The Powhatan River: Canoeing From Richmond To Jamestown

by Charles McGuigan 06.2007

In the past fifteen years or so I have come to know, in a manner always shy of friendship, two mega-developers, in all cases, men, who routinely seize great tracts of land and alter them utterly, covering them with obscenely expensive and ill-conceived houses that bear price tags in the millions, netting them massive profits. These men share at least two things in common: they consider themselves somehow above the law that governs men of lesser stature, and they are endowed with a shameless greed that would make lesser men physically ill. And both are gamblers—risk takers, they like to say—who frequently piss away a hundred thousand dollars and more, over a single weekend, in Atlantic City or Las Vegas. “You always need more,” one of them told me when I asked why it was necessary to keep accumulating more money and land. His words could easily have served as a central tenet of the Virginia Company of London, those venture capitalists who funded the first exploratory mission to what we now call Virginia. The land they settled on, Jamestown Island (what they called it), was inferior in the extreme. No self-respecting Powhatan tribesman would ever have considered living there. 

The Powhatan River from Richmond to Jamestown Island is still filled with wonder, and good river folk, and flora and fauna too numerous to mention. But there are no Indians on its shore that we would see. 

My daughter, Catherine, eleven-years old, had just finished reading “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” the day before we set out for Osborne Landing down the mighty Powhatan from what was once the bustling port of Rockett’s Landing, recently reclaimed by developers looking for profit. Even here it is a fairly wide river with discernible tides and a faint brackishness that lures blue crabs as far upstream as the 14th Street Bridge, the Fall Line, where Christopher Newport, 400 years ago, landed and scanned the banks that would later become Richmond. 

Getting the canoe in the water at this juncture is somewhat difficult. Just a couple years back there was an easy put in here, but developers have cordoned off this section of the river with a chain link fence as high as the heavens. I find a spot down along a fairly steep bank and slide the canoe along the clay, bow first, easing it into the water, then retrieve my children, one at a time, stow our gear, secure their blaze orange life vests, and we settle into the canoe.

Catherine mans the front end of the canoe, taking long, deliberate strokes with her paddle, digging deep into the water, her upper body strength admirable. She paddles confidently like an expert canoeist and her brother, Charles, not quite six, sits low in the canoe, mid-ships, his hands cast over the gunwales, fingers splayed, raking the cool, deep green water. 

Pilings And Sturgeon

Almost immediately we pass the delta formed by Almond Creek and pull ashore to wade across the stream and sink our feet into the sand. This beach is littered with small freshwater clam shells and rounded, oval pebbles, the size of robin eggs. 

From the moment we leave Richmond, all the way down to our takeout at Osborne Landing, the eastern shore of the river, the bank we hug, most of the time, is sprinkled liberally with old pilings, gnawed, as if by beavers, by age and rot, the remnants of piers and docks, giving us an indication of just how much commerce was conducted along the river in days gone by.

In the day, this river teemed with Atlantic sturgeon, primitive fish with bony plates covering the head, and a protrusile mouth perfectly adapted for bottom-feeding. When the English first came, the water boiled with these odd looking fish, slow-growing, reaching the length of our canoe, sometimes living to the ripe old age of seventy-five. Members of the first wave of invasion wrote that the sturgeon were so thick in some portions of the river that you might literally cross the water, from shore to shore, skipping across the huge hulks of these beasts, jammed on the surface like massive logs, basking in the sun.

Sturgeon, of course, meant caviar, and the invaders soon set up fisheries to extract the eggs for export. What’s more they butchered the fish to get at their air bladders, a source of isinglass, which was used, commercially, as an adhesive, or a clarifying agent. By the early 1800s, virtually all sturgeon had disappeared. It doesn’t take long to devour an entire species when profit is the motive.

Kingdom Of Tsenacomoco

Profit was the motive from the beginning. The Virginia Company, this private enterprise, had one goal: the discovery and recovery of precious metals. They suspected, based on what they knew of the Spaniards’ similar quest in Central and South America, that gold and silver would be available in great abundance in the Chesapeake Bay region. And why should they think otherwise? In about 1570 Spanish Jesuits had set up a colony not 20 miles from Jamestown, prospecting for gold and souls, but in short order the Powhatans eradicated them. The English thought they’d find the stuff of dreams in the New World, riches beyond their imaginations. Boy, were they wrong. Not a nugget, nor a fleck of gold dust, was to be had here.

But what they found in great abundance was death. Jamestown Island was about the only parcel of land available at the time in the entire kingdom of Tsenacomoco, which encompassed all lands from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay north to the Potomac River and west to the Fall Line. More than a hundred villages comprised this realm, all congregated along the tidal rivers of the area. The emperor of it all was Powhatan, who ruled from Werowocomoco, on what is now called the York River, just a few miles northwest of Jamestown.

