THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410210312
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GREG GOLDFARB, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
L. Michael Cloud-Butler, an Oceana Gardens resident and member of Northern Wisconsin's Lac Court Oreilles Band of Ojibwe Indians, Wednesday night addressed the Virginia Beach Human Rights Council on the topic of Indian burial grounds. Cloud-Butler told the commission about plans now under way to reinter in Great Neck, the remains of dozens of indigenous American Indian men, women and children.
The bones belong to Virginia Beach's only American Indian tribe, the Chesapeakes, which was part of the 32-tribe Powhatan Federation that controlled most of the state's Indian tribes, including the Chesapeakes. Powhatan, federation ruler and father of the famous Pocahontas, died in 1618 after inexplicably destroying the few hundred Chesapeake Indians and their village.
Discovered behind John B. Dey Elementary School in 1984, the bones were taken to James Madison University, among other places, for study. They now rest in a Richmond repository and paperwork is being prepared for their reinterment. Returning the bones to their original resting place is important to Native American tradition, said Cloud-Butler, 43.
The following are answers Cloud-Butler gave about Virginia Beach and its American Indian history.
Q. How far back can you date Virginia Beach's American Indian ancestry?
A. ``In Virginia Beach, it starts about 11,500 years ago. The site of the current Chesapeake village was actually like a bluff, or low hill, or rise - about 200 feet above the landscape around it. It was a natural village site for the people who, sort of, migrated here, from they think, the Northwest and North. Virginia Beach was probably the end of a transcontinental migration, I would think, but I don't really know.''
Q. What was the tribe's population at its zenith?
A. ``It's hard to say. When they first came, they obviously made campsites and they were more migratory at the time. They were back and forth. They didn't actually set up farming and palisaded village sites until about 3,500 years ago. But it couldn't have been more than a few hundred, because the area was pretty rich. There was a lot of everything. But, they were only reapers and not sowers. In other words, at one point, they didn't grow anything. The environment would only support so many people. But when they started to cultivate crops, of course, their population, I'm sure, grew from hundreds to maybe thousands.''
Q. Can you describe the Chesapeakes' political system and social order?
A. ``Unfortunately, no. The only records that really exist on this particular tribe is just what has been dug from the ground. We do know that they lived in a high-fenced village, with logs that were sunk into the ground. Those were around the village site to afford protection from possible raiders or other tribes that may be marauding through the area. They had cleared croplands, where they raised corn, beans, squash - that sort of thing. So, they were farmers, and they were also hunters and fishermen, because of the proximity of the rivers and the oceans.
Q. How did the Chesapeakes perish?
A. ``The story goes that the Chesapeake Indian tribe, at least the warriors of that tribe, were all killed by warriors from the Powhatan Confederacy.''
Q. Why were the Chesapeakes unable to defeat their attackers?
A. ``Powhatan was told through visions of some of his wise men that an enemy would come from the east and destroy him. And where they existed, which is up toward the Williamsburg and Richmond area, the easternmost people were the Chesapeakes. And so he destroyed them. Unfortunately, the real threat came afterward, when the Europeans started coming.''
Q. How long did the attack last?
A. ``It's not really known. There's reference made in some of the English journals. They think that it was in 1585, that the actual attacks occurred. The next time that they have record of it, which is in about 1611, they were pretty much spread out and gone.'' by CNB