History
In 1607, Captain John Smith, one of the Jamestown settlers, sailed up the Chickahominy in the hope that it would prove to be a passage to the Pacific. There, he was captured by warriors of the Chickahominy tribe and taken to meet Chief Powhatan, an event that led to his legendary rescue by Powhatan's daughter, Matoaka (Pocahontas).
In the 19th century, the Chickahominy was bordered in many places by swampy forests, which during heavy rains and spring thaw were covered with water as to be almost impassable. At such times, the river's normally narrow path could grow to be as much as a mile wide. This small river became a major obstacle and natural force to be dealt with during the American Civil War (1861–1865).
Read more about this topic: Chickahominy River
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“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
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the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)