Matoaca: Pocahontas's Name on the Appomattox

The name of this Chesterfield County community carries one of the oldest stories in Virginia. Matoaca is an anglicized spelling of Matoaka, the private name given to the woman the English would call Pocahontas. The village on the Appomattox River is believed to sit near the land where she grew up as the daughter of the paramount chief Wahunsenacah.

The settlement became a milling village in the nineteenth century, when entrepreneurs harnessed the Appomattox to power grain and textile operations. The river had been a working waterway since the earliest colonial decades, and the falls here made it a natural site for industry. Today Matoaca is a quiet suburban community within greater Richmond's southern reach, but the name alone is a kind of monument, a reminder that these banks were already a homeland long before the English arrived and gave them a different word.