They were looking for it...
...and they found it.
There's a historic gravity to the place...
...This was a place where religious ceremonies had been held...
...for thousands of years.
It took those moments where somebody said,
"Look, do realize what you're digging?
This is a part of American history."
There's just this weight of history that you feel.
"The majority of people don't even know about Werowocomoco,...
...but they know about one specific event...
...that took place here, that involves one of the most famous...
...Indian people in the world and that's Pocahontas."
This, Werowocomoco, is the place where Captain John Smith, Powhatan and Pocahontas met.
For years and years, people thought that the site was lost.
I walk in the morning, and I walk again late in the evening, and I always find...
...something. I still get just as excited when I find something as I did at first.
It's like this is so amazing to live here.
You can definitely tell this would be a good place to live for several reasons.
It's high up on a bluff. That's good for you know obviously issues of flooding.
People from other tribes were coming to pay tribute to Powhatan and the other
paramount leaders who lived here. They will have wanted to be in an elevated place and
it's surrounded by water on three sides and if you look at important places
throughout the Powhatan Virginia landscape, you'll see that that's a pattern.
They did a small dig here in the 70s, that was not focused on Werowocomoco.
We know from the notes they were not looking for Werowocomoco at that time.
We come here and then Lynn shows us what she found...
...and then it all changed...
This is a really nice arrowhead. Beautifully done on the edges.
This is another unique one.
This is the pipe stem that I almost threw away, made for a very very...
...prominent person in the tribe probably a chief. This is a significant find.
It's bigger than us.
How could we not share it with the world and let the research go forward?
To have Werowocomoco and to be able to look under the soil, it's so unusual
because oftentimes, that activity has been paved over or you know there's a
suburban development sitting on it, but this place is largely intact, it's a very
large landscape, and the story is just underneath the surface.
You get with the archaeologists and they begin to tell you...
...this is where Chief Powhatan's house was...
...and we believe a temple was here and in this field, that's where they planted
corn I mean you just you're just blown away and you begin to feel it, you begin to see it.
It is an awesome archaeological site in and of itself and
it talks about their history, Virginia Indian history.
I mean how many people get to say that they are researching, excavating where their ancestors lived?
And not just any ancestor, you know, Wahunsenacawh, better known as Chief Powhatan
lived here and the paramount leaders before him.
I believe it was like ten years ago and my brother and I came out to watch the dig
and we could feel this connection between us and this place.
Not until I actually came out here myself, did I feel the the power
of the site and my kids have experienced that same thing.
For them to have a say in what's going to happen to the site,...
...it'll strengthen in them the need to keep our culture going.
Keep it alive.
This was the first archaeological project in Virginia that created a
sustained collaborative relationship with the Virginia Indian community, so
for me, that aspect of it this contemporary aspect of it and having
Native people at the table to tell our story was also extremely important.
It's really important for our culture to be portrayed and described through our voices.
I do want people to take away the complexity of the Powhatan chiefdom.
How it developed. All of the working parts that created this complex nation that the English encountered.
The people who are here, thousands of years before...
...Powhatan and Pocahontas, you know they are important people in human history.
They are people that are worthy of studying. This site has their history in the artifacts
that are left behind. We have a longer story to tell.
Also it doesn't just end in 1607. Our story doesn't end in the 17th century.
We're still here today. We have our own perspectives about this place and about this history in general.
These were our lands our sacred sites and still are.
And hopefully people come away with a respect for our culture as it existed
then and as it exists now.
This is the perfect opportunity for us to tell the whole story for the American public.
It's a spiritual place. Hopefully it'll be preserved for a long, long time.
This is something that's much bigger than any of us...
...and it's something that's gonna last much longer than we will.