All 8,000 square miles of Tsenancomoco were well-managed land, where some 14,000 Powhatan Indians thrived. Belonging to disparate tribes, from the Accomacks on the Eastern Shore to the Nanjemoys on the Potomac, they were all members of the mighty confederation called the Powhatan. Each village in the kingdom was self-sustaining, consisting of a dozen or so longhouses and cleared land where corn and other crops were grown. The surrounding woodlands harbored an abundance of game, none of which could be domesticated. So the villagers used the woods almost like a private stockyard. They kept the undergrowth at bay by annual burnings that created an almost park like setting among the sycamore and gum, the oak and loblolly pine. John Smith would later remark that you could gallop on horseback at full speed through the woods, dodging trees with ease.

Jet Skis And Deepwater

From the canoe, we can see that the woods to our left are thick and overgrown with underbrush. We make our way out to the midstream and ride the wakes of boats, large and small, that cavort through the warm, May afternoon. Jet skis and stilettos whiz by churning up rooster tails—foamy, white plumes of water. 

“It’s like riding waves,” Catherine says as we plough through a wake.

“I’m a canoeist,” says Charles, his hands trailing through the water.

“No, you’re not,” his sister tells him.

“Yes, I am,” he says. And things escalate into sibling bickering.

The river at this point flows almost due south and is about one-fifth of a mile across. We can hear the distant thunder of cars traveling down Commerce Road and Interstate-95 when we near the western shore. Above the towering trees we can see evidence of industry, stacks belching smoke and vapor, white as clouds. Near Dupont there is a great steel bulkhead stretching downriver for a hundred yards, towering sixty feet above of us, like a perpendicular bluff. At intervals of every twenty yards or so there are twelve-inch pipes that froth a steady stream of clear effluvium. These jets of water strike the river with such force that they cause a significant current, so we paddle back to the inactivity of the opposite shore, and hug it for the rest of the day.

As we pass Deepwater Terminal we can see several container ships moored there, but there is little other activity. My daughter wants to put in so we can eat a bit and explore the shoreline. We pull onto a wide sand beach, among spears of old pilings, and sit on the sand, eating apples and almonds and beef jerky, drinking cold, cold, half-frozen water. Charles splashes in the water, drinking milk from his sippy cup, still insisting he is a canoeist, and the battle with his sister starts again. 

Sausage And Bald Eagles

Back on the water we pass under the towering 895-bridge, inspecting its underbelly from our unique perspective, as if it were Leviathan swimming above us. Just below the bridge, the river turns abruptly to the east, one of the many oxbows along this stretch of the Powhatan. 

My daughter is about a year and a half younger than Matoaka was when she was abducted by the Englishmen of Jamestown. They held her for ransom when Powhatan refused to return guns he had previously bought from the English. As it turns out, the legend that Matoaka (Pocahontas, a term meaning “little hellion”, was her nickname) intervened to save the life of John Smith is hogwash. 

What did happen was this: Matoaka married John Rolfe, another one of the invaders or nation builders, and they settled down to a peaceful life in Jamestown for a time. The marriage helped ease the increasing tensions between the English and the Powhatans. And dear, lovely Matoaka returned with her husband to England where she died at the threshold of adulthood.

On our approach to the next oxbow and an island owned by a sausage king, we spy our first bald eagle, dark chocolate brown with white tail feathers and head, and a beak yellow as gold. It drops to the water 200 yards off our bow, and in a second, rises with a large catfish caged in its talons.

Over the next four days, I will see a total of 32 bald eagles. Their return from the brink of extinction has been remarkable. Today their numbers along the Powhatan River continue to increase, in part, because there is such a profusion of large, non-indigenous catfish in these waters, a great source of protein for the ever-hungry eagles.

Just downstream we see our first osprey nest that could easily serve as a crib for a human child. Constructed of vines and branches, the nest is built atop a channel marker, and on our approach, the guardian of the nest flies off, then returns, wheeling overhead, eyeing us and screeching at us. The screech chills the back of my neck.

Honey In The Rock

River activity increases along this stretch. There are any number of sport fishermen here, anchored near the shipping channel, where they bottom fish for blue catfish and channel cats. We watch as one man lands a cat that, he tells us later, weighs 14 pounds, a hideous, bloated, writhing thing. And even at a distance you can feel its slimy skin.

Laying low on the river are great ponderous barges laden with sand as white as sugar. The barge traffic increases the farther downstream we go and every tug boat is emblazoned with the name Buchanan. The barges move steadily upstream against the current.

