and assumed the mounds were burial sites.

John Smith’s 1608 map of the Jamestown area. The location of Monasukapanough is indicated by the star.

A portrait of Thomas Jefferson, painted by Gilbert Stuart, in 1805.

Over time, curiosity led to more systematic explorations of the mounds, including one near Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in the Rivanna River valley. In 1784, Jefferson conducted a systematic excavation of the mound that today is known to virtually every student of American archaeology. In Notes on the State of Virginia, he wrote:

“I proceeded then to make a perpendicular cut through the body of the barrow, that I might examine its internal structure. This passed three feet from its center, was opened to the former surface of the earth, and was wide enough for a man to walk through and examine its sides.”

Jefferson’s work at the large mound at Monasukapanough was the first scientific excavation in the history of North America, making him the father of American archaeology. He used two excavation strategies: trenching, which let him see the mound’s internal structure, and stratigraphy. Hantman says this technique put Jefferson about 100 years ahead of his time.

According to Hantman, Jefferson, unlike many 20thcentury archaeologists, saw the Monasukapanough mound in a regional archaeological perspective, described the mounds as community burial places, and knew that bodies were added to the mounds over a long time. Jefferson also accurately described other mounds of different sizes and structures in central Virginia.

Jefferson’s writings on his excavation strategy, hypothesis, observations, and conclusions were “ extraordinary for his time,” according to Hantman. Jefferson’s work serves as a comparative base for contemporary excavations and interpretations of that period.

In his book, Jefferson mentioned that the mound was

To Protect and Preserve

The Monasukapanough village site is on land owned by developer Charles Hurt, who offered 20 acres of the property on a long-term, no-payment lease to the Soccer Organization of Charlottesville and Albemarle (SOCA) for a new soccer complex. The Archaeological Conservancy is working closely with SOCA, Hurt, Hantman, and the Monacan Indian Tribe to protect part of the field as a permanent archaeological preserve. The rest of the property will be used for athletic facilities and soccer fields, whose construction Hurt will help fund.

“The county knew this was the likely location of a significant archaeological site,” Hantman says, “so we had discussions and they flagged the county planners, but there are no zoning ordinances for private land—none of the federal laws kick in.”

As it turned out, Albemarle County realized that a soccer facility, however well-intentioned, could destroy an important archaeological site. Hantman and the Monacan Tribal Council knew there was no money to pay for a big research operation, so Hantman and his students conducted a field school on the site and contributed their time, working with SOCA officials in a spirit of cooperation. Hantman and his students identified the village boundaries and SOCA established the area along the Rivanna River as an archaeological preserve.

“What has been remarkable is SOCA’s spirit and attitude,”says Hantman. “The county required them to take archaeology into account, but from day one SOCA wanted to do the right thing.”

across the river from an Indian town—probably Monasukapanough. Based on that account, on excavations conducted by the Smithsonian in 1911 and 1930, and on findings and radiocarbon dating at the site, Hantman believes he’s working in the portion of the village located directly across the Rivanna from where the mound once stood.

Correcting the Historical Record

According to the historical record, the Monacans were barbaric and too hostile to trade with Captain John Smith and the other settlers at Jamestown. The tribe eventually fled with other tribes and seemingly disappeared from the region. Jefferson thought they merged with the Tuscarora Indians and had become part of the Iroquois Confederacy to the north. But Hantman’s study of the Monacan culture tells a different story.

“We’ve found evidence of a well-structured, sophisticated society that lived along the Rivanna River at the time Smith was settling the Tidewater region,” Hantman says. “What we now know is not at all consistent with the description Smith gave of the Monacans.

“My working hypothesis for many years has been that to prove your existence by colonial law you had to enter into a treaty with or trade with the colonists, and the Monacans didn’t need to. But I never had a site [from that period] I could use to evaluate it.”

In 1607, the Monacans and the Powhatans were enemies, Hantman explains. For the Powhatans, copper was of great value and may have been a source of power and authority. Their only means of obtaining copper was to have it transported through Monancan territory. Chief Powhatan faced the dilemma of becoming dependent on an enemy who may have been growing increasingly hostile, Hantman says.

Then the colonists arrived, and among the things John Smith brought was copper. Powhatan eagerly accepted copper in trade for corn, quickly established an alliance with the colonists, and was no longer dependent on the Monacans.

Hantman thinks copper is the reason the Smith party quickly developed good relations with the Powhatans. The colonists’ survival depended on the good will of the natives; Jamestown was established because the Powhatans allowed it.

“My sense is that the Powhatans initially chose to trade with the colonists and the Monacans in the Jamestown region didn’t,” he says. “It’s an argument from negative evidence; the site is contemporary with Jamestown and most people assume that when the European traders arrived, Indians wanted to trade. For the Monacans, at least so far, we haven’t seen it.”

(Left) Jeffrey Hantman shows artifacts to elementary school students who visited the site through a summer enrichment program sponsored by the University of Virginia.

(Above) These tiny Late Woodland projectile points (shown actual size) helped researchers establish the date of the site.

Obtaining Evidence for Federal Recognition

In 1989, the State of Virginia officially recognized the Monacans. The tribe has since applied for federal recognition of their Native American status. One requirement for federal recognition is that the tribe document a continuous history in a particular region.

“What was missing was the critical Jamestown era,” Hantman says. “We didn’t have anything between 1500 and the 1700s except John Smith’s map. There was no archaeology, no scientific evidence, no radiocarbon dating.

Monacan tribal members attend their Homecoming festival in Amherst, Virginia last October. The 27-year-old annual festival is open to the public.

The common explanation was that the Monacans disappeared, but we knew better.”

The first date confirmation at the village site was from charcoal found near the river and radiocarbon dated—the date that came back was 1670. Having also discovered a deeper, earlier level of occupation that dates from 1300 to 1400, Hantman has documented continuous use of the site from that time through the contact period.

“To find [the village] site undisturbed, in context, radiocarbon dated, with artifacts from the 17th century, is absolutely extraordinary,” he says. “It shows us that these are the same people John Smith talked about, and who live in Amherst County today.”

Virginia will celebrate the 400th anniversary of Jamestown in 2007. Hantman thinks “it’s important to look beyond Jamestown itself, to see how other people reacted to the European colonists, and help fill” holes in the historical record—the very thing he is doing.

CHERYL PELLERIN is a freelance science writer who lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Faces from the Hayes Creek Mound

In 1901, antiquarian E. P. Valentine moved the skeletal remains of hundreds of people from a mound on Hayes Creek in Amherst County to Richmond, and displayed them in a museum founded by his family. Nearly 100 years later, based on historical and archaeological evidence linking the Monacans to the remains, they were returned by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources under the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.

In discussions about the remains between the Monacan Tribal Council and archaeologist Jeffrey Hantman, a council member raised the possibility of having facial reconstructions made. No Monacan had seen an image of an ancestor earlier than photographs dating to 1914. Could they see one or more of their ancestors’ faces? Karenne Wood, director of historic research for the Monacan Indian Nation, and historic research coordinator Diane Shields applied to the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities for a grant to fund the facial reconstructions.

In June 2000, forensic artist Sharon Long of Sparks, Nevada finished clay sculpture faces of a Monacan man and woman who lived in west-central Virginia between A.D. 1000 and 1400. Today the reconstructions are displayed in the Monacan Ancestral Museum in Amherst, Virginia, as a tribute to Monacan heritage and cultural continuity.