IN REVIEW 10/25/2020

Discovering a Palisade: Indigenous-Anglo Interactions In the Seventeenth Century

by Barbara J. Heath, Rebecca J. Webster and Katherine G. Parker*

Popular histories of life in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake typically begin with the founding of the colony in 1607 at Jamestown and the establishment of the colony of at St. Mary’s City in 1634. Until recently, these histories have highlighted the experiences of English colonists, depicting Virginia Indians and the Indigenous peoples of Maryland as background actors who were either violently opposed to, or peacefully supportive of, the colonists’ goals. By the 1640s, when organized warfare between the two groups ceased in Virginia, Native peoples largely fade from the narrative, only to reappear, briefly, as antagonists who helped set in motion the intra-colonial conflict known as Bacon’s Rebellion. The seventeenth century, in these depictions, is a simplified story of English conquest and Indigenous defeat and assimilation.

Since the 1970s, however, historians and anthropologists, including archaeologists, have continually reevaluated the relationships between competing and allied Indigenous socio-political groups, and between Indigenous peoples and European colonists. Ethnohistorians and anthropologists have closely examined historical accounts and non-textual forms of evidence to understand the lifeways and politics of Algonquian-speaking people of the region, and traced how Native peoples actively shaped the outcomes of early colonial interactions.1 Scholars have incorporated Native voices both within their professional ranks and as collaborators in their research.2 It is now clear that political alliances varied over time and space; that longstanding cultural practices and historical alliances and animosities pre-dating the English arrival to the region shaped the seventeenth-century landscape; that relationships between Indigenous groups,

*Barbara Heath is professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee and has overseen work at Coan Hall since 2011. Rebecca Webster and Katherine Parker are doctoral students in the department of anthropology at the University of Tennessee. 1Stephen R. Potter, “An Ethnohistorical Examination of Indian Groups in Northumberland County, Virginia:1608- 1719” (Chapel Hill: master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, 1976); James H. Merrill, “Cultural Continuity Among the Piscataway Indians of Colonial Maryland,” The William and Mary Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1979): 548–570; Paul Byron Cissna, The Piscataway Indians of Southern Maryland: An Ethnohistory from Pre-European Contact to the Present (Washington, D.C., doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, The American University, 1986); J. Frederick Fausz, “Middlemen in Peace and War: Virginia's Earliest Indian Interpreters, 1608–1632,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 95, no. 1 (1987): 1–64; Helen Rountree, Foreign Relations 1500-1722 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993); Buck Woodard, “Degrees of Relatedness: The Social Politics of Algonquian Kinship in the Contact Era Chesapeake,” (Williamsburg: master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, The College of William and Mary, 2008); James D. Rice, Nature & History in the Potomac County, From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Martin D. Gallivan, The Powhatan Landscape, An Archaeological History of the Algonquian Chesapeake (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016). 2 Martin Gallivan, Danielle Moretti-Langholtz and Buck Woodard, "Collaborative Archaeology and Strategic Essentialism: Native Empowerment in Tidewater Virginia." Historical Archaeology 45, no. 1(2011):10–23. 1

and between Indigenous groups and settlers, were complex and dynamic; and that some Native groups, while altered by the tumultuous events that characterized seventeenth-century colonialism, persisted. Their descendants continue to shape the contours of life in the region today.

Using archaeological evidence of a particular seventeenth-century landscape, the authors of this article take a close look at how these fluid relationships played out over time at a single place, known by seventeenth-century Virginia Indians as Sekakawon (Chicacoan). John Mottrom and other settlers transformed this landscape into a plantation beginning circa 1640, and called it Coan Hall. Located along the Coan River, a tributary of the , north of Heathsville in Northumberland County on Virginia’s Northern Neck, the site has been the focus of periodic archaeological investigations for more than 50 years.3

In December 2013, archaeologists from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, uncovered both a structural post for the south wall of Mottrom’s manor house and a short section of an earlier trench that the post disturbed. At that time, research focused on defining the architecture of the house and understanding its chronology of construction, repairs, and destruction.4 Archaeologists mapped the trench, but did not excavate it because it did not contribute information to that phase of the project. As additional work uncovered sections of the trench extending in a broad arc across the site, it became apparent that this trench was an important feature of the colonial or pre-colonial landscape that merited attention.

By the conclusion of the 2019 excavation season, archaeologists had identified some 100 feet of the southwestern and northeastern portions of the trench over 22 excavation units. The authors hypothesize that it is all that remains of a palisade—a series of posts set directly in the ground, or in this case, set into a trench—used to form a substantial enclosure. Its presence raises a series of seemingly simple questions: who built it, how large was it, what was its purpose, and how long did it persist? The answers to these questions can contribute to a more complex understanding of the changing political landscape of the site and the broader region in the seventeenth century.

History of the Sekakawon and Coan Hall Before turning to the details of the palisade construction and chronology, it is first important to situate this important landscape feature within the broader context of life in the Potomac River Valley. Indigenous people occupied the lands east of the Coan River for hundreds of years (Figure 1). Previous archaeological research suggested that by the early seventeenth century, the Sekakawon had come together to live in a single village of the same name, spread across approximately 18 acres adjacent to an inlet of the Coan River known today as Boathouse

3 Stephen R. Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs, The Development of Algonquian Culture in the Potomac Valley (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993); Barbara J. Heath, Dennis J. Pogue, and Eric G. Schweickart, “The Architecture of John Mottrom’s Coan Hall,” The Bulletin of the Northumberland County Historical Society (2017) 54:5–18; Barbara J. Heath, Eric G. Schweickart and Daniel W.H. Brock, “ Power, Persistence and Change in a Lower Potomac Valley Landscape,” in Clifford C. Boyd, Jr., ed., Archaeological Adaptation: Case Studies on Cultural Transformation from the Southeast and the Caribbean (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019), 223–257. 4 Heath et al., “The Architecture of John Mottrom’s Coan Hall.” 2

Pond.5 Agricultural fields and other activity areas radiated out from the village to cover an area equivalent to approximately 1.24 square miles. The results of more recent archaeological excavations, presented below, indicate that the village extended a considerable distance north of Boathouse Pond, and included the high ground between the L-shaped bend in the Coan River and that inlet.

