Hundreds of years before English settlers arrived to establish Jamestown in 1607, Native Americans had been living along the river whose name they shared; Rappahannock in the Algonquian language means rising and falling (or tidal) water. In the area that is now Richmond County, fourteen Rappahannock towns were recorded by Captain John Smith when he explored the river in 1608. The town of their chief was called Topahannocke. Small farmers who also fished and hunted game with bow and arrow, the Rappahannocks comprised one of about thirty Tidewater Virginia tribes loosely united under the rule of Chief Powhatan.
