Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/171

 The Indian village was, generally situated on the slope of a hill overlooking a river, and in selecting such a site, the aborigines were probably influenced to some extent by the fact that they could thus obtain a view of in approaching enemy. The towns of the same tribe appear to have been entirely distinct, and this was the case even in the thickly inhabited valleys of the Nansemond and Chickahominy. The health of the Indians was in no peril from overcrowding, since few of their villages were occupied by more than two hundred persons, and many by less than thirty. Strachey informs us that before the aboriginal settlement at Kecoughtan was broken up, the population of that place was close upon one thousand, their wigwams numbering three hundred, but there is nothing to show that all of these dwellings were built in the immediate neighborhood of each other. When Smith visited Kecoughtan it contained only eighteen houses, and the band of warriors there, as already stated, was reduced to forty. In general, the largest towns were not composed of more than twenty or thirty wigwams. At Maraswquoike, the Farrar&#8217;s Neck of the colonial age, thirty or forty were observed by Smith, and he mentions that he had seen in one village as many as one hundred dwellings, either situated together or separated by groves, but this was exceptional. There were in the vicinity of the wigwams no small and but few large trees, owing to the fact that the ground had been periodically burnt over, and much of the standing wood had been used as fagots; sufficient, however, was allowed to remain to furnish protection from the rays of the sun in summer, and to break the