In addition to the Sekakawon, three other Algonquian-speaking polities occupied the south shore of the Potomac River. The Wicocomico (Wicomico)6 lived to the southeast along the Little Wicomico River. The Onawmanient (Matchotics or Nomini), occupied lands to the west along Nomini Creek, and the Patawomeke (Potomac), lived farther to the northwest near the bend of the Potomac River along , where their central village was located. The Cuttatawomen (Lower Cuttawomen, Corotoman), Moraughtacund (Moraticos), and Rappahannocks were the Sekawawon’s closest neighbors to the south along the north bank of the Rappahannock River.7 John Smith encountered these groups during his 1608 exploration of the Chesapeake, documented their place names, and estimated their fighting forces. He recorded the population of Sekakawon at 30 warriors, which scholars have extrapolated to 120 to 130 total members.8

The Northern Neck increasingly became a site of conflict from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries because of its position between two powerful chiefdoms and the impact of continued migrations from northern Iroquoian groups. By its height in the later sixteenth century, the Piscataway (Conoy) comprised eleven polities located within the Lower Potomac River Valley under the centralized control of the tayac (paramount chief). Beginning in the seventeenth century, migrant and raiding Iroquoian groups—including the Susquehannocks, Erie, and Nacochtanks from the north and northwest, and the Patawomeke (neighbors of the Sekakawon) to the west —seriously threatened Piscataway control of the region.9

At the time that the Piscataway were reaching their apex of power, Wahunsenacawh, known to the English as Powhatan, assumed the role of mamanatowick (“great king”) along the James and York Rivers to the south. He inherited six “countries” in the latter part of the sixteenth century. By 1607, he had expanded his control by force over an additional 28 Indigenous towns, located across the Virginia tidewater.10 In the seventeenth century, the English refered to the population of these allied villages as “the Powhatan,” and to Wahunsenacawh himself as “Powhatan.” Although scholars disagree about the extent of his influence among the polities of

5 Stephen R. Potter and Gregory A. Waselkov, “Whereby We Shall Enjoy Their Cultivated Places,” in Paul A. Shackel and Barbara J. Little, eds., Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 23-27; and Stephen R. Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs, 142–148. 6 English modifications to Indigenous names are in parentheses. 7 Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs, 10–11, Figure 1. 8 Christian F. Feest, “Seventeenth Century Virginia Algonquian Population Estimates,” Archeological Society of Virginia Quarterly Bulletin 28, no. 2 (1973): 66–79; Randolph E. Turner III, An Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Study on the Evolution of Rank Societies in the Virginia Coastal Plain (University Park: doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, State University, 1976), 143–144, 153–157; and Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs, 45. 9 Cissna, The Piscataway Indians of Southern Maryland, 115, 121; Merrill, “Cultural Continuity Among the Piscataway Indians of Colonial Maryland,” 550–553. 10 Martin D. Gallivan, “Powhatan’s Werowocomoco: Constructing Place, Polity and Personhood in the Chesapeake, C.E. 1200-C.E. 1609,” American Anthropologist 109 no. 1 (2007): 85–100; and Gallivan, The Powhatan Landscape, 40–42. 3

the southern Potomac, they agree that these groups were familiar with Wahunsenacawh’s history of conquest and responded to it by allying themselves with him or with his opponents. Despite their strength within the region, the were subject to raids and retaliations from Iroquoian groups, specifically the Massawomekes, believed to be the Haudenosaunee (Five Nations Iroquois). These conflicts surrounded the Sekakawon on all sides.11

The arrival of the English in Virginia in 1607 further complicated the political landscape in the ensuing decades. John Smith sold the teenage immigrant Henry Spelman to the Powhatans in 1609. Spelman escaped and lived among the Patawomeke, where he established a strong relationship with the king and his brother, the werowance (chief) of Paspatanzie, Japazaws. Their relationship paved the way for a longstanding Anglo-Patawomeke alliance against the Powhatans and later, against Iroquoian aggressors from the north. By the 1620s, the Potomac River was a central focus of the growing power struggle between the Anglo-Indigenous allies and the Powhatans during a period of hostilities known as the Second Anglo-Powhatan War.12

In early 1622, Spelman, Raleigh Crashaw, and a small English crew sailed up the Coan River to trade. A Sekakawon villager boarded their vessel and told them of his king’s refusal to betray them by participating in a widespread attack on Virginian settlers orchestrated by Wahunsenacawh’s successor and kinsman Opechancanough. Not every Northern Neck Indigenous group sought peace with the English: the same villager who warned Spelman’s crew of danger indicated that the Wicocomico had allied themselves with Opechancanough.13 Spelman and his men escaped the violence and continued to trade along the Potomac. Later that summer, fearing additional attacks, Crashaw and other English traders built an English fortification at Patawomeke.14

The following year, the Nacotchtanks attacked that village and killed Spelman, as well as many others, and captured Englishman Henry Fleet. He remained their captive for five years until the English bought his freedom. Following his release, Fleet became an important player in the region, allying himself with leaders of the fledgling Maryland colony in the 1630s but transferring his loyalties to the Virginians in the ensuing decades.15 Intercultural relationships like the one between Fleet and the Potomac tribes began the process of opening up the Northern Neck to trade and settlement.

During the 1620s, the English focus on trade increasingly shifted from foodstuffs to animal skins and furs obtained from Indigenous hunters and trappers on the Eastern Shore, along the Potomac River, and in the northern reaches of the Chesapeake Bay. Alongside Fleet, the first generation of fur traders plying these waters included Virginians Henry Poole, Thomas Savage, Charles Harmer, and William Claiborne. Claiborne was a particularly ambitious entrepreneur who established a thriving trading center at Kent Island near modern-day Annapolis. His successful trade with the Susquehannocks, organized in partnership with London merchants William

11 Rountree, Powhatan Foreign Relations, 4–7; and Cissna,The Piscataway Indians of Southern Maryland, 114. 12 Fausz, “Middlemen in Peace and War,” 55–59. 13 Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs, 185. 14 Fausz, “Middlemen in Peace and War,” p. 57 interpreted the evidence to mean that they built a fort; Howard A. MacCord characterized it as a “strong house” in “The Potomac Indians, A Brief Culture History,” Archeological Society of Virginia Quarterly Bulletin 47. no. 2 (1992): 80. 15 Fausz, “Middlemen in Peace and War,” 60–62. 4

