Occoquan Creek takes its name from an American Indian word meaning at the end of the water, and it may have been named by the Dogue Indians, who lived in this area for centuries before European exploration as part of the Alqonquin nation. Their main village, Tauxenent, stood near the Occoquan, most likely on Mason Neck across the creek, on land the Dogue people called Myampses and that early colonial land patents later called Dogg’s Island. After Englishmen established Jamestown in May, 1607, worsening relations with the local Powhatan people led them to explore farther inland, and in June, 1608 John Smith led an expedition up the Potomac and found the Dogues’ king’s howse at Tauxenent, a village he said was occupied by as many as 175 people, where his men met the “Toags” who “did their best to content us.” Dogue society was complex and long established, with people living in communal longhouses, hunting, fishing, eating seasonal foods, and growing numerous crops, including corn and native tobacco, which they taught English settlers to cultivate. As more English colonists arrived in Virginia and tensions increased, Europeans began settling by the mid-1600s in what became Prince William County, and most Dogue Indians left their homes on the Potomac River and Occoquan Creek and moved inland.