Mattaponi Tribe History

Lee Major, Mattaponi, wearing native hat made of duck skins

For good reasons the Mattaponi Indians may be classified definitely as a branch of the Pamunkey, as such, their history often mirrors theirs.

Powhatan Pottery

Recent Pamunkey pipes.

First let us look over the material from the Virginia tidewater area. Everywhere here from the southern boundary of Virginia by actual observation, north-ward even through the Delaware valley, the pot-sherds are almost identical in material, decoration and color. Holmes has appropriately called the ceramics of the tidewater “the Algonquian type.” On the Pamunkey, Mattaponi, Rappahannock, James, and Chickahominy rivers it is all the same, the rims, decorations, and ingredients being practically uniform within a certain range of variation.