Cloberry and Maurice Thomson, convinced Leonard Calvert of the financial promise of the Maryland colony. The rivalry for control of the fur trade that arose between Virginia and Maryland in the 1630s resulted in Calvert’s forcible appropriation of the Kent Island enterprise in 1638, and the relocation of some of Clairborne’s associates and servants to the lands of the Sekakawon, directly across the Potomac River from St. Mary’s City.16

In the late 1630s or early 1640s, the Sekakawon werowance, Machywap, ceded the forests and fields that included his village to English immigrant John Mottrom. Over the next decade Mottrom, displaced Kent Islanders, and other English immigrants and West African bondspeople established the first permanent colonial settlement on these and the surrounding lands with the support of William Claiborne. They anglicized the Indigenous place name to Chicacoan and adopted it for their district, which extended from the Yeocomoco River to Cubitt’s Creek.17

In the early 1640s, Mottrom and other residents of Chicacoan helped plot, from Coan Hall, the violent overthrow of the Maryland government. Their actions sparked an eighteen-month inter- colonial conflict known as Ingle’s Rebellion.18 An archaeological reassessment of the house of a planter living upriver near Nomini Bay indicates that he fortified his house at this time in anticipation of a retaliatory strike from Maryland which, fortunately for him, never came.19

It appears that Indigenous and colonizing peoples co-existed in close proximity. Archaeological evidence from Coan Hall indicates that members of both groups lived figuratively, and sometimes literally, side-by-side and that peaceful co-existence may have occurred for about a decade. In 1652, the Virginia General Assembly ordered that “there be noe grants of land to Englishmen de futuro; Untill the Indians be first served with the proportion of fiftye Acres of land for Each Bowman, the proportion of each perticular towne to lye together, to be surveighed as well Wood landes as Cleared ground, and to be land not before Pattented...”20

At a meeting at Coan Hall held in June 1655, the Northumberland County Court ordered Machywap to have his land surveyed according to the foregoing Act. The order indicates that at this time, he was “King of ye Chicacoan and Wicocomicos,” the latter being the more populous polity to the east that had allied itself with the Powhatans in the 1620s.21 The order suggests two things: first, that the Sekakawon had removed from their ancestral land along the Coan River by

16 Fausz, “Middlemen in Peace and War;” Fausz, “Present at the Creation,” 11–16; and Heath et al., “Power, Persistence, and Change,” 229. 17 Potter and Waselkov, “Whereby We Shall Enjoy Their Cultivated Places;” and Heath et al., “Power, Persistence, and Change,” 229. 18Nathaniel C. Hale, Virginia Venturer, A Historical Biography of William Claiborne, 1600-1677, The Story of the Merchant Venturers who Founded Virginia and The War in the Chesapeake (Richmond: The Dietz Press, 1951), 265. 19 D. Brad Hatch, Barbara J. Heath, and Lauren K. McMillan, “Reassessing the Hallowes Site: Conflict and Settlement in the 17th-century Potomac Valley,” Historical Archaeology 48, no. 4 (2014):46-75. 20 Warren M. Billings, ed., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century, A Documentary History of Virginia 1606–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 68. 21 Northumberland County Order Book 1652–1665, folio 39, June 30, 1655 as cited in Potter, “Ethnohistorical Examination of Indian Groups in Northumberland County,” 71; and Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs, 185, 195–196. 5

this time and settled lands closer to the mouth of the Potomac; and second, that the Sekakawon and Wicomicos had merged, and that Machywap had assumed leadership of both groups.

By February 1656, the combined Sekakawon and Wicomico occupied a 4,400-acre parcel of land near the southeastern end of the Northern Neck, north of modern-day Kilmarnock, by order of the colonial legislature.22 The following year, the English intervened when Machywap, “in great danger of his life” asked for their support against Wicomicos hostile to his leadership.23 By about 1660, he no longer served as King; the Wicomico “great man” Pekwem had taken his place.24

References to the settlement established in the mid-1650s, known as Wicocomico Indian Town, continued to appear in the Northumberland County records in the 1670s in relation to Wicomico land disputes with neighboring English settlers, which were resolved in favor of the Indians. In the last half of the seventeenth century, the population of the settlement dwindled from about 350 people in 1655 to 280 people in 1669 to “three men living,” (probably a reference to bowmen rather than a complete census) by 1703. William Taptico Jr., the last “king of the Wicocomico Indians,” died in 1719, and any remaining members of the town ceased to be recognized as a distinct political group by the colonial courts.25

Although the Sekakawon and Wicomico polities merged and moved to a new town, other Indigenous influences were still felt in the area. A town associated with the Matchodic to the west persisted until 1660. Individual Indians remained in Northumberland County as free people, some hiring themselves out to planters as hunters or to fill other short-term needs.26 Others entered the county as indentured servants or slaves, like Frank Sisco and the “Indian boy and girl” inventoried as part of the estate of Simon Overzee.27

With this summary of regional history in mind, we return to the questions raised by the Coan Hall palisade. To determine who may have built it requires a short review of the characteristics of palisades in the region built by both Indigenous peoples and by English colonists.

Indigenous Palisades Fortified sites began to appear across the landscape of the Chesapeake during a period of time that archaeologists refer to as the Late Woodland, which began around AD 700 to AD 900. Their appearance probably was a response to Iroquoian hostilities that followed the influx of

22 Northumberland County Order Book 1666–1672, folio 47, June 30, 1655 as cited in Potter, “Ethnohistorical Examination of Indian Groups in Northumberland County,” 71. 23 Northumberland County Order Book 1652–1665, folio 54, January 20, 1656/57 as cited in Potter, “Ethnohistorical Examination of Indian Groups in Northumberland County,” 72; and Potter, Commoners, Tribute and Chiefs, 196. 24 Martha W. Hiden, and Henry M. Dargan, “John Gibbon’s Manuscript Notes Concerning Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 74 no. 1 (1966): 3–22. Some members of the Sekakawon may have remained, or returned to Northumberland County. Augustin Herrman labeled an area in the interior of the county, south of the Coan River, as Chicacoan in 1670. Augustine Herrman, Thomas Withinbrook and Henry Faithorne, “Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670.” (Printed 1673, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Reading Room, Washington, D.C.). 25 Potter, “Ethnohistorical Examination of Indian Groups in Northumberland County,” 2, 55–57. 26 Potter, “Ethnohistorical Examination of Indian Groups in Northumberland County,” 56; and D. Brad Hatch, “Venison Trade and Interaction between English Colonists and Native Americans in Virginia’s Potomac River Valley,” Northeast Historical Archaeology 41 no. 3 (2012): 18–46. 27 Northumberland County Record Book 1658–1662, 82; Northumberland County Record Book 1662–1666, 107. 6

migrants from the Piedmont into the region.28 From about AD 1300 to AD 1500, as migrant and local populations mixed, they constructed dispersed settlements along river valleys arranged around defensive, and later political and religious, centers enclosed by palisades. These enclosures first provided protection and, when the threat of violence had dissipated, became compounds for elite residences and sacred spaces, containing houses for the werowance, family members and priests; storehouses for tribute; mortuary temples; and ossuaries (mass burials of bones of the dead).29

