A Place Called Wolf Creek Indian Village Part 2

Where to begin with my relationship with Wolf Creek Indian Village? Those that know me personally, know I along with MANY, MANY others, have a very long history with the land the village is on and sort of the beginnings around it. Long before it was ever built. I could and probably should write a book on it all but I think I will just stick to the museum village itself.

Many GOOD people put in a lot of hard work and brought the museum into being. To this day, each successive crew of staff and volunteers that have worked there, have in their own way, made it better. Each like a bead in a story belt they are each a part of the whole. I'm really grateful that the history of the village continues at the museum today.  But it could take volumes to tell of so many and really I can only speak about my own experiences with the village.

The events and how it first began were a little rocky but that's for possibly a blog post that deals with economic development in the mountains, not necessarily the village or the museum. But this is about the village and what it has taught us and specifically me, about Native American history in the mountains. Instead of a 2 part blog post I believe this will be 3.

My first experience with the village was at the archeology dig itself. My dad had retired from the military in 1970. For an entire summer we went camping. We camped a lot when I was growing up. My dad, in the Army in World War II, had been forced to camp and he believed his children needed to know how to live that way too. After seeing many cities and towns in Europe just decimated and people having to live out in the open, he was very adamant about it. It's sort of funny how that also prepared me for my outdoor job at Wolf Creek.

When Howard MacCord was initiating the dig of the Wolf Creek site, we were camping in Grose's Bottom which is right next door to the museum. Ben Grose, whose family owned the adjoining farm for generations, would rent out this pasture on his farm located next to Wolf Creek for folks to spend the day camping, or for a picnic for 50 cents a day. It's the same place my grandfather Bane Boyles dies in 1975 fishing on the creek bank. There is a overhead view picture of the village dig from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and on the adjoining farm, is a very small white car at Grose's bottom. This is my mother's white Studebaker station wagon parked next to the creek at our camp site.

In May of 1970, while camping at Grose's Bottom we knew about the dig. Everyone knew about the dig. Howard MacCord made sure of it. In order for him to pull off this size of a dig in such a short time, he relied on local volunteers. It was in all the local newspapers and after digging all day he would go in the evenings and speak to groups about the dig canvasing for more volunteers. As I said in the first post, though the methodology might not have been up to archeological standards of today, what he did was a miracle.

I was in my early teens. I had never seen an archeology dig in my life. We started camping at Grose's Bottom probably 3 or 4 days after the dig began. When we walked over to the dig, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. Just a lot of bare earth. There were dark patches and pits and opened graves. The bones in the ground were a bit upsetting. I had never seen that before either. Grave yards were sacred grounds to me even at that age.

But there was this man, taking time to talk to all the visitors while he was working about what we were seeing and what he was trying to do, what he was trying to save. The dark post hole molds where Natives charred the ends of the posts before burying them showed on the ground in a round pattern indicating a house. The fire pits with charred rocks, how they were arranged showed how they could have been a documented way Natives cooked meat.

As he spoke, I didn't see bare ground anymore I was imagining and seeing the village he was talking about! He spoke to us of the value of saving what we were seeing. That this was history written in the ground. Those were his words and later on I would use those words to teach thousands of school children about archeology.

Howard MacCord talked about the highway coming through was going to put the evidence of this entire village under the creek and destroy these bones if they didn't get them moved. He then showed us how they were documenting all they were finding. He motioned us over to the pit he was working in which was a woman's bones.  He handed me a soft brush and showed me how to gently brush away the dirt without disturbing the shells beads she had been wearing. Something happened that day to me. I have to say that was the "DAY" I became a student of history and started a life long pursuit.

Now today, I understand the controversy of archeological digs on ancient sites. I feel it in my heart too. Especially from those of the Native American communities. But the Ancient Natives themselves inhabited and re-inhabited sites in the mountains. With our population, and geography there is no way sometimes to just leave things as they are.

In Wolf Creek's case they could have just built another bridge and today if the highway was being built, they "might" have done just that. Of course cost overruns and debt speak doesn't guarantee that any site will be saved. So what can you do? Except to document and remove what is in danger of being totally destroyed and annihilated from memory in the ground. The laws today are better at protecting new sites and with each site discovered new history emerges. The story in the ground of the first people has much yet to teach us.

That night back at camp was the first time I heard my mom and dad speak about that side of our ancestry. Almost in hushed tones. First time I heard my dad say, "We don't speak about that because it's worse than being black."  It took me YEARS to discover the stories, as to what impressed upon him that belief and why he thought that way.

