From John Page's Journal

John Page Williams, naturalist, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, on visiting with the Holums on the Nanticoke...

First Light's Log, Nanticoke River

John Holum is a great reporter of Solveig III’s travels around the Captain John Smith Water Trail.  First Light (my 17’ Boston Whaler Montauk) and I were honored and delighted to have him, Barbara, Terry Smith, and Russ Brinsfield aboard today. 

Because the weather was unsettled, as John has explained, we elected to launch at Sharptown’s Cherry Beach Park, in the middle of the territory we wanted to explore, to minimize the distance to the ramp in case things should deteriorate.  John has described our basic route—from Sharptown down to Riverton, within sight of Vienna, then back up into the Marshyhope past Walnut Landing to Red Bank, then up the main stem to Phillips Landing so Terry and Barbara could hunt for Smith’s cross, and back to the ramp—about 20 river miles in all.

First Light & I have made this basic trip at least a dozen times.  It’s always a joy because, as John notes, there is so much wildlife habitat in the woods, the marshes, and the river itself.  What was striking to me this time was how much habitat this part of the river offered to the Nanticoke people who lived here in Smith’s time.  In the past thirty years, we’ve all learned a lot about the value of salt marshes of the Chesapeake and other coastal areas, but tidal fresh marshes like those that Solveig III’s crew saw on the Chickahominy and that begin on the Nanticoke at Vienna and extend upstream tend to be less well-known.  They were, however, of much greater value to the Natives than the salt marshes. 

First, freshwater plants like wild rice (there’s a great deal of it on the Chesapeake’s rivers) offered grain to be harvested.  The roots of plants like arrow arum and arrowhead provided starchy tubers.  Sweetflag supplied an aromatic, fleshy stalk heart that helped to settle upset stomachs.  Meanwhile, the marshes contributed furbearers like muskrats (whose meat the Indians also ate) and, in winter, the waterfowl that migrated in from colder climates to feed on the abundant seed crops of freshwater plants like rice cutgrass, tearthumb, and millet.  Second, these rivers supported heavy spring spawning runs of migratory fish like American and hickory shad, several species of herring, Atlantic sturgeon, rockfish (striped bass), and white perch, which the Indians netted and trapped, to eat fresh and to preserve by drying.   

Third, the land on the back edges of these marshes provided excellent soils for the garden plots of corn, beans, and squash tended by Nanticoke women and children, while the woods offered deer and turkeys for the men to hunt.  On the outsides on river bends at places like today’s Vienna, Walnut Landing, and Red Bank, the current carved out natural access points for keeping and launching canoes.  It’s no wonder historians now believe that the chief’s village which Smith mapped here, Kuskarawaok, was located on the ridge of land that runs from Chicone Creek, immediately above Vienna to Walnut Landing. 

The Chesapeake’s Indian people were exquisitely attuned to their environment.  They found these upstream marshes, swamps, and woods immensely valuable to their way of life.  Today, these areas are probably the least known of the Chesapeake’s riches.  It’s always a pleasure for my skiff and me to turn on new John Smith Water Trail explorers to them.