The stream  called Bull Run meanders gently southeastward from its headsprings which rise in the Bull Run mountains in the Virginia Piedmont. It flows in a narrow, crooked course through precipitous 200-foot cliffs and past low marshy banks. Many small tributaries enter the stream from both Fairfax and Prince William counties, for which it serves as a boundary line. Thus enlarged, it becomes the Occoquan River, flowing into Bel­mont Bay and the Potomac River at a point twenty-five miles below Washington, D.C.

The early records of man's habitation in the valley drained by Bull Run can only be interpreted in a generalized way. In­stead of written records, the cultural re­mains consist of tools and utensils fashioned by hand and fire. The strongly acid condition of the soil in northern Virginia and the humid climate quickly break down organic matter such as bone, wood, and leather so that only inorganic evidence remains. l

The first men in the area were nomadic hunters of large and small animals who traversed the hills and valleys in small groups. They were here at the end of the last Ice Age, about 9-10,000 years ago. Called Paleo-Indians, these people had a life-span of approximately thirty-five years. They usually used quartz rock from which they fashioned implements such as spear points, scrapers for working animal hides, and tools for working wood and bone. 2

Men of the Archaic Period, 7-6,000 B.C., were similar to the Indians known by the settlers of colonial America. They wandered far and wide in search of food - animals, fish, birds, and wild plants. It is assumed by archeologists and an­thropologists that they knew nothing of the bow and arrow. Instead, spears were used as weapons, with throwing sticks called "atlatls" to increase their velocity. A bannerstone, with a hole drilled through the center, was used as a counter weight for balancing the atlatl. A typical ban­nerstone was found in the Popes Head Creek bed near the Doak farm and Bull Run in 1914.3

Farming gradually developed after 1,000 A.D. during the Woodland period. A gradual modification in life-style came about because of the planting, tend­ing, and harvesting of crops. Small villages grew up beside rivers and creeks. Instead of following their men on long hunting expeditions as had formerly been their custom, the women and children stayed home and tended the gardens,while the men went on shorter hunting trips. The bow and arrow were developed - they were quieter, lighter, and more accurate than spears.

  Bannerstones were used by Indian hunters as counterweights to gim added thrust to a spear-like weapon called "Atlatl " The ir­regular grooves and ridges inside the hole were probably cut to pre­sent the stone from twisting or revolving on the shaft. This par­ticular stone was found on the Doaft farm between Popes Head Creek and Bull Run in 1914. Drawing and description courtesy L. Doug/as Waldorf, Roanoak Island Historical Park, Manteo, North Carolina. (From Cooling, Historical Highlights of Bull Run Regional Park, Fairfax County Office of Planning, 1971.

The Algonquian tribes were probably the peoples who were on the land when Captain John Smith and his associates sailed up the Potomac in 1608. Intertribal warfare conducted by Iroquois and Susquehannock parties from the north had already greatly reduced their numbers.

Surface collections of Indian relics can still be made near Bull Run and its tributaries. Three groups of artifacts found in the Clifton area were donated to the Smithsonian Institution, by different collectors in 1894. 1915, and 1946. The third collection was made on the Kincheloe farm near Bull Run. More than a dozen quartz projectile points were found just outside of Clifton, off Newman Road near Popes Head Creek, in 1979.4

An Indian burial site is occasionally found in Fairfax County; stone tools and utensils and projectile points for spears and arrows can still be found in the Popes Head Creek-Bull Run area. There is evidence that Indians worked the soapstone quarry off Union Mills Road. Because of their knowledge of these things, in the early twentieth century, the young people of the Clifton area com­monly recognized it as having been "In­dian country."5