Rappahannock

The Rappahannock were an Algonquian-speaking people of the river valley that bore their name in Virginia. Their principal town was Topahanocke, and in 1607 they had thirteen villages.

As settlers pressed into the valley, their leader Accopatough ceded land east of Totuskey Creek in 1651. His successor Taweeren was killed in a dispute with colonists in 1654. By 1669 they had moved to the Mattaponi headwaters. They joined Cockacoeske’s renewed Powhatan confederacy in 1677 but withdrew the following year, and in 1684 Virginia ordered them to merge with the Portobago.