First in a series
Sometimes local historians turn up some interesting history. Rob Warner of Deer Chase subdivision has spent a great deal of time researching Middlesex County’s colonial Pipe-In-Tree legend. He worked on the history with Ron Kauffman, owner of Pipe-In-Tree farm, which was once 556 acres but is today 40 acres. The rest of the acreage is today part of Pipe-In-Tree subdivision near Hartfield.
Warner wrote: “At a very early part of European settlement in the Piankatank River Valley, local Indians and early settlers got off to a bad start with . . . conflict on the river.
“Trying to make peace, the Indians and English met on high ground on the north shore of the Piankatank, maybe seven or eight miles upriver, from the river’s mouth. The Indians invited the settlers to smoke a peace-pipe.
“This happened and had religious meaning to the Indians. They agreed on peaceful co-existence. To mark the spot, and maybe meet again, they placed the peace-pipe in a crotch of a young red oak at the site. Well, today (nearly 375 years later) the pipe could be inside the huge nodule on the side of this tree inside a tumor that engulfed the peace-pipe. The red oak tree is now a giant with the trunk 31 feet around at the base. How do we know we have the right tree? Oral and some written history have always described it and its location. This location was important later in history. When was this meeting? As we move forward in time we will try to answer that question and provide more interesting history.
“Captain John Smith a leader in early Jamestown, explored the Chesapeake Bay. He explored the Piankatank River from 29 August to 1 September 1608. He anchored at the mouth of the river on the night of 29th. Explored the river up to the Kings House a large (Indian) village and on 30 August anchored there. They explored up river to what became Turks Ferry, then where an active smaller Indian village was located, and above that into the Dragon stream and swamp, to an empty Indian hunting camp, returning to the Kings House that night.
“The Kings House was a major village, where Piankatank Shores subdivision is today and less than half-mile from the Pipe-In-Tree. On 1 September they sailed/rowed down the river and out into the bay traveling south. All this time, the King was away hunting. This was the first known contact between the English and Piankatank Indians.”
(Much of this information in this section was taken from the book, “John Smith in the Chesapeake” by Champlain’s Edward Wright Haile, 2008.)
It happened right here in Rivah Country!