John White’s 1585 depiction of the palisade at the Indian “town” of Pomeiock, now in coastal North Carolina, shows narrow poles fashioned of saplings, some with branches still partially attached, encircling a number of structures built of bark and earth-set posts. White described the town as “all compassed abowt with small poles stock thick together instead of a wall.” 30

John Smith later described Powhatan palisaded settlements that he visited. He noted “at the North End was 9. Houses, builded with Cedar, fortified round with sharpe trees” at a village called “Citte Skicoak.” At another settlement, he stated that “[t]hey conducted us to their pallizadoed town, mantelled with the barkes of trees, with Scaffolds like mounts, brested about with Barks very formally.”31

At the turn of the eighteenth century, Robert Beverley described these spaces as follows: “Their Fortifications consist only of a Palisado of about ten or twelve foot high, and when they would make themselves very safe they treble the pale. They often encompass their whole town; but for the most part only their King’s Houses, and as many others as they judge sufficient to harbor all their people, when an enemy comes against them. They never fail to secure with their Palisado, all their religious reliques and remains of their Princes.”32

Smith’s and Beverley’s accounts of palisades suggest that they served two functions: as defensive walls around towns, and as more limited enclosures within a village. While Smith’s account of “Citte Skicoak” is less specific, Beverley is clear that these smaller enclosures were only occasionally defensive, and primarily functioned to delineate political and sacred centers.

28 Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs, 126-132. 29 Robert L. Stephenson and Alice L.L. Ferguson, The Site: A Middle Atlantic Seaboard Culture Sequence (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1963); Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs,174–177; Randolph E. Turner, III, “The Virginia Coastal Plain During the Late Woodland Period,” in Theodore R. Reinhart and Mary Ellen N. Hodges, eds., Middle and Late Woodland Research in Virginia, A Synthesis (Richmond: The Archeological Society of Virginia, 1992), 108–110; T. Dale Stewart, Archaeological Explorations of Patawomeke: The Indian Town Site (44St2) Ancestral to the One (44St1) Visited by Captain John Smith (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992); Dennis Blanton, Stevan C. Pullins, and Veronica L. Deitrick, The Potomac Creek Site (44ST2) Revisited (Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 1998) 28–33; Christopher J. Shephard, “Places of Power: The Community and Regional Development of Native Tidewater Palisades Post A.D. 1200” (Williamsburg: master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, The College of William and Mary, 2009). 30 Paul Hulton and David Beers Quinn, American Drawings of John White (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964). 31 John Smith, “The General Historie of Virginia. London,” in The Complete Works of Captain John Smith, 2 vols. Philip L. Barbour, ed., (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986 (1624)), 66, 107 as cited in Shephard, “Places of Power,” 17. 32 Robert Beverley, The Historie of Virginia, Louis B. Wright, ed., (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947 (1705)), 149. 7

Although his writings date to nearly a century after Smith’s, and cannot be read as accurate reflections of earlier practices, archaeology supports the idea that palisades served different functions long before the English arrived in the region.

Since the 1930s, archaeologists have excavated Late Woodland palisaded sites along the Potomac and Patuxent rivers, the Rappahannock River, and in the Shenandoah Valley. These sites include the Moore Village Site (18AG43) in the Maryland piedmont; Cumberland (18CV171) and Accokeek Creek (18PR8) in the Maryland coastal plain; the Miley (44SH2) and Quicksburg (44SH3) Sites in the Shenandoah Valley; and Potomac Creek (44ST2), ancestral to the seventeenth-century village of Patawomeke, below the fall line of the Potomac in Virginia.33,34 This discussion focuses on the three sites in the coastal plain (Cumberland, Accokeek Creek, and Potomac Creek).

Cumberland, on the Patuxent River, consisted of a single palisade line dated via radiocarbon assays to the sixteenth century. Villagers drove posts into the ground individually, leaving archaeological evidence of the decayed posts as separate, circular soil discolorations known as post molds, and set them in narrow, linear trenches. Ditches paralleled the inside of the Cumberland palisade. Following abandonment, the site was disturbed by plowing and later was partially bulldozed, but archaeologists located numerous post molds and portions of intact house floors within the enclosure. Concentrations of artifacts found outside the palisade indicate additional houses or areas where people worked, cooked, or carried out other activities.35

The Accokeek Creek and Potomac Creek sites each consisted of a series of circular palisades that demonstrate multiple periods of use and rebuilding. At Accokeek Creek, the northern half of the site had eroded into the river, but nine separate lines of post molds remained defining a series of concentric palisades. Some of the molds were contemporaneous, while others indicate changes to the enclosure over time. Individual post molds were about one foot in diameter, indicating the use of substantial posts to construct what archaeologists characterized as stockades. Trench-set post molds of only two to four inches in diameter formed a partial, later enclosure that may have bounded a ceremonial area containing one or more ossuaries. The archaeologists interpreted the molds as either remains of light poles or of cuttings that took root to form a hedge- like barrier.36

