When the English arrived in 1607, Paramount Chief Powhatan controlled much of Tidewater Virginia. His sphere of influence included over 30 tribes and 160 towns located from the coast to the James River fall line. The colonists built Jamestown in the territory of the Paspahegh, a Powhatan tribe with its primary town six miles upriver.
Colonist William Strachey, writing in 1612, noted that in springtime some Virginia Indians "?disperse themselves in small companies and live upon such beasts as they can kill with their bows and arrows. [They dine upon] crabs, oysters, land tortoises, strawberries, mulberries and such like; ?they feed upon the roots of tuckahoe berryes, ground nuts, fish and green wheat (corn)."
On Jamestown Island, Glasshouse Point, and here at Neck of Land, archaeologists found fire-cracked rock from campfires, stone flakes from tool making, pottery sherds, projectile points, and deposits of oyster shell, all evidence of hunting and fishing camps, many dating to the Woodland period.
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