He with his parents, grandparents and great grandparents lived through times, unlike today, that it was thought not to be good to be Native or have ANY Native ancestry. They lived during a time popular history books about the settlement of our area began to focus on wars with Indians that produced "massacres".  Yet they forgot to mention the massacres on the other side. No one plays nice in a war! His great grandparents lived after the Civil War when fighting the Indians out west produced the motto, "The only good Indian is a dead one".

Besides no one with Native ancestry was suppose to be left in the mountains anyway, they were all "removed". They could say and make believe that until he with his parents and grandparents suffered through Walter Plecker and the Virginia eugenics movement. Yes, there will be more blog posts.

That night I dreamed about the village. I saw two men and a woman, not dressed like any Indians I ever knew from TV, coming from the village site, walking like floating over the waters of Wolf Creek by our camp site and vanishing into the hillside above Grose's bottom. I actually got up and went outside the tent and looked. It was really dark and all I could hear were the night critters and the creek water over the rocks.

I went back to sleep and I dreamed there was singing, drumming and laughing coming from the village site and I was moving towards it. I never got there in the dream. It was a long, long way off.  They were not scary dreams just odd ones. Dreams I'd forget about because that was 1970 and I didn't remember until I return to the reconstructed village in 1999.

Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum

A Place Called Wolf Creek Indian Village Part 1

A Place Called Wolf Creek Indian Village Part 3

A Place Called Wolf Creek Indian Village Part 4

Appalachian Native American Stories to Tell

There is one area I will be delving into in the future and it will not be easy. Not only because of the shape I am in, but also because it is a part of history that is just not easy to research or tell, but it's on my heart. That is what I know about the history of Indians in Appalachia.

A Native friend called me today and asked me if I had seen the special on C-Span about Werowocomoco Village. Powhatan's chief residence that was recently identified in the last 10 to 12 years. They are preserving and studying the site which is located on the York River and is SUCH an important historical site for Native American history in Virginia. Most of the tribal chiefs of the state tribes in Virginia were there at this event whose tribes were once part of this federation of tribes that dealt with the colonists at Jamestown. It brought up the remembrance of a long neglected history of our Appalachian mountains.

How many of us have the oral tradition that we had ancestors that were Native American? Yes, I know, there are many who laugh at that. Mainly because all we have are stories and not the actual proof of that history. Though DNA is helping. It is always told to be Cherokee, which those in the Native American community ridicule each time they hear it. I understand, but the history of the Cherokee in this area is pretty predominant. John Ross, one of the chiefs of the Cherokee at the time of removal in 1836, was actually 3/4 white and many were especially in the North Carolina mountains connected to that tribe.

I also think some of that is because in the early 1900's the Cherokee plight became so well known that the actual history of Native Heritage became mixed up with, "they had to be Cherokee". So many of those who did have a Native ancestor in the mountains had become so assimilated into white culture. They did not know the history that so many tribes were wiped out of existence. They didn't understand that the Cherokee were not the only tribe here or connected to Appalachia. 

It is also talked about as if it was most recent. When it could have occurred generations ago before the removal policies. It is also hard for those who are west of the Mississippi, in a later history that included segregated reservation systems, to comprehend what it was like to live in the East prior to and after those removal policies. But those stories need to be told.

In my own family it was something not to be talked about but more to be feared if it was found out. We knew and that was enough. In Virginia especially there was the assimilation with not only white but black ancestry with the persecution that follows that.

Natives were people of color.  I once was helping a woman trace her family tree. In some of the records she found, their family would be listed as white. In others listed as black or mulatto.  She did trace to some Saponi names but was quite upset when I told her they would be at times listed as people of color. She told me, "Those records could not be my family," because, " my ancestors were "white" Indians!" 

I really don't know what that is. Though it's popular today to claim Native ancestry, it is hard to get folks to understand this aspect of who they were and the times in which their ancestor had to live.

Mary Kegley wrote a wonderful book entitled, "Free In Chains", the story of Rachel Findlay who was Native American and enslaved. It is the story of Rachel and her family going through Virginia courts to gain their freedom before the Civil War. It is hard for some to come to grips that Virginia Indian history is tied to black history.

The records of Virginia and America still need to be combed to find and verify the history about Native Americans in Virginia and the mountains. It would also have to be an international search with England and France records, prior to the Revolutionary War. Plus we know there was a time in Virginia records were destroyed to hide native ancestry.

The history of the Native Americans in Virginia is a very long one and in modern times very much tied to race issues. In Virginia, we have a history of eugenics in our state government that had a big impact on Native Americans in our state.

