The Weight of the River: uncovering and honoring the ones who came before

There is something surreal as I slowly stroll the sandy banks of the York River in Barhamsville, Virginia. I’ve been standing in this particular spot for over thirty years, and yet now things seem to hit a bit different. Maybe because it’s almost the fourth of July on this, the two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary. 

Across the river from me, seen as a distant shoreline of hazy green trees, lies Werowocomoco-  the (relatively) recently rediscovered stronghold of Chief Powhatan, leader of the Powhatan people and, eventually, chief of chiefs as he inherited and led over thirty different tribes. This particular village was his main residence, but Indigenous peoples have lived here for thousands of years prior to Powhatan’s time. Werowocomoco is fifteen miles from Jamestown. Not the place I’d want to stick my flag in the ground, if you know what I’m saying. 

My family has owned a piece of land here on the river since I was eleven. Back then, I thought it was so cool to be across the river from Pocohontas. Back then, we didn’t know the lush line of green across the river was Werowocomoco (archeologists confirmed it in 2003). Back then, sitting on the sandy shoreline, we found arrowheads and other stone tools used by the Powhatans- many of them were prehistoric. Now, I find their pottery, and the pottery of their ancestors.

A small creek borders our property and another piece of land, which also sits on the banks of the York. During low tide I forge the shallow waters and scour the coast looking for treasures. This land, however, was home to a Revolutionary War-era house which was cannonballed during the war. The handmade bricks lie scattered across the beach, up on the bluff, half submerged in sandy soil and clay. Mounds hidden among Periwinkle and English Ivy and Beautyberry. As the edge of the bluff gives way year after year, storm after storm, more and more of that history is both uncovered, and recovered, by the Earth. Chunks of handmade bricks and river stones and china slide down the sandy banks, along with grandchildren of the Cedar and Poplar that stood guard hundreds of years ago. They tumble down to the beach, each wave of the tide either pulling it out to the briny river or lying exposed for me to find.

And now, thirty years later, I feel it. The push and pull of time. The conflicted sense of belonging and taking and wishing I was perhaps something I was not. As I gaze over my left shoulder, I see the banks which housed the ones who worked with the land. The ones who knew how to live with nature. To make it last. The ones

who belong here. Who I feel more deeply connected with than those who I truly owe my existence to. I can’t walk three feet without seeing another and another and another shard of their clay-fired pottery with etchings from hands made with love and respect. How many hands had touched these pieces? 

If I look toward the right, I see what’s left of a crumbling attempt to stake claim in a place they had no right to take. I see the plants they brought with them from Europe which lasted much longer than they did. I see magnificent pieces of beautifully painted china. So delicate, but still here regardless of cannonballs, winter storms, or uprooted trees. And bricks, also made by hand, which show each imperfection and, sometimes, the hand of a longgone raccoon. Here I am, hundreds of years later, combing the beach and the root beds of overturned trees for their trash. Broken clay pipes, river-smoothed shards of glass bottles, pieces of a life swept forgotten over time. For some reason, I feel it’s my job to find them. To honor those from the past, whose names I’ll never know. To pick up the broken pieces and find the answers in them. 

Two sides of the river. Two stories. Two struggles. Two very different lives, and two very different outcomes. 

I find it hard to celebrate this exceptional year of independence knowing what I know, standing here on the banks with this sense of dramatic irony. Knowing the continued struggle of indigenous people today, and here I am, white as can be, ‘owning’ this land. I wish I could give it back. I wish I could repair the past and the pain. How can I celebrate this ‘victory’? As I work to heal the land as an herbalist, and try to honor the ones who came before us without appropriating their culture too, I just can’t find it within myself to dredge up any patriotism right now. But for some reason, I have been called to this place, time after time, with a distinct sense of being pulled to this beautifully conflicted spot on the banks of the York River. My second home, in a place I don’t really belong. Standing in the space of the sublime, with tears in my eyes and fullness in my heart for something I can’t begin to understand.