Ancient trade routes shaped Nottoway life long before European contact, supporting barter, the exchange of information, and relationships across territorial and linguistic boundaries. Because the Nottoway lived inland, their first significant interaction with Europeans came in 1650, decades after Jamestown was established in 1607, and they remained relatively undisturbed and intact as an independent tribe through geo-political leverage, comparatively peaceful relations with neighboring tribes, and dispersed towns, fields, and hunting grounds along important trade routes. Colonial Virginia records portray the Nottoway as central participants in trade, battles, and diplomacy with tribes including the Seneca, Catawba, Tuscarora, Cherokee, and Tawittawayes, and in 1699 Nottoway representatives and leaders from several Virginia tribes were examined at James City over a planned peace treaty with northern and other foreign tribes that colonial authorities refused to allow. The account presents Virginia Indians as pursuing stronger alliances in response to the musket and colonial encroachment rather than acting as mere pawns of Europeans. In 1715, two years after a stand-alone treaty with the Nottoway, the tribe petitioned over violations of territorial conditions, and its great men were jailed until they complied and renounced their complaints; later, in 1728, John Simmons received leave to patent Raccoon Island, a place formerly assigned to the Nottoway for a Quiocosine house or burial place. A 1723 council record further shows the limited protection available under colonial treaty arrangements when a colonist suspected of killing a Nottoway Indian after a prohibited rum sale avoided conviction but was ordered to provide compensation in roanoak and post surety for good behavior. The Nottoway history is framed as a passage through barter, buffer, and being, and as the continuing life of citizen Indians with a rich past and proud present.