Peninsula In Passage

The Passage Begins

The Nansemond Peninsula The setting for our stories is the peninsula bounded on the west by the Nansemond River, the north by the James River and the east by the Elizabeth River. To the south lies the Great Dismal Swamp, long a barrier to human overland migration northward. Pines, oaks, maples and a variety of nut trees forest the region. Springs and brooks provided drinking water and tidal rivers and creeks, teeming with fish, oysters, clams, turtles and other animals, provided food and tools to the Indians. Shell middens, some as deep as 12 feet, along the riverbanks prove the importance of oysters as food and the shells as tools for the earliest residents. Stone and clay artifacts found in farm fields and along shorelines are further evidence that people have occupied the area for thousands of years. When Europeans first arrived the peninsula was home to the Algonquian speaking Nansemond people. The Nansemonds lived in several villages along both shores of the Nansemond River about eight miles upriver from its confluence into the James River. They stored grain on Dumpling Island, an

easily defensible island surrounded by marsh in the Nansemond River. The island was also their treasury, home to their chiefs and medicine men and the tomb site of their dead chiefs. The Nansemond numbered about 1200, including 300 warriors. Their distance from Powhatan’s main tribes on the York and Rappahannock Rivers somewhat isolated them and the Great Dismal Swamp was as a barrier to tribes from the south.

Dumpling Island

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