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Wise's Story of Norfolk's Indian Bones
(For more Norfolk geography tidbits, click here.)
The following is taken from "Romantic Sewell's Point," an article that appeared in the Jamestown Magazine (October 1906, pp.24-26) by Lucy Redd Wise. Though the article clearly contains some unverified assumptions and interpretations that are disputed by the scientist's personal report – if not directly then possibly by the omission of what would have been extremely significant – the closeness of time between the discovery and Miss Wise's writing suggests the possibility that some of her elaborations may be valid or at least  based on reliable information that has not otherwise been accessible to later researchers:
"…Captain John Smith relates that on his return from his three-months' cruise of discovery…, he sailed up the Elizabeth River and saw cultivated patches of corn and the cabins of the Chesapeake Indians on this point. He says the number of their fighting men was one hundred, which, with the women and children, would give the tribe about four or five hundred members. He also speaks of seeing men of gigantic stature among several tribes, notably the Chesapeakes and Sesquehannocks.
Captain Smith's account was verified on April 12, 1905, when on this spot an Indian burying ground was discovered. About sixty yards from Pine Beach Hotel a sand hill was being graded, under the supervision of Mr. C.W. Consolvo. Suddenly the laborers came upon a quantity of human bones, a cart load or more being thrown out, in a more or less perfect state of preservation. Fully fifty skulls were found, but only one was intact...."
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