In 1650, Edward Bland's journey along the lower Nottoway and Meherrin river valleys produced the earliest known written record of direct contact between the Nottoway and colonials seeking to expand into Nottoway homelands. Bland recorded that people along the Nottoway River lived in dispersed towns. This contact followed years of conflict and negotiation: in the spring of 1644, settlers along the James River faced Virginia's second major Indian resistance to increasing invasions on Indigenous lands, and in October 1646 a Treaty of Peace was concluded with Necotowance, King of the Powhatan Confederacy. As concern shifted from Indian attack to the public cost of maintaining frontier forts established in 1645, the General Assembly ended public support and transferred the forts to private individuals who were required to keep ten men at each place for three years. Under the 1646 treaty, Fort Henry near present-day Petersburg was designated as one of only two places south of the James River where Indians could trade with colonists. Abraham Wood, who had become commander of Fort Henry in 1645, gained ownership of the fort, its buildings, boats, ammunition, and six hundred surrounding acres, and this position brought him prominence in trade between Jamestown colonists and Indians south of the James River; by 1650 he had amassed 1,557 acres around the fort. In August 1650, Bland, accompanied by his indentured servant Robert Farmer, joined Wood and his servant Henry Newcombe, along with Élias Pennant and Sackford Brewster, while an Appamattuck guide named Pyancha led the party from Fort Henry. Bland's account, The Discovery of New Brittaine, recounts the earliest documented exploration of Virginia's interior south of the James River and the first documented colonial contact with the Nottoway. One major purpose of the expedition was to increase profits from Indian-colonial trade by removing Indian middlemen, a role the Nottoway had held for decades, and the Nottoway recognized this intrusion and shrewdly misled Bland's party about the territory and other Indians, especially the Tuskarood. Later, in 1705, after further negotiations, the House of Burgesses set aside two tracts known as the Circle and Square, together containing over 40,000 acres, as reserved land for the Nottoway. This reservation extended from present-day Sussex County, including Assamoosic Swamp, east of the Nottoway River to below present-day Capron, Virginia, and west of the Nottoway River in Southampton County.