The Original Residents

The Original Residents. Pemberton Park Historic Trail. For millennia before Europeans arrived, the Chesapeake region was home to Native Americans and to a rich diversity of wildlife. Black bears and wolves roamed the woods while beaver, muskrat and otters foraged the wetlands. Schools of sturgeon, perch and shad swam in the river and great flocks of ducks, geese, and passenger pigeons flew overhead. Sustained by this natural bounty, Native Americans lived in large villages near the Chesapeake Bay in the summer and dispersed into smaller interior camps in the winter. As European settlement increased, Native Americans moved to reservations created on the banks of the Wicomico River. Tundotank Reservation lay across the river from Pemberton Plantation in the 18th century. There was a significant Native American population in this region until the mid 18th century.

Picture Caption , The illustrations of John White, the basis for this DeBry etching, are an important source of information about the first Americans. White visited coastal Native American villages as far north as the Chesapeake Bay in the 1500s. Stone tools used by native people in this region include a grinding stone, a mortar for grinding seeds and grains, and a full-grooved archaic-period ax.