Norfolk Highlights 1584 - 1881
By George Holbert Tucker
Chapter 1
Before the White Men Came
Indians of various tribes and cultures inhabited the Norfolk area for
thousands of years before the arrival of the first white men. Because
of a lack of written records, however, little besides archaeological
evidence of their existence is known today about them.
The earliest definite record of an Indian settlement on land now occupied
by Norfolk is found in the writings of Captain Arthur Barlowe, who,
with Captain Philip Amadas, headed Sir Walter Raleigh's first exploratory
expedition in 1584 to what are now known as the Outer Banks and Eastern
North Carolina.
Barlowe recorded in his report to Raleigh, written the same year after
his return to England, that the main town of the Chesepian Indians,
the tribe that then occupied the area now including Norfolk, Portsmouth,
Chesapeake, and Virginia Beach, was Skicoak, "which the people
say is very large, though none of the natives have seen it. But they
have heard about the great size of the city from their fathers, who
reported it takes about an hour to journey around it."
In explorations made in 1585-86 by Ralph Lane, the governor of Raleigh's
first Roanoke Island colony, it was also learned that the Chesepians
had two towns besides Skicoak. These were Apasus and Chesepioc, both
near the Chesapeake Bay in what is now Virginia Beach.
All three of these towns, which were palisaded or fortified with stakes
driven closely together into the ground, are shown on the first printed
map of the North Carolina and Virginia coastal areas, engraved in 1590
by Theodore De Bry from watercolor maps drawn by John White during Lane's
explorations northward from Roanoke Island, that penetrated the Chesepians'
hunting grounds.
The Chesepians who inhabited these towns took their name from the great
bay, which means Mother of Waters, that washed the northern boundary
of their territory. But they were not to occupy it for long after Barlowe's
and Lane's reports to Raleigh were written.
According to "The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia,"
written in 1612 by William Strachey, the Chesepians were wiped out by
Powhatan, the head of the powerful Powhatan Confederacy, a few years
before the arrival of the English at Jamestown in 1607.
The Chesepians were exterminated because Powhatan's priests had warned
him for years that "from the Chesapeack Bay a Nation should arise,
which should disolve and given end to his Empier."
It is possible that Skicoak was destroyed at that time. In any event,
its name disappeared from the records before the settlement of Jamestown.
And by the time Captain John Smith's map of Virginia was issued in London
in 1612, the town, or "King's House," of the tribe on what
is now the Elizabeth River, was called "Chesapeack."
It is also known that after the massacre of the Chesepians in the 1590s,
Powhatan peopled what is now the Norfolk area with warriors of his own
whom he could trust, although they continued to be known as Chesepians.
Traditionally, Skicoak, the main town of the Chesepians, was on the
north side of the Elizabeth River where its eastern and southern branches
converge on the exact site where Norfolk was laid out in 1680-81.
Later historians and archaeologists, however, believe that the town
was farther down the river toward Hampton Roads, somewhere between the
present sites of Fort Norfolk and the Lamberts Point coal piers.
 Chapter
2
Exploring with the Smith Party
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