At the time of Captain John Smith’s explorations, Virginia Indians were part of a vast trade and communications network that reached the Gulf Coast, New England, and the Great Lakes. On the Rappahannock, tribes in this area spoke an Algonquian dialect, while tribes west of the fall line spoke a Siouan language, and people who knew multiple languages moved among tribes sharing news and exchanging goods. Smith and his crew relied on Mosco, a Wighcocomoco Indian familiar with the Rappahannock people, as a guide and translator. The English also traded with Indians, usually for furs and food. In the early 1600s, Smith explored the Chesapeake Bay while seeking precious metals and a passage to Asia, traveling the James, Chickahominy, and York rivers in 1607 and leading two major expeditions from Jamestown in 1608. He and his crew sailed and rowed a primitive 30-foot boat nearly 3,000 miles, reaching as far north as the Susquehanna River. Although he found neither gold nor a river to the Pacific, his accurate map and detailed observations of American Indian societies and the region’s abundant natural resources guided later explorers and settlers. At that time, about 50,000 American Indians lived in the Chesapeake region in sophisticated societies with arts, architecture, systems of government, extensive trade and communication networks, and shared spiritual beliefs, supporting themselves by hunting, fishing, farming, and gathering from the land and waterways. Smith observed thick forests, vast marshlands, huge turtles, 800-pound sturgeon, great schools of shad and striped bass, massive flocks of ducks, geese, and swans, and enormous oyster reefs rising above the water.