Learn about the culture and day-to-day life of the Chesapeake Bay region’s earliest human residents.
Francis Gray, a former Councilman of the Piscataway Conoy, stands on the bank of the Patuxent River in Calvert County, Maryland. (Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program)
Woodland Indian peoples built small villages as farming become more important. (Illustration courtesy of National Park Service)
A detail of a c. 1590 watercolor by John White is titled “The manner of their fishing.” White’s illustration was based on several previous studies and depicts the use of weirs, dip nets and spears as well as fires lit in canoes at night to attract fish. It shows species found near the Outer Banks of North Carolina—many of which also live in the Chesapeake. (Illustration courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license)
The site of the Powhatan village of Werowocomoco in Virginia has been preserved by the National Park Service. (Photo by Matt Rath/National Park Service)
[LEFT] Near the Mattaponi River on the Mattaponi Reservation in Virginia, women and girls were photographed by the anthropologist Frank Speck in 1918. [RIGHT] A delegation from the Nanticoke Indian Association poses for Speck on the steps of the Kent County Courthouse in Dover, Del., in 1922. (Photos courtesy of National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution; catalog numbers N12812 and N12430)
