Seasonal Encampments

Native Americans set up seasonal river-fishing encampments at this place, which they called Yosocomico, meaning “within the enclosure.” These temporary villages stood along the shoreline at productive fishing spots that they returned to year after year. The Coastal Plain Region provided saltwater and freshwater rivers, bays, and creeks, and each spring many fish migrated inland from the Atlantic Ocean to spawn, including herring, shad, and striped bass. The Indians caught and stored large numbers of these fish to support themselves, smoking or drying them so the meat would keep throughout the year. Members of the Late Woodland culture were ingenious fishermen who used natural materials for their tools, braiding willow branches into nets and fashioning hooks from bone or wood because they lacked iron. They used spearing, bow and arrow, netting, trapping, and night fishing, in which a fire burned on a raised deck in the center of a canoe while one person tended the flame and a person at each end speared fish drawn to the light.

Virginia · United States