But they are STILL HERE and we who are descendants are still here! The Virginia Indian Tribes the Pamunkey and the Mattaponi actually have the oldest reservations in the United States but they are not recognized by the federal government. They have fought to keep their culture and history.  An interesting article click here for the Pamunkey. One of the best sources about Pocahontas's people is to read Helen Rountree's works. But we are in the mountains and that story is just not yet written in it's entirety. Historians and researchers today are only scratching the surface.

I remember as a child looking at maps of where the Native Americans were located in the United States and always so disappointed because our part of Appalachia would say, "Unknown Tribes". In my research I have found it wasn't as much an uninhabited "wilderness" as once thought.

Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum, where I worked, was based on an actual archeology site in Bland County. It was the first state recognized archeology site in Bland County but didn't occur until 1970. We are way behind the coast of Virginia on documentation and archeology in telling the Native American story in Appalachia.

I hope in the future to tell the story of what I know about Native American history in Appalachia, but this Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is an awful disease. No two ways about it. It has robbed me of so much. There are days when I can hardly move, days when it is an effort to get dressed or do the simplest of things. Days when the sun is shining and I want to do SO MUCH and the old body just won't cooperate. I fight it every day and I can tell you it is no fun to feel like I have the nightmare of this achy awful flu that never goes away.

This blog I have to say is kind of a saving grace. You see, I was just laying around, trying to figure out how to get better. A lot of times just in tears because I just felt so worthless. I felt I had become this shadow of my former self. Days turned to weeks, that turned to months and now a couple of years since I felt really well. The internet and TV were all I had. This spring, when I found my blog again, that I started before and just as I got ill, I thought ...ok I will just share a few things on it and tell some family history to see how it goes. It will be something to do, other than cry and watch T.V.

Little did I know that it is has become something I can put my attention on, rather than just laying here hurting and being sick.  Even when the illness is so bad and I can't even think. At those times I don't write too well I have to go back, edit, over and over again. But I feel I'm on a mission once more.

If you all see any sentences that are backwards, literally, please tell me. My thought processes with this disease are really weird to me. But though it is a real challenge to do this, it's giving me new hope. That my life is not over. I'm not totally useless.  Especially the nice comments I have received from readers. SO THANK YOU! THANK YOU ALL.

I can't be as prolific a blogger as some. This week will be 3 posts...whoo hoo.... been the most I've ever accomplished.  I know I have several hundred articles in me with added recipes and crafts. Yep, I can keep this going for quite a while.

I don't know how much I can do these days to expound on these things. Being ill has hampered me in more ways than one. I miss the ability to do my job and I really miss my job MONEY!  I will be limited to research on the internet, and as long as I can keep the internet on, it's a story I will surely try to tell.   I hope you will join me for the journey.

Copyright 2007-2016 Denise Smith

Taking A Different Path

OK, so it's been a while since I have posted a thing on this blog.  Not that I have many readers. It's my own personal thang!  I have been much to busy outside of my personal sphere, i.e. work, to keep up with this blog.  That is getting ready to change. Sometimes in life you can choose to change things or life happens and it changes for you.  I love my job, obviously but it has been getting more stressful as the years roll on. I've been there 12 years now and have had about 6 new bosses in the last 4 of those 12 years. The job is not stressful. It's hard outdoor/indoor physical labor, is mentally and socially challenging but so rewarding. Not monetarily mind you, as it barely pays the bills. I'd be making more at probably McDonald's. No, I think more stress  arrives in the usual business/office politics than the work ever did. 

Now I also have to face it...I'm not a spring chicken anymore but I like to pretend I am. The last 5 years I have pushed ever harder and worked really long hours for Wolf Creek Indian Village & Museum, in many many capacities, (I learned how to redesign a website, not great but it's there!) because to me it is personal. It is to tell the story of Native Americans in Appalachia. Of a time lost and a people forgotten and the Virginia Indians who are still here. My own people. This to me for 12 years has been worth my time, effort and energy even at the detriment of my pocketbook and health.   Well today a doctor informed me I have leaky heart valves and I need to change my ways. They can fix it but it will be a journey.

I don't know what this new life will look like, but I think I will use this blog to chart the journey.  I've been off work a few days and it's not been a vacation. I don't get those anymore and haven't in 3 years!  I return tomorrow and start anew. There are a few physical things I can't do any longer I know. They were hard before and now I know why!

I want to pick up the research again that is so desperately needed about American Indians in our area. Finish these projects I have. I just made the cutest pair of moccasins for a baby! I think I will post the how to's on line next blog. Share also about the people I know and people I've met through Wolf Creek. It's time .....Time to take a different path!! Stay tuned!!