33 Stephenson and. Ferguson, The Accokeek Creek Site, 1–36; Howard MacCord and C. Lanier Rogers, “The Miley Site, Shenandoah County, Virginia,” Quarterly Bulletin of the Archeological Society of Virginia 22, no. 1 (1966): 9–20; Howard A. MacCord, Sr. “The Quicksburg Site, Shenandoah County, Virginia, Quarterly Bulletin of the Archeological Society of Virginia 27, no. 3 (1973): 121–140; “T. Dale Stewart, Archaeological Explorations of Patawomeke:; M. Christopher Williams, A Preliminary Site Report for the Cumberland Palisaded Village Site, Calvert County, Maryland (Report submitted to the Maryland Historical Trust, Southern Maryland Regional Preservation Center, and American University, 1983); Elizabeth Moore, Prehistoric Economies during the Late Woodland Period of the Potomac Valley: An Examination of Animal Resource Utilization, (Washington, D.C.: doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, American University, 1994) , 46–48; Blanton et al. The Potomac Creek Site; and data from the Colonial Encounters project (www.colonialencounters.org), 2014–2018. 34 Turner, “The Virginia Coastal Plain during the Late Woodland Period,” 109–110 also mentions two sites along the Rappahannock River where palisades might have been built during this period. 35 Data from the Colonial Encounters project (www.colonialencounters.org), 2014–2018. 36 Stephenson and Ferguson, The Accokeek Creek Site, 50–53. 8

The Potomac Creek Site consisted of eight concentric palisade lines along with an internal ditch.37 The posts that made up these lines were either set upright in trenches or driven into the ground individually. The palisades enclosed an area of approximately 1.4 acres, and contained numerous post molds associated with circular and oval structures, storage pits, and ossuaries.38 Radiocarbon assays provide a date range of AD 1260 to AD 165539 for the site as a whole. The earliest palisaded enclosure, dating from circa AD 1300 to AD 1400, included six or more defensive bastions. Blanton et al. estimated that the founding population, consisting of approximately 250 to 300 individuals, lived within the enclosure.40 Subsequent site residents dismantled the bastions, filled the ditch, and rebuilt a smaller enclosure. By the early to mid- sixteenth century, it no longer had a defensive or domestic role, but rather served a more specialized function as an ossuary.

Evidence of Indigenous palisades has also been found in the southern Virginia coastal plain at Flowerdew Hundred (44PG65) and Shirley (William and Mary site SP9) along the James River near modern-day Hopewell, and the Hand Site (44SN22) on the Nottoway River.41

Two other sites in Virginia provide additional information about the size and plan of Late Woodland-period palisaded centers. The Great Neck Site (44VB7) in Virginia Beach, occupied from circa AD 1330 to AD 1510, consisted of two intersecting lines of closely set posts forming a 100 foot circular enclosure or a 100’ x 140’ oval. It contained a large elliptical long house and another structure whose size is not known, as well as an ossuary, individual human burials, dog burials, hearths, pits, and post molds likely associated with additional structures that are difficult to identify.42 The Buck Farm Site (44CC37), located on the Chickahominy River, consists of a larger and deeper outer palisade enclosing an area of 80’ x 50’. Within it was a narrower, shallower palisade trench, extending 63’ x 43’ in diameter, containing eleven dog and pig burials, one human burial, and numerous post molds and hearths. Occupied from circa AD 1300 to AD 1500, the compound is significantly smaller than other palisaded sites found in the region. It may have contained a quioccassan or temple, representing a sacred space for the Chickahominy polity.43

In sum, despite variation, groups living in the region during the Late Woodland period constructed palisades with either substantial wooden posts or more slender saplings driven into the ground or set in trenches. They were sometimes combined with encircling ditches or partial ditches, and were circular to oval in plan. Palisade trenches were fairly narrow, ranging from about 6 inches to 1 foot for the eight trenches at Potomac Creek.44 At Buck Farm, the inner line measured a maximum of 1 foot wide, while the outer line was 2’ to 2.5’ across.45 Enclosed spaces contained structures, human and animal burials, activity areas, household artifacts, and items associated with

37 T. Dale Stewart reported seven lines, but the archaeological reassessment of the site recorded eight lines—see T. Dale Stewart, Archaeological Explorations of Patawomeke, 28–33. 38 Stewart, Archaeological Explorations of Patawomeke. 39 2-sigma span, 95% probability. 40 Blanton et al., The Potomac Creek Site (44ST2) Revisited, 93. 41 Turner, “The Virginia Coastal Plain During the Late Woodland Period,” 109. 42 Mary Ellen Norrisey Hodges, Native American Settlement at Great Neck: Report on VDHR Archaeological Investigations of Woodland Components at Site 44VB7, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 1981-1987 (Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources Research Report Series Number 9, 1998), pp. 33–48. 43 Christopher J. Shephard, “Places of Power.” 44 T. Dale Stewart, Archaeological Explorations of Patawomeke, 35. 45 Shephard, “Places of Power,” 20. 9

tribute paid to the werowance such as beads, copper, mineral ores, hides, and corn. Sites like Accokeek Creek and Potomac Creek, with long histories of occupation, were characterized by multiple, concentric rings of palisade lines, indicating the repair and rebuilding of these enclosures over time. Each of these sites was located on borders between competing socio-political groups that called for proactive defensive measures.

English Colonial Palisaded Sites The English also constructed defensive palisades, but theirs were built with large timbers closely spaced within deep, narrow trenches, or with large posts spaced at roughly 10-foot intervals, set in hand-dug holes, and connected by horizontal rails to which pales or planks were nailed. Fortifications surrounded compounds and private settlements owned by the Virginia Company prior to its dissolution in 1624. Immediately following the Powhatan uprising of 1622, “every dwelling house” was required to be surrounded by a palisade to defend against future attacks. Fortifications also might include interior or exterior ditches that could be used to bank soil against the walls to reinforce them from cannon fire. Maryland colonists erected a palisade at St. Clement’s Island in 1634, and at St. Mary’s City later that year.46

Chesapeake colonists drew on precedents developed in Europe, but no universal blueprint guided the construction or siting of their defensive works. Instead, their designs accommodated the realities of colonial experience on the ground. Nevertheless, previously excavated seventeenth-century fortifications in Virginia and Maryland, including the Company-owned fortification of James Fort, and private works at Wolstenholme Town, Flowerdew Hundred, and Jordan’s Journey on the James River; Nansemond Pallizado on the Nansemond River near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and Pope’s Fort in St. Mary’s City, share a common rectilinear design. These English fortifications also included rectangular or circular bastions for musket or cannon fire. Pope’s Fort, which stood from 1645 to 1655, is the least linear design yet uncovered, but is still recognizable as conceptually triangular in form.47

