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Sometimes these houses were of great length, accommodating many families at once; and at Uttamussick, in the peninsula formed by the Pamunkey and Mattapony, were three such structures sixty feet in length, where the Indians kept the bodies of their dead chiefs under the care of seven priests, or medicine-men.
The Ricahecrians went back to the Blue Mountains, and their women raised the death chant for those whom they left stretched out on the bank of the great river.... Seven times had the maize ripened, when Black Wolf led a war party against a tribe that dwelt on the banks of the Pamunkey where a fallen pine might span it. The waters ran red with blood.
The whole command was drawn in by noon of the 22d, and that day it crossed the Pamunkey by Merritt's reconstructed bridge, marching to Ayletts, on the Mattapony River, the same night.
A year later, when the soldiers of the Nineteenth were staggering along the Pamunkey, with heavy loads and blistered feet, or throwing up breastworks with their coffee-pots all night under fire in front of Petersburg, they looked back to the Defences of Washington as to a lost Elysium."
In crossing from the Pamunkey to the James, Sheridan was charged with the duty of escorting a train of 900 wagons from the White House to Douthat's Landing on the James. General Gregg was entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the right flank, which placed him in the post of danger, and the brunt of the fighting as well as the greater part of the honors of the movement fell to his share.
"The white men upon the Powhatan are many," he said in his own tongue, "but they build not their wigwams upon the banks of the Pamunkey. 1 The singing birds of the Pamunkey tell no tales. The pine splinters will burn as brightly there, and the white men will smell them not. We will build a fire at Uttamussac, between the red hills, before the temple and the graves of the kings."
When General Phillips retreated from Richmond, his project was to stop at Williamsburg, there to collect contributions which he had imposed, this induced me to take a position between Pamunkey, and Chikahomany rivers, which equally covered Richmond, and some other interesting parts of the State, and from where I detached General Nelson with some militia towards Williamsburg.
Stafford county would be full of Nicholson's militia, and Lawrence's strong hand lay on the line of the Borders. But what availed it? While Virginia was flattering herself that she had repelled the savages, and the Rappahannock men were notching their muskets with the tale of the dead, a wave was gathering to sweep down the Pamunkey or the James, and break on the walls of James Town.
When I got to the river the enemy was holding the bluffs surrounding the White House farm, having made no effort to penetrate General Abercrombie's line or do him other hurt than to throw a few shells among the teamsters there congregated. Next day Gregg's division crossed the Pamunkey dismounted, and Torbert's crossed mounted.
Leave your enfeebled troops to watch the country and guard the passes covered by your artillery and cavalry, and with your main body, including Ewell's Division and Lawton's and Whiting's commands, move rapidly to Ashland, by rail or otherwise as you find most advantageous, and sweep down between the Chickahominy and the Pamunkey, cutting up the enemy's communications, etc., while this army attacks McClellan in front.
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