SCIENCE SERVICE RADIO TALKS 
PRESENTED OVER THE COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM 
THE INDIANS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 
By Dr. WALTER HOUGH 
HEAD CURATOR^ DEPARTMENT OP ANTHROPOLOGY, U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 
There are many evidences that before 
the coining of the white man Indians had 
their villages in what is now the District 
of Columbia. These Indians spoke the 
language of the great Algonquian fam¬ 
ily which covered the east coast, and for 
this reason the Algonquians were met by 
John Smith at Jamestown and by the 
Pilgrims at Plymouth. Much more is 
known about the Virginia Indians than 
of the northeastern tribes seen by 
Winthrop, because Sir Walter Raleigh 
sent along with John Smith a competent 
artist who drew pictures of the natives, 
their houses, dances, occupations, and of 
animals of the sea and land. Accus¬ 
tomed as we are to the buckskin of the 
western Indians, we will be surprised 
to know that Powhatan’s braves had 
nary a shirt to their backs, robes taking 
their place. The women wore short 
skirts and the children dispensed with 
clothes. Of course, in the cold months 
of winter the Indians withdrew into 
their houses and enjoyed the stores of 
corn, smoked fish, hickory nuts and such 
things as they had laid up. The houses 
were of bent poles covered with mats 
and were in shape like a hayrick seen on 
farms. 
Such houses were spaced with some 
regularity into villages, surrounded by 
cornfields, and having a dance plaza 
smoothed by the bare feet of the cele¬ 
brants around the central fire. Secotan 
was a scattered village among the trees, 
while Pomeioc was massed in a circular 
palisade of sharpened stakes. John 
White made pictures of these towns and 
they may be regarded as typical Algon¬ 
quian architecture and village planning. 
We may thus restore to the mind’s eye 
a great village on the Eastern Branch 
and call it the ancient capital of this 
region. 
It may seem unfortunate that the Dis¬ 
trict of Columbia Indians left so few 
traces of their life here. Archeologists 
trained to the work are able to see much 
in small things and to tell the story 
without straining the imagination. One 
picks up an arrowhead, say, at Ana- 
costia. It is of a certain stone and 
worked from a boulder most likely at 
the Piney Branch quarry. He knows 
that the arrow was fixed with sinew at 
the end of a wooden shaft, straight and 
smooth, which was notched at the end to 
receive the string; also that it was 
feathered to guide its flight. 
He knows further that there was a 
bow to project the arrow and that it had 
a sinew or Indian hemp cord. Then it 
is evident that there was a man in charge 
of the bow, arrow, quiver, and so forth. 
The arrowhead was found at Anacostia, 
inhabited by the Nacotchtank Indians, 
and we have got our man, equipped for 
the hunt or battle. The arrowhead was 
found at Anacostia and belonged there 
because it is the right kind of stone. 
Another variety of stone would indicate 
that it was a point made by the hostile 
Indians living on the Susquehanna or 
where the certain stone was found. Per¬ 
haps the archeologist picked up a frag¬ 
ment of pottery and derived a most in¬ 
teresting story from it. Especially it 
would tell him that the Indians lived in 
a village of houses because fragile pot¬ 
tery can not stand rough Indian trans¬ 
portation, and was therefore made on 
the spot from native clay. 
So the story widens with the bits of 
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