Resilience Of Virginia's Patawomeck People Focus Of '1666: A Novel'

FREDERICKSBURG, VA — In an effort to steal the land of the Patawomeck people in 1666, colonists in what would become the Commonwealth of Virginia killed all of the men of the tribe. They then enslaved the Patawomeck women and children, marched them to the coast and shipped them off to work in the sugar fields of Barbados.

Despite these hardships, many of the women and children were eventually able to return to their home in the Fredericksburg area.

Lora Chilton, a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, can trace her ancestry through her father's family back to the Patawomeck people. As a modern member of the tribe, she has always been fascinated by the brutal events of 1666.

"I wanted to know more and started to research and talk with people just to find and ask, where is the book about these women, about this story?" she told Patch in a recent phone interview.

Many of members of Chilton's extended family still live in Virginia and, in 2007, she attended a family reunion in Fredericksburg.

"Chief Robert 'Two Eagles' Green attended the event and shared the oral tradition of the tribe, which was about that summer of 1666," she said.

Inspired by that story, Chilton began researching the history of the Patawomeck people, reading the records kept by the Governor's Council of England which governed the English colonists.

"There is written documentation from the council to make war to the utter destruction of the tribe and dispose of the women and children," she said. "That's written down."

These records and the oral tradition of the tribe are the basis of Chilton's "1666: A Novel," an historical retelling of the Patawomeck women and children's forced migration and enslavement.

"It's a story that has been told within the tribe, but it hasn't had a wider audience," she said. "It is important to share these stories. They're hard stories and what happened to the people was hard, but it's also a story of resilience and love and family. That these women were so committed and brave to find a way back from a Caribbean island, all the way back to what we now call Virginia."

On Saturday, Chilton will be attending the 1666 Commemorative Day event, which runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Patawomeck Museum and Cultural Center in Fredericksburg. The event is free and open to the public.

Chilton will discuss "1666: A Novel" at 11:30 a.m., at the Patawomeck Museum and Cultural Center, which is located at 638 Kings Highway in Fredericksburg.

The museum discussion will be the first stop in a week-long book tour, in which Chilton follows the historic 1666 route taken by the Patawomeck women, with stops in Henrico, Hampton, and Williamsburg.

"Likely, they took a footpath that might have gone a little further east, probably following a route that would lead to Tappahannock," she said. "But, for the sake of being able to go to the places could come, I'm just following a path going south."

At each stop of the book tour, Chilton will discuss what inspired her to write the novel, how she studied the Patawomek language, and interviewed elders of the tribe who have kept the story alive through their oral tradition.

Last September, U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (R-Glen Allen) introduced the Patawomeck Indian Tribe of Virginia Federal Recognition Act, which would give the tribe the same recognition it has already received from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

"What's involved in that is proving that there's been a presence for many, many years," Chilton said. "What happened in Virginia is in 1924, with the Racial Integrity Act, a lot of the native people went underground."

This "paper genocide," as Chilton described it, kept the tribe's culture and language hidden, because they were no longer recognized as a category of people in Virginia. In recent years, the tribe has worked to reverse that perception, something that would be helped by the passage of Spanberger's bill.

"It's just an acknowledgement of what really happened and that these were real people with a real language, with culture and connections to the land that were destroyed when Virginia was colonized in the 1600s. It's an acknowledgement of the existence of these people."