Fortified English sites in the Chesapeake varied in size depending on the needs of the communities they served. Those that incorporated multiple households and structures were 90 feet or greater at their minimum dimension, extending up to 400 feet. They could also be designed to protect a single house. In Westmoreland County, Virginia, for example, John Hallowes created a hybrid set of defenses shortly after completing his house in 1647. He placed wooden posts within

46 William Waller Hening, The Statutes at Large, vol.1 (New York: R. W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 127; A Relation of the Successefull Beginning of the Lord Baltemore's Plantation in Mary-land (Annapolis: Maryland Maryland State Archives, 1990), 48; Fraser D. Neiman, Field Archaeology of the Clifts Plantation Site, Westmoreland County, Virginia (Stratford: Robert E. Lee Memorial Association, 1980); Ivor Noël Hume, Martin’s Hundred (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982); Henry M. Miller, Discovering Maryland’s First City: A Summary Report on the 1981–1984 Archaeological Excavations in St. Mary’s City, Maryland (St. Mary’s City: St. Mary’s Commission, 1986), 47–66; Charles T. Hodges, “Private Fortifications in Seventeenth-Century Virginia: A Study of Six Representative Works,” in Theodore R. Reinhart and Dennis J. Pogue, eds., The Archaeology of 17th-Century Virginia (Richmond: Archeological Society of Virginia, 1993); Nicholas M. Luccketti, “Nansemond Pallizado and Virginia Pallisade Fortifications,” in Eric Klingelhofer, ed., First Forts, Essays on the Archaeology of Proto-Colonial Fortifications (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 85–104; and Luke J. Pecoraro, “‘Of Chusinge and Takinge Some Place of Advantage, and There to Make Some Pallysadoes’: Atlantic Connects ant the Nansemond Fort, Virginia” (Boston: master’s thesis, Department of Archaeology, Boston University, 2010); https://www.hsmcdigshistory.org/pdf/Forts.pdf, 1–2. 47 https://www.hsmcdigshistory.org/pdf/Forts.pdf, 3–6. 10

semi-circular ditches at the gable ends of his dwelling, essentially incorporating large bastions into the structure of his 50’ x 20’ English-style earthfast (post-in-ground) farmhouse. In response to the threat of Bacon’s Rebellion in the 1670s, residents of the manor house at the Clifts Plantation in Westmoreland County built a more conventional, and substantial, palisade of split rails set upright into a trench. The palisade included opposing bastions, but was just large enough to protect the house. Across the Potomac, a substantial ditch, containing post molds of about one foot in diameter that bounded the southern yard or forecourt, protected Charles Calvert’s Mattapany manor in St. Mary’s County. Archaeologists Edward Chaney and Julia King believe that the defensive barrier was quickly assembled in 1689 to protect Lord Baltimore’s house during the Protestant revolt against Maryland’s proprietary government.48

For English settlers in the colonial Chesapeake, palisades were the ultimate form of protection. However, their defensive value had to be weighed against the cost of constructing and maintaining them, the crowded interior living conditions that they created, and the restricted access to yards, gardens, fields, and views that most entailed. The archaeological record suggests that most were of limited duration; built when necessary and dismantled as soon as the threat that precipitated their construction had passed.

The Archaeology of the Coan Hall Palisade Drawing on this review of Indigenous and English construction methods, sizes, and plans for palisades it is now necessary to turn to the geophysical and archaeological evidence at Coan Hall to evaluate the physical evidence of the palisade and other seventeenth-century landscape elements. This evidence will more directly address questions of origins, chronology, use, and meaning.

Geophysics

Concurrent with our excavations, the authors conducted a geophysical survey across approximately 4 acres of the site. In archaeology, geophysics refers to a variety of techniques used to identify disturbances, or anomalies, to a given area below the ground surface. These anomalies can result from a wide range of human activities, such as burning or digging. Archaeologists differentiate between them based on their size, depth, and the intensity of the signal they return, and use the anomalies recorded by geophysical surveys to target key areas for excavation.

At Coan Hall, ground penetrating radar (GPR) was used to identify sediments or solid barriers below the surface.49 In 2018, Katherine Parker was able to identify much of the unexcavated extent of the palisade from the GPR survey. Based on these results, the palisade was

48 Neiman, Field Archaeology of the Clifts Plantation Site, 74; 1993:265–266; Hatch et al., “Reassessing the Hallowes Site,” 56, 64–66; Edward E. Chaney and Julia A. King, “ ‘A Fair House of Brick and Timber’: Archaeological Excavations at Mattapany-Sewall (18ST390), Naval Air Station, Patuxent River, St. Mary’s County, Maryland (St. Leonard: Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum, 1999). 49 At Coan Hall, two geophysical techniques were employed to explore the presence and distributions of anomalies at the site: systematic gradiometer survey to detect anomalous magnetic signals, and ground penetrating radar (GPR). Only the second technique proved useful for detecting evidence of the palisade. GPR detects sediments or barriers whose density, which is measured in the amount of electromagnetic wave that is reflected back to the machine by a given surface, varies from the surrounding soil. 11

revealed to be oval in shape, measuring 150 feet east-west by 92 feet north-south. While the eastern and western lines are fairly clear, the northern and southern lines of the palisade are partially obscured by anomalies that relate to other activities. To the south, the GPR detected two roughly parallel lines, spaced a maximum of about 10 feet apart. It is possible that the two southern lines represent the expansion or contraction of the enclosure over time, but one cannot be sure until excavations are conducted in this area. The GPR survey should have detected ossuaries or other large pits within the enclosure if they were present, but none are evident.50 The methods used to collect the GPR data were not suited to detect very small features such as post molds measuring less than 6 inches in diameter that are often associated with Native American structures. However, deeper, larger posts, such as those associated with English construction methods, were detected.51 Therefore, while the geophysical survey provided good evidence for the size and shape of the enclosure, the results were biased towards the later use of this space associated with the Mottrom household.

