Early Sites at the Falls

In 1607 and 1608, English colonists from Jamestown visited the falls of the James at present-day Richmond. In 1609 and 1610 English attempts to establish forts at the falls led to conflict with the resident Powhatans. Several of the sites associated with these events can be identified with good probability.

Second Islet

Detail from Byrd title book

In 1607, as Christopher Newport's party proceeded up the river from Jamestown, a friendly Powhatan drew a map for them. Beyond two islands, he indicated, was a place where all traffic on the water stopped. Referring to these directions, Gabriel Archer wrote that the colonists "came to the second Islet Described in the River." On the north side of the river opposite was Powhatan town, situated "upon a high Hill by the water side, a plain between it and the water." John Smith stated that Powhatan town consisted of "some twelve houses, pleasantly seated on a hill; before it three fertile Isles, about it many of their cornfields, the place is very pleasant, and strong by nature." From the town, by Archer's account, the English rowed "some 3 mile" to "an overfall, impassible for boats any further." Smith located Powhatan town closer to the falls: "to this place the river is navigable: but higher within a mile, by reason of the Rocks and Isles, there is not passage for a small Boat."

Painting of the James River, c.1860

James River in 2003

A key landmark is Archer's "second Islet," presumably the largest of Smith's "three fertile Isles." Archer said that six or seven families lived on it. The scholar Philip Barbour in 1969 identified it as Mayo's Island, a downtown island today crossed by 14th Street Bridge, but this seems mistaken. Mayo's Island is located directly at the falls, not a distance away.

The best candidate for the landmark island is one that is no longer an island. Known as My Lord's Island, it was along the south bank, downstream from the falls below today's sewage treatment plant. Robert Lee Traylor in 1899 identified My Lord's Island as Archer's "Islet." It appears on a 1662 plat in the "William Byrd Title Book" as the central and largest of three islands north of Stony Creek, today's Goode's Creek. A record of the name "My Lord's Island" in the title book dates to 1649, and although its name changed over time to reflect the names of subsequent owners, the island appears on a map as late as 1890. By 1899, the island in Traylor's words had become "a peninsula of very considerable area." Perhaps the shallows that separated the island from the shore were filled by silting from the industrial construction boom that took place on the Richmond riverfront in the 1890s.

Powhatan Town

Across the river from the site of My Lord's Island today are rolling plains that extend from the lower valley of Gillies Creek, also known as Fulton Bottom, to Almond Creek, about a mile south and the next stream downriver. In this area would have been the cultivated fields of several hundred acres cited by Smith, and Powhatan town stood atop one of the facing hills.

At Powhatan Seat

Powhatan town stood atop one of the facing hills. A variety of Richmond traditions locate the town. One long-held is that it was on Fulton Hill, known also as Powhatan Hill. On a nearby lower hill was a Mayo family house that was built by 1732 and called "Powhatan Seat." This hill was leveled about 1911 for a Chesapeake & Ohio (today CSX) railroad yard. Robert Lee Traylor in 1899 was dismissive of both of these claims for the location of the town, however, and there is no hard evidence for either. At the founding of St. John's Church in 1740 the site for the church, today's 25th and Broad Streets, was referred to as "Indian Town," but this town was likely a later settlement.

Native Virginian settlement

A key discrepancy in the accounts is that Archer said the town was three miles from the falls, and Smith said it was under a mile. Traylor in 1899 and L. G. Tyler in 1907 each followed Archer and favored a place like Marion Hill or Tree Hill. Both of these hills are located along Route 5 to the east of the modern city limits, on the downriver side of Almond Creek where the road rises to Varina. Indeed a 1992 dig at Tree Hill by Douglas C. McLearen and Beverly J. Binns produced good evidence for that place as the location of Powhatan town. The study, by the Virginia Commonwealth University Archaeological Research Center for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, found that a site designated "44HE674" contained a large number of artifacts from the correct period, and concluded that the site is "believed to be the main occupation area of the village of Powhatan."

View from Tree Hill

That location fits well to the historical record. Gabriel Archer spoke of the town as "Pawatah's Tower," implying a steep-sided hill, as Tree Hill is. William Strachey wrote of Powhatan towns that they were "commonly upon the Rise of a hill, that they may overlook the River and take every small thing into view which stirs upon the same." When driving into Richmond from the east on Route 5, at a certain moment there appears a grand panorama of the city skyline. To the left at that point, between Route 5 and the river, is Tree Hill. John Smith could well have written with enthusiasm about a place with such an overlook.

Powhatan towns often had habitations on both sides of a river. The families residing on My Lord's Island would then have been an extension of the Tree Hill town. For an enemy threat from the west, the Tree Hill townsite was strategic, overlooking river and plain. The case for Tree Hill as the location of Powhatan town is stronger than for any other site.

The 1607 Cross

Painting of Richmond, 1822

On the 1607 exploration, the English erected a cross on an island at the falls. Regarding the location, in 1899 Robert Lee Traylor suggested "Island 321," and nobody has guessed any better since. For this site, guessing is the operative term, since river islands are changeable, and the earliest map to show the falls with any precision was made about two centuries after 1607. Island 321, numbered but never named, was at the foot of the rapids and accessible by boat. In an 1822 watercolor by Borqueta de Woiseri, the island appears supporting a Mayo's Bridge abutment. Today the location is beneath 14th Street, behind the stone riverwall at the north end of the bridge.

West's Fort and Laware's Fort

As to the settlements of 1609 and 1610, the evidence for their location is limited but indicative. For Laware's Fort of 1610, there are two big clues. In 1611, after his return to England, Lord Delaware wrote a letter justifying his departure from Virginia. In it he reported that his fort at the falls was "upon an Island environed also with Corn ground." Of the islands that the English found at the falls, only one was large and reported as inhabited: My Lord's Island. The second clue is that in George Percy's accounts, he repeatedly refers to Lord Delaware, the Governor of Virginia, as "My Lord." A logical name for the island on which the governor had located his fort would have been "My Lord's Island."

Fort building, detail from de Bry engraving

For West's Fort of 1609, the same place seems likely. Lord Delaware would have known in 1610 where his brother had placed West’s Fort in 1609. The kind of thinking that saw Jamestown Island as a suitable place to settle would have found My Lord's Island as similarly advantageous, for it seemed defensible and was accessible to boats. John Smith disapproved of the location of West's Fort as "not only subject to the rivers inundation, but round environed with many intolerable inconveniences." In its deficiencies My Lord's Island would have also been similar to Jamestown. Smith had seen enough of the Powhatans' way of life to appreciate many of their choices. A breezy site on top of a hill with a nearby spring made more sense to him.

Locations for Powhatan town on Tree Hill and the forts on My Lord's Island accord with historical accounts. For example, when occupying the island, Francis West's party would have created friction by displacing the Powhatan residents; and the Powhatans' crops were just across the river, easily accessible to the English.

What of My Lord's Island today? It is attached to the south bank of the river, in an industrial section located to the east of, and quite close to, Interstate 95. The site is probably as inaccessible on the ground as any in the city. A large gravel quarry there may have excavated the lion's share of the former islands. It is surely curious that the likely first site of European habitation in Richmond has been one of its least-inhabited spots. That is changing, however, with the new Rocketts Landing complex on the opposite bank and slightly upriver, and with early stages of development at Tree Hill now beginning.