When John Smith and his crew reached the Potomac River in July 1608, they were astonished by the abundance and variety of fish. Virginia Indians had fished these waters for thousands of years and had developed fishing weirs of stone or woven branches, multi-pronged spears, firelight fishing, and plant-fiber nets to harvest aquatic species for food and shells. In the early 1600s, Smith explored the Chesapeake Bay and major rivers in search of precious metals and a passage to Asia, traveling in 1607 and leading two major expeditions from Jamestown in 1608 in a primitive 30-foot boat that covered nearly 3,000 miles and reached as far north as the Susquehanna River. Although he found neither gold nor a route 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 the time of his voyages, about 50,000 American Indians lived in the Chesapeake region in sophisticated societies with arts, architecture, systems of government, trade and communication networks, and shared spiritual beliefs, sustaining themselves by hunting, fishing, farming, and gathering from the land and waterways. Smith encountered a region rich in thick forests, marshlands, turtles, sturgeon, shad, striped bass, waterfowl, and oyster reefs, a landscape whose natural and cultural richness later inspired European migration and remains associated with his voyage routes from 1607 to 1609.