My Father's Secret

Lora Chilton thought her family was "mostly English," until a dinner with her father changed everything.

I was forty-nine years old when, in the middle of a routine dinner conversation, my father referenced his “Indian Grandmother." He continued to talk as if he had revealed nothing new. I put down my fork and said, “Dad, back up, what did you just say? Your Indian grandmother?” His hidden ancestry unfolded over the next couple of hours, through dessert and coffee. My father, it turned out, was a member of the Patawomeck Indian Tribe of Virginia.

          And here, ever since a fourth grade family tree project, I’d always thought our family was “mostly” English and Scottish. When I asked my father why he had not shared our Native ancestry with my siblings and me, he simply replied, “It was a secret.”

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He was born in 1935, eleven years after the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was enacted, a eugenics law in Virginia designed to erase what remained of Indian culture, language and even Native people. The law eliminated the category of “Indian” from the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Registrar of Vital Statistics. When the Act became law, all babies would be labeled Negro (the term used in the Act), or White. The category of Indian ceased to exist and all Native babies and people were to be identified as Negro. The segregation of the races at school, the limited availability of medical treatment, and voter suppression for Black Americans caused many people of color in Virginia to try to pass as White.

On his first day of school, my father remembered his parents' instructions. “If your teacher asks you if you are Indian, you must say no.” And further, “Even if the principal asks you if you are Indian, you must say no.”  If he had acknowledged his Native ancestry, he would have not been allowed to attend what was then a “Whites Only” school. What a heavy burden for a six- year-old to carry, at that young age and for a lifetime to come.

Once he told us of his Patawomeck heritage, the flood gates flew open as he shared stories about his grandmother, his aunts and uncles and how bits and pieces of the secret culture were expressed at home. His grandmother made corn cakes in the cast iron skillet but didn’t use a spatula. She used her hands, patting out the dough. Several of his aunts, his father’s sisters, kept their long hair in braids but wrapped them into buns instead of hanging down.

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In 2007, my father invited the Patawomeck Chief, Two Eagles Green, to attend our Chilton family reunion in Fredericksburg. This is when I first learned the tribal oral tradition that told of how the Patawomeck survived after the brutal summer of 1666, when the men were massacred and the women and children were sold into slavery and forcibly taken to the Caribbean island of Barbados. As we sat with Chief Two Eagles, listening and asking questions, I longed to know more. Where was the book that told this story? What were the names of the women who made their way from the killing sugar fields of Barbados back to Virginia? I needed to know!

I began to read everything I could find about the first encounter tribes in Virginia. There were mentions here and there of the history of the Patawomeck people. Written diaries by early explorers told how the Patawomeck had provided food that kept the explorers from starving. There was also the horrific recorded decision of the Governor’s Council to “…..make war to the utter destruction (of the tribe) and dispose of the women and goods.”

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1666: A Novel tells the story of the Patawomeck tribe.

Toni Morrison famously said, “If there is a book you want to read and it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.” So that’s what I did.

I began to think about the women who had survived, pondering their motivation and fortitude as they worked as slaves after being shipped to the Caribbean. COVID isolation offered unexpected opportunities for research, and I dug in more intentionally, wanting to tell this story of my ancestors. The tribe began to offer Patawomeck language and culture classes for members via Zoom. I enrolled in the children’s class, not only because I wanted to start at the very beginning, but also because that way I could share this experience with my granddaughters. Also during COVID, JSTOR, the  online library of academic journals, books and primary resources, removed their paywall so folks confined at home could access articles and books. This allowed me to do a deep dive into life in Barbados in the 1660’s – the decadent, sugar rich, rum infused “Little England” as it was called.

When we could travel again, I felt compelled to see and feel Barbados as my ancestors had, so many years ago. So I traveled there with a friend to continue the research. I needed to smell the ocean, feel that sun on my face, and try to understand how they might have experienced this strange, new land.

While the names of the women had been lost to time, as the book I was writing took shape, I knew I would have to use Indigenous names to honor their lives. We do know some of the names. Patawomeck Chief  Wahanganoche was killed in 1664, two years before the massacre. His life had meaning and he needed to be remembered for his leadership, so he was included in the story. I wanted to use a few of the Patawomeck words to honor the work of the current tribal leadership to preserve the language.

I wrote 1666: A Novel to bring to life a story that has been virtually unknown outside of the tribe. While reading about slavery, murder, sexual violence and other injustices is difficult, the book’s story, like the Patawomeck’s, is ultimately a story of strength, resilience and love. Through it, I hope that we learn from the past and do better in the present.

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Lora Chilton is an enrolled member of the Patawomeck Tribe of Virginia. 1666: A Novel is her first published work of historical fiction and was published by Sibylline Press in April 2024.

Images:

Virginia Natives from Public Domain Review

1666: A Novel book cover courtesy of Lora Chilton & Sibylline Press.