Excavations

By the close of the 2019 excavation season, archaeologists had uncovered approximately one third of the extent of the palisade but had completely excavated only three 5-foot portions of its fill. These portions included a 5-foot length within the east room and running beneath the east wall of the manor house (Area A), and two lengths midway along the palisade’s southwest arc (Area B). Two additional 5-foot lengths were also partially excavated in this area. A ten-foot portion of a separate trench running from the northeast corner of the house into the east yard was also excavated (Area C) (Figure 2). All sediments were screened through quarter-inch hardware mesh, except for samples collected for additional processing. These samples were either floated or water-screened. Artifacts larger than one-eighth inch were recovered by both methods.52

The palisade ranges in depth from 7 inches to 1 foot, 3 inches, and averages about 1 foot across. It is roughly U-shaped in profile, with straight sides and a flat to slightly curved base. Palisade fill in Areas A and B is characterized by very dark brown to very dark greyish brown silt, mixed with small amounts of clay and fine sand. The proportion of silt to clay varies across space, with Area B containing more clay than Area A. As the palisade was dismantled, surface artifacts fell into the voids left by the removal of the posts. These artifacts, as well as the vertical relationship between the palisade and stratigraphic layers and features above and below it, provide evidence used to infer the chronology of its construction and destruction.

In Area A, a broken beamer—a tool made from a deer metatarsal and used by Indigenous women to tan deer hides—as well as a small number of artifacts of Native American and European

50 The archaeologists anticipate conducting very limited testing within the palisade enclosure and will avoid excavations in any areas that might be associated with interments. 51 Katherine G. Parker, “Geophysical Investigations of Intimate Colonial Interactions: A Case Study of Two Sites in Northumberland County, Virginia,” paper presented at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference. Ocean City, MD., March 21-24, 2019. 52 Flotation is a method in which sediment is agitated in water so that light material, particularly carbonized seeds, floats to the surface and can be collected. Heavy materials settle out to the sediment and are caught on mesh. Waterscreening is a method in which sediment is placed on a fine mesh screen and sprayed with a hose until the sediment is washed away and only solids larger than the mesh size, including artifacts, are left on the screen. Approximately twice as much sediment from samples has been processed and catalogued from Area B (31L) as from Area A (13L), or Area C (15L). 12

manufacture were found within the fill of the palisade (Table 1). The stratigraphic position of the feature, beneath the east room of the house and the foundation, indicates that the palisade stood in this location prior to the construction of the house. The presence of historic architectural materials within its fill indicates that laborers dismantled the palisade prior to or during the construction of the manor house. The relative paucity of artifacts in that location suggests that the palisade was dismantled and filled early in the period following English settlement.

Excavations south of the manor house uncovered further portions of the palisade running in a broad arc until it began to flatten and turn eastward. In Area B, a 20-foot section of the palisade trench was completely or partially excavated near the broadest point in the arc. Despite processing more than twice as much sediment from this area in search of small artifacts, archaeologists found that the quantity and variety of European-made artifacts were much lower in this area than in Areas A or C. Architectural artifacts, a few tiny pieces of unidentified bone, a few seventeenth-century ceramics, a lead shot and some lead casting waste, and a scatter of lithics associated with Indigenous tool production or maintenance, were recovered. None of these artifacts can be assigned to a tight date range. However, the European ceramics probably date after the construction of the manor house, and the presence of window glass and brick in the fill confirms a date following the arrival of the Mottroms at the site.

Shallow pockets of dark brown silt at the base of the palisade trench in Area B are most likely the remains of post molds. These provide important clues about the size of the uprights used to construct the palisade and about their degree of uniformity, which can speak to the extent of work that went into shaping them. The post molds in Area B varied in shape from circular to triangular to rectangular, measuring from 2 ⅓ inches to about 6 inches at their maximum dimension, with an average diameter of 4 ½ inches.

Excavations within and adjacent to the palisade have begun to provide additional information about the changing landscape of Coan Hall following English settlement.53 They include an English-style linear trench dug to seat the posts of a light paling fence, known as a slot trench; holes dug to seat the posts that formed the supports of a small outbuilding; and other post holes that may be associated with a later fence. Archaeologists uncovered a five-foot section of the slot trench oriented north to south just 2 ½ feet east of the palisade in Area B. An additional section of the fence was excavated 12 ½ feet farther south, forming a right angle 47 feet south of the manor house and extending due east 28 feet to the end of our excavations (Figure 2). Part of the slot trench cut through the palisade, meaning that it was built during or after the destruction of the palisade. None of the artifacts recovered in its fill could be tightly dated, but its close proximity suggests that the builders either directly followed the route of the palisade as they dismantled it, or that they remembered its location (Table 1). The barrier formed by the slot trench probably began at the midpoint of the south wall of the manor house, and enclosed the southeast yard of the house within a rectangular paling.

The ground penetrating radar survey located anomalies associated with a small structure in Area B that intrudes into, and therefore dates later than, the palisade line. The GPR results indicate

53 Limited excavations within the interior of the palisade, focused on locating Indigenous and English structures and activity areas, were planned for the summer of 2020 and postponed due to COVID-19. They are currently planned to resume in 2021 or 2022. 13

a building of earth-set posts that was rectangular in plan oriented at a northwest-to-southeast angle relative to the manor house. Archaeologists have uncovered at least six post holes in the area of the GPR anomalies and have fully excavated three of them. One is a large, deep post that likely is associated with the structure. It cuts into the palisade line and contained numerous seventeenth- century artifacts in its fill, but none that can be tightly dated (Table 1). The other two post holes are relatively shallow, smaller, and appear to be part of a later fence line. One of these posts intrudes into the large structural post, indicating that it is later in date. Additional work in this area is needed to fully expose the post-in-ground building and to sort out the chronology of all of these features. Nevertheless, it appears that following the destruction of the palisade, the English occupants of the site enclosed the south yard and constructed a small building within it. They later replaced the slot trench with one made of earth-set posts.

Excavations also uncovered a section of trench in the yard area east of the manor house (Area C) (Figure 2). At the base of this trench, two complete and two partial post molds were excavated. Both complete molds were rectangular, with the first measuring 6” x 8” and the second, larger post measuring 7 1/3” x 1’ 2 ½”. The two partial molds were 7” to 8” in width and of undetermined length. Together, these molds indicate that significantly larger posts were set into this trench than the posts used in the Area B palisade, and that the posts were hewn into more uniform shapes.

