[1] Classes use the audio and printed materials prepared by the linguist Blair Rudes for cast members who portrayed Native Americans in the film, The New World.
[4] For thousands of years various cultures of Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands lived along the Potomac River and its tributaries in the coastal area.
[5][6] More recently, a 1996 archeological study by the College of William and Mary revealed Native American artifacts dating back to the 15th century.
While the ancient village site is protected under historic preservation laws, the land is being steadily eroded by the creek.
[5] The coastal peoples were part of the Algonquian-speaking language family that coalesced into differentiated tribes from present-day New England into the southern states.
According to contemporary accounts by Ralph Hamor and others, on 13 April 1613, Argall, with the connivance of Japazaw in exchange for a copper kettle, was able to capture Chief Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas who lived with the Patawomeck tribe for three years.
The Patawomeck continued to ally with the English in their conflicts with the Powhatan in 1622 (even after Captain Isaac Madison took their weroance prisoner), and in 1644.
After settlers began moving into their area in the 1650s, pressures mounted in competition over resources and differing ideas of how to use land.
[11][12] In 1666 after continued conflicts, the English colonists declared war against several tribes in the Northern Neck, including the Patawomeck.
A silver badge, issued to Wahanganoche in 1662, was found in a contemporary archeological excavation near Portobago (or Portobacco) on the Rappahannock River.
[13] In 1928, the anthropologist Frank Speck wrote of the Native American population living around the original Patawomeck capital.
[19] In the 17th century, at the time of early English colonization, the Patawomeck tribe was a "fringe" component of the Powhatan Confederacy.
[2] In the 1990s, Robert "Two Eagles" Green, a native of White Oak and resident of Fredericksburg, worked to reorganize the tribe and began seeking state recognition.
[22] In February 2010, Las Vegas singer Wayne Newton, whose father was Patawomeck (also of Irish descent), spoke before the House Rules Committee in support of recognition.