Late that afternoon, the paddling becomes increasingly difficult. As I remove my paddle from the water, I tell my daughter to do the same. The canoe gradually stops and then begins moving upstream, slowly, almost imperceptibly, but the incoming tide is canceling out the downstream current, and then the wind starts up, blowing up from the south straight at us.

After another hour or so of hard paddling we make our way to shore to a sand beach backed by a steep bluff of soft sandstone, with neat strata of white and beige and orange and black. When I rub my palm across the bluff it crumbles into sand.

Each of us is aware of the noise at the same time, a low and steady hum that becomes increasingly frenetic with every step we take.

“Bees,” says my daughter. There is honey dripping from the sandstone face of the bluff, and hundreds of bees swarming around the nest that seems to be drilled right into the stone. We make for the canoe, cast off, head for deeper water, paddling furiously now against the incoming tide and a stiff breeze, the buzz in our ears a memory that continues to reverberate.

We make Osborne Landing well before sundown, and Charles, when he steps ashore, staggers briefly with his newfound sea legs. 

Powhatan’s Revenge

The next morning I continued the downstream journey with an old friend, Anya, who claims to be at least one-quarter Mattaponi. We find a takeout near Turkey Island Road, park one car there and then head back upstream to Osborne Landing where we put in. We avoid as many of the oxbows as possible to decrease our distance, and by the end of it all, we’re glad we did.

It is a leisurely paddle and we make frequent stops along the shore. At one spot I find several shards of stoneware, remnants of ancient bricks and pieces of old ironmongery cemented with sand. At a time, and God knows how long ago, there was probably a home nearby. In the surrounding woods I find an outcropping of English ivy, confirming this theory.

Much of this land—most of it—had been clear cut by the mid-1650s, to sustain farms where the cash crop was tobacco, a demanding plant which quickly robs the soil of its nutrients. Early on, colonists from Jamestown were growing tobacco in great abundance. Within 20 years of the first settlement they were shipping 300 tons of tobacco back to England each year. In the end, it’s what justified the colony, what finally started turning a profit.

“Powhatan’s revenge,” I say to Anya, and she nods. 

A few miles downstream we cross under Enon Bridge and the river widens to nearly half a mile. In front of us a great blue heron flies, perhaps a hundred yards at a time, alighting in a tree top, and as we approach him, he, on pterodactyl wings, lifts off silently, and makes his way down the river another hundred yards, until we catch up with him. For the next two hours, the bird is with us, like an Indian legend, guiding us, perhaps, protecting us.

On the southern shore (the river flows west to east at this point) there is heavy industry, steel towers and smoke stacks that seem to crouch menacingly over the tree line as if intent on pouncing on the river; but the north shore looks as wild as it did four centuries ago. I half expect to see a member of the Powhatan nation come through the curtain of grasses on the bank, emerging through the tunnel of the forest, and then I look at Anya’s back and her well-paced command of paddling, and know I am looking at one of Powhatan’s own.

Night On Presquile Isle

Below Curles Neck we come to Presquile Isle National Wildlife Refuge, shaped on the map like a hot air balloon in ascent, fully a mile wide and three miles long. We explore its shoreline and disembark at a well-maintained pier and enter the forest then head to higher ground. On a large plateau, completely open to the breezes spilling off the James, there are thousands of plastic tubes thrust into the earth. Each one protects a sapling—black cherry, red cedar, sycamore, redbud, beech, blackjack oak, white oak, willow oak, sourwood, and so on. Beyond the saplings on the far shore, looming over the mature trees that grow there, is the hellish looking nightmare of Hopewell, all refineries and tanks, and the word kepone, like a bat, flutters across my consciousness.

As we get back in the canoe the wind picks up and we paddle directly into it, making no time at all as the sun begins to drift down toward Hopewell. We are crossing a large, extremely shallow bay, a mile and a half wide. It is so shallow that the tips of our paddles actually touch the muck on the bottom. At certain point we pole rather than paddle. We are looking for our take out, but it is hard to see where it is among several houses on the northern shore of the oxbow that circles Presquile Isle. We think we see it a number of times, but then think it’s still further downstream. After coming a good five miles we can see the main channel of the river again, and in the distance Hopewell, bigger than ever. The sun is close to setting and we turn around and start back upstream, fighting the current, though the wind is now at our back. As the last light of day is swallowed by night, a golden moon rises over the water, bathing us in its richness, yet even with the abundant light it is hard to see and we have no running lights. We pull in at the first pier and climb a long, steep, perfectly manicured lawn and the owner, Veeanne, and her daughter, Holly, greet us, show us the way to our car and let us pick up our canoe from their landing. They are gracious folk and lovely.

On Kittewan Creek

On the third day, Anya and I leave the second car down near Milton, just above the confluence of the Chickahominy. A man by the name of Bobby Payne let’s us park near his pier.

