The Powhatan Museum is located in the historic Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C., just two blocks north of the Columbia Heights Metro station. Washington, D.C., the northernmost segment of the Historic Powhatan Confederacy  is also home to descendants of the Tauxenent (Dogue), Pamunkey, Rappannock, and Potowomeck nations (‘tribes’) from the confederation of 34 Algonquian-speaking Eastern Woodlands people who came under the governance of the Pamunkey weowanance (leader) Wahunsenacawh or “Powhatan” (the father of Pocahontas). Historic boundary markers of the Federal City, as Washington, D.C. was originally known, still stand in the traditional territory of the Tauxenent Indians of Arlington, Virginia, linking Virginia with our Nation’s Capital. Maps of the city also continue to include the Virginia side of the Potomac River.

The mission of the Powhatan Museum is to interpret, preserve, exhibit, and promote the historic and cultural
heritage of the past and present tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy, as well as other select indigenous nations of
the Americas. The Powhatan Confederacy tribes were (and still are today) the predominant Algonquian tribes
mainly based in Virginia, whose members also resided in historic villages north  to Washington, D.C., and east to
parts of Maryland.