In the 10-foot section of trench fill removed in Area C, archaeologists recovered the most diverse array of artifacts, including architectural materials and domestic artifacts of both Indigenous and European manufacture (Table 1). The trench contained broken pieces of oyster shell and small fragments of Atlantic ridged mussel shell that Indigenous people used to make beads and as temper for their clay pots. Together, the much more varied nature of this assemblage in comparison to the artifacts from Areas A and B, and the individual artifacts themselves, suggest the mingling of locally made and imported artifacts discarded in the yard both prior to and after the manor house was occupied. A tiny fragment of leaded glass dates the filling of the trench to sometime after 1680, when merchants began to ship leaded glass to the Chesapeake region.54

The trench in Area C intruded, and therefore dates later than, a deposit of dark brown silt mixed with clay and burned wood. This relationship is important because the dark brown silty deposit contained an abundance of mid-to late seventeenth-century artifacts, indicating that the Area C trench is not part of the original palisade, and was dug sometime after the Mottrom family occupied the manor house and began to routinely discard household trash in the side yard. The shape, width, and depth of the trench is consistent with the palisade, however, indicating that it served a similar purpose—to support upright posts. However, in addition to its differently sized posts and more abundant artifact assemblage, the Area C trench breaks from the oval plan of the palisade. It turns abruptly southward approximately 5 feet from the east foundation of the house, and runs south in an arc, which at its farthest point is located 25 feet east of the house (Figure 2).

For each of these reasons, the authors believe the Area C trench is associated with a later period of construction unrelated to the palisade. We currently hypothesize that it was built as a defensive bastion sometime in the period from the 1640s to the 1680s. It resembles the bastions that protected the east and west gable ends of the manor house at the Hallowes Site in

54 Leaded glass was invented in England circa 1675 by George Ravenscroft. 14

Westmoreland County.55 Future excavations will trace its full extent, confirm its purpose and date, and locate the northern extent of the Sekakawon palisade in this area of the site.

*******

The historical, geophysical, and archaeological evidence indicates that the Sekakawon constructed the palisade prior to 1640. Unlike sites that were occupied over one hundred years or more, the palisade shows no evidence of having been repaired or rebuilt, suggesting that it stood for only a relatively short time. Given that large, structural wooden posts set into the ground tend to rot within a generation, and that smaller, more slender posts were less durable, it appears that the Sekakawon constructed the enclosure in the 1620s or 1630s, and that laborers employed by Mottrom tore it down prior to, or while building, the manor house that stood at the time of Mottrom’s death. It is likely that a temporary structure housed the Mottrom family while the more substantial manor was under construction, but that house has not yet been found.56 While it is possible that the palisaded enclosure continued standing into the mid- to late-1640s (while English settlement of the Northern Neck was sparse, the Sekakawon maintained their autonomy, and intra- and inter-colonial conflict continued to affect the lower Potomac Valley), further excavations are needed to support or refute that possibility.

While the chronology is relatively straightforward, the use of the space is less certain. The palisade enclosed approximately 10,833 square feet of space, or the equivalent of approximately one-quarter of an acre. By way of comparison, the earliest and largest enclosure at the Potomac Creek Site was six times larger (Table 2).57 Applying estimates used elsewhere that average living space per Indigenous person at that time tended to be 215 square feet, archaeologists determined that the earliest phase of the Patawomeke village accommodated some 250-300 people who lived within it. Applying the same formula to the Sekakawon enclosure indicates that it could have accommodated about 50 people. Recalling population estimates at Sekakawon of 120-130 people in 1608 and, barring a significant decline in population over the following decade, the palisade might have accommodated slightly more than one third of the population, but likely housed far fewer people.

The palisade at the Great Neck Site bounded an area of comparable size to the Sekakawon enclosure. It contained at least two elongated oval structures, as well as two human burials and a number of small post molds that could not be assigned to a particular function.58 Archaeologists working there concluded that the site could have been an elite compound, with the large structure within it also used to shelter villagers at times of conflict.59 The Buck Farm Site is significantly smaller, enclosing just over 3,000 square feet or 0.07 acres. It has been identified as a sacred, rather than defensive space. Based on these size comparisons, the Sekakawon palisade may have functioned primarily as a domestic, political, and sacred center occupied and overseen by the Sekakawon wereowance, which provided shelter for the larger population in times of conflict.

55 Hatch et al., “Reassessing the Hallowes Site,” 56. 56 Heath et al. 2017, 13–14. 57 Metric measurements (from Blanton et al., The Potomac Creek Site (44ST2) Revisited, 93) have been converted in this article to feet, for this comparison. 58 Hodges, Native American Settlement at Great Neck, 36–42, 76. 59 Hodges, Native American Settlement at Great Neck, 76–77. 15

In previous publications, the senior author of this article has argued that John Mottrom built a house at Coan Hall comparable in size and materials to the dwellings of mid-seventeenth- century governors and government officials, and that he appropriated the pre-existing power of this place by settling on Sekakawon land and adopting and anglicizing the Indigenous name for his plantation and for the broader community of Chicacoan.60 The recent exploration of the palisade speaks more directly to his complex mix of intentions.

By the 1650s, Mottrom had used the memory of the Sekakawon werowance’s position on the landscape to cement his own political ambitions (recall the English term for leader being “King”) and had erased or irrevocably altered Machywap’s most potent symbol of leadership— the palisaded enclosure. Despite these actions, Mottrom and his descendants preserved elements of the Sekakawon landscape for decades after the group had left their ancestral lands. By literally building his house on top of the palisade, Mottrom destroyed it, but preserved the function of that space as the domestic compound of a leader, a religious center (Mottrom housed the minister at his house), and a political center (the Northumberland County Court frequently met there).

The organization of the south yard also preserved elements of the Indigenous landscape. While the first fence, indicated by the slot trench, straightened and regularized the space, it closely honored the path of the pre-existing palisade line. Even after the first fence was removed, a later fence line continued to define this space. The Sekakawon had materialized their political relations in the landscape they created, and these relations influenced the subsequent development of the property long after they had abandoned it. Echoes of their early seventeenth-century landscape persisted through the first two generations of Mottrom residents at the site, only to vanish with the destruction of the manor and the re-organization of the broader plantation near the turn of the eighteenth century.

60 Heath et al., “The Architecture of John Mottrom’s Coan Hall,” 17–18; and Heath et al., “Power, Persistence and Change in a Lower Potomac Valley Landscape,” 248. 16