Suffolk returns 100 acres of Indian ancestral homeland

Growing up on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp in Chesapeake, Barry Bass remembers, he was always aware of his Indian heritage.

His grandfather, Earl "Running Deer" Bass, was chief of the Nansemond tribe. His ancestors were part of the empire ruled by Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas. They traded and fought with the Jamestown settlers and farmed and hunted along the banks of the river that now bears their name before the English ran them off in the mid-1600s.

Earlier this week, Bass, now the Nansemond chief, returned to his ancestral homeland - mostly to remember, but also to celebrate the historic return of the land to the Nansemond people by the city of Suffolk.

After a nine-year struggle, the city agreed last week to give the Nansemonds roughly 100 acres of prime riverfront land in Lone Star Lakes Park.

The tribe plans to use it for Mattanock Town, an $8 million replica of a 17th century village, cultural center and burial ground.

"When I'm here, I can sense that my ancestors are still here," said Bass, sitting under a colorful autumn oak and gazing out upon the rippling river. "It took a while, but now I feel like we're home."

Over the next five years, Bass and his tribe will raise funds and oversee the design and construction of what the city hopes will be a popular tourist attraction, drawing up to 50,000 paying visitors a year.

Plans call for a museum, tribal center, gift shop, hiking trails and other tourist-friendly facilities. The project is to be privately funded.

A key historic feature, Bass said, will be a dispersed Indian village - a series of wooden longhouses scattered around the property and separated by garden plots, just as a Nansemond village would have appeared in the 17th century.

"We want this to be a working village, not like something you see in a museum," he said. "When people come here in different seasons, we want them to see the changes, the different crops, and so on."

Bass said the project already has received some donations and pledges of support. Once the paperwork is completed and the tribe officially takes ownership, he said, they will seek grants, corporate sponsors and individual donors.

Supporters hope Mattanock Town will complement Jamestown as a tourist destination for history buffs, school groups and others interested in experiencing a re-creation of traditional Indian culture.

The tribe has been working closely for years with historians, archaeologists and anthropologists to see that the village accurately resembles 17th century Indian life in the Tidewater region.

"They are re-creating the Algonquian culture, of which the Nansemonds were a part," said Helen Clark Rountree, a retired Old Dominion University professor and expert on the Algonquians. "They had ways of life and language very similar to other Indians living up and down the James River."

The original Mattanock Town, Rountree said, was one of four Nansemond villages in the Lone Star Lakes vicinity that were mentioned in the writings of Capt. John Smith. "We can't be sure of the exact site, but the modern village is very close to the original site."

Bass traces his own roots to the 1638 marriage of Englishman John Bass to the daughter of a Nansemond chief who became a Christian convert. Virtually all modern Nansemonds are descendants of that marriage, Rountree says.

Like most Nansemonds, Bass' family scattered centuries ago and its members gradually were assimilated into the English culture.

For Bass and the rest of his tribe, one reason for undertaking the project is to preserve and transmit the Nansemond culture among their own. Of some 350 members of the Nansemond Indian Tribal Association, Bass said, the largest concentration is in southern Virginia. But many are scattered around the country.

To join the tribe, one must establish a genealogical connection to a known Nansemond. While some members, like Bass, have known of their roots for generations, some, he said, have dis covered their heritage recently and know little about Indian ways.

"We wanted this land back because it means so much to us," said Bass, who works for a Virginia Beach construction company. "But we want to give back to the city, too, and to share our history and culture with the public and with our own people. If that means being a tourist attraction, then that's what it will be."

Jeff Sheler, (757) 222-5563, jeff.sheler@pilotonline.com