In spring of that year, when news spread of explorers sailing on the James River, their weroance took a party and rushed there.

He wore a red deer-hair crown tied around his hair knot and a copper plate on the other side, with two feathers arranged like horns, and earrings made of bird-claws fastened with yellow metal.

When the Second Anglo-Powhatan War of 1644–1645 broke out, the colonists seem to have viewed the Rappahannock as independent and outside the conflict, and did not attack the people.

In the 1650s, when colonists began settling along the river, the Rappahannock withdrew from the southern bank; their weroance Accopatough deeded the land east of Totuskey Creek to settlers just before he died in April 1651.

By 1653, English settlers were moving into the region in such numbers, that the colony assigned the tribe reserved land.

In November 1654, a group of colonists visited the tribe to demand restitution for damages, but a brawl ensued in which Taweeren was killed.

The Rappahannock gave up trying to defend their homeland and moved away; by 1669 they were settled at the headwaters of the Mattaponi River with 30 bowmen (and likely about 100 people in total).

The Seneca had invaded the area from their base in western, present-day New York as part of the Beaver Wars.

To solidify their tribal government to seek state recognition, the Rappahannock incorporated in 1921; their first chief was George Nelson.

By the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, Virginia enforced a binary system of a one-drop rule, classifying all persons as "white" or "colored", and even requiring changes to vital records to reflect this.

Rappahannock men, Robert Percell Byrd, Oliver W. Fortune and Edward Arnell Nelson were drafted as “colored,” they refused to serve and were convicted and jailed.