“It’s got everything, even running water,” he says of the pier. He tells us that he grew up in Highland Springs but has lived here for the past 38 years, and now, bit by bit, developers are coming in and building their McMansions right on the banks of the river, destroying the views. 

We put in up near Presquile Isle and almost directly after departing see one of the first McMansions in the New World—Shirley Plantation. Below the Benjamin Harrison Bridge and the old ferry landing we come upon Berkley Plantation, an imposing brick structure, classical Georgian, sitting on a knoll, its windowpanes watchful of the river. We pull in shore just south of the plantation and in the wash of pebbles and sand find shards of glass and pottery. And one section of the beach features six different kinds of grasses, some like miniature bamboo, others like cord grass. I’m thinking you could spend your days identifying the flora along the Powhatan River and never run out of things to keep your interest.

A few miles east of Westover Plantation, which is built close to the bank, its front door facing the water like a street, the river takes a deep turn south and soon thereafter the cypress trees begin appearing. At first they are sporadic, sometimes growing straight up out of the channel, other times growing on the sandy beach, their smooth knees like a natural bulkhead. 

And then at Weyanoke Point the cypress forest begins, fully three mile long, going all the way up to Kittewan Creek. These are majestic trees, hundreds of years old, trees Powhatan and his daughter might have seen. They are sheer works of art and their kneed roots support their own ecosystems. We suddenly come upon an old cypress that has fallen into the river from the shore and 20 buzzards fly from the silver branches. The flapping of their wings on the air sounds like a paddle slapping water. These massive birds leave the tree, but as we pass they return to this dead tree, their rookery, which seems a fitting place for the birthing carrion birds.

A Bullfrog Moon

We seek refuge among the cypress trees, up a small creek where the water is black, and beyond the trees there is a savannah, emerald green, luminescent, and through this savannah a deer comes bounding out, barely touching the ground with its hooves. On closer inspection we find out that this entire savannah is made up of tuckahoes, their giant leaves shaped like arrows and their roots, thick tubers, the size of yams. The Powhatans depended on these roots for sustenance when things grew lean. As potatoes to the Irish, were tuckahoes to the Powhatan. 

As we near Kittewan Creek, the sun begins to go down and the wind picks up and the tide rises. We are suddenly in a wash of whitecaps and searching desperately for our take out point. Night is coming on fast. Soon after passing the mouth of Kittewan Creek, the cypress forest begins to thin, but the wind increases in velocity. We put in at the first house we see, drag the canoe up a steep slope paved with rounded river stones and head uphill. The house is new and massive and vacant as a hollow bone. We walk up the gravel drive and the light seeps quickly out the world. At the end of the drive, about half mile from the house, there is a locked wrought iron gate. We walk through the underbrush on one side of the gate and make a right toward what we hope is the home site of Bobby Payne.

Half a mile later we see his house. He and his wife, Linda, meet us in the front yard and she tells us she had almost called the sheriff to send out a party looking for us.

“We were getting a little worried,” she says.

“I know that river real well and a lot can happen on it at night,” says Bobby. He looks overhead at the moon, gold and full, rising swiftly. “At least y’all had a bullfrog moon,” he says. I look at him quizzically. “Bullfrog moon is the best moon for hunting frogs,” he explains.

It turns out Bobby has keys to the gate of the house up the river. “I’m their caretaker,” he says, and we follow him in my car back to where we left the canoe.

As we’re securing the canoe to the top of the car, I tell him about the cypress forest we saw and Bobby nods, then, invites me to look across the river at a point, illuminated by the moon, called Kennon Marsh. “That’s the largest cypress stand on the River,” says Bobby Payne. “Only one creek into it and out of it and you can get lost in it.”

Toward Bush Gardens

The last day on the journey to Jamestown I take my daughter and her good friend, Selena—two Indian princesses, who share the burden of paddling at the bow. We leave from the private marina of Two Rivers, a development of extremely high dollar homes and golf courses. Somewhere on the grounds there is an Indian burial site, where the Pashbehay went to their final rest. The developers of this site had put aside an area for the Indian burial grounds and they’ve done a tremendous job preserving all the cypress forests and bordering swamplands. As we paddle out of the marina and hang a sharp left, it is as if there is no development behind the barrier of old growth cypress.

It is the first cloudy day and the water here is salty, not merely brackish. We see our first seagull and along the shore blue crabs and mummichugs, which are small bait fish. The water here is more like Chesapeake Bay than a river. We have a steady wind and there is a constant chop and the girls absolutely adore it. 

“It’s like being on the ocean,” says Selena.

“Or like Roman Rapids,” Catherine says. “You know, Daddy, at Bush Gardens.”