Talk to focus on Nansemonds
Published 9:36 pm Wednesday, April 6, 2016
The Nansemond Indian Tribe will be the topic of conversation during this Sunday’s installment of the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society’s speaker’s series.
Sandra Councill, vice president of the society, said it hopes to begin offering the speaker’s series more regularly, and this is one of the first in that effort.
Steve Edwards, a deputy commonwealth’s attorney in Isle of Wight County, said he has been interested in the Indians of this area his entire life. While attending undergraduate and law school at the College of William and Mary, he worked at Jamestown during a time when its Indian village was growing.
“I was making bows, tanning hides, doing just the basic, everyday living things,” he said. “I used to make an awful lot of projectile points and stone tools.”
Edwards said he will discuss religion of the Powhatan peoples, as well as how their Algonquin language was connected to the people that lived around the Lost Colony, although they were not connected by the same powers.
Way of life and culture will also be a topic of conversation.
“I’m going to give people an idea of what it was like to live here before the white people came,” Edwards said, “about how much fishing and farming they did and how little of their diet actually came from hunting the way that we imagine.”
Councill said Edwards’ presentation is child-friendly, and guests are encouraged to bring their children.
“He holds the interest of children, and we’re trying to get more children involved,” she said. “He’s entertaining for anyone, and we’ve encouraged people if they have an artifact and don’t know what it is, they should bring it and have him identify it.”
The event will take place at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society’s Phillips-Dawson House, 137 Bank St. Refreshments will be served, and the program is free.