![]() ![]() The Howson tract extended along the Potomac River, from Hunting Creek on the south to the Little Falls on the north. This land overlapped a 700-acre patent that had previously been issued to Dame Margaret Brent in 1654. ![]() Much of present-day Alexandria was included in a 6,000-acre land grant from Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, which was awarded to Robert Howson, an English ship captain, on October 21, 1669. Learn more about Indigenous Peoples, Virginia Indians, and Alexandria. Familiar place names today persist as reminders of Native Americans in the area include Dogue, Pohick, Accotink and Occoquan. After Smith's visit, it would be many years before white settlement would expand into this part of tidewater Virginia. The types of artifacts discovered in Alexandria indicate that Native Americans visited the area beginning about 13,000 years ago, and historical documents suggest that they remained in the vicinity until about 1675. When Smith neared this point, he met at least two groups that we now refer to as the Tauxenents and the Nacotchtanks, both part of a larger affiliation known as the Conoy chiefdom. These people made up just a small percentage of the thousands of Native Americans who inhabited the region and enjoyed its rich resources of fish and game. The shoreline of the Potomac River where Alexandria is located today has been a useful and popular spot for centuries, long before the modern community was founded. Exploring the Chesapeake Bay in 1608, John Smith sailed up the Potomac River and contacted many different people along both banks.
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