High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Pocahontas Island, Virginia is a peninsula located on the north side of the Appomattox River within the limits of what is now Petersburg, Virginia. There is evidence of prehistoric Native American settlement dating from 6500 BCE. The area is more recently notable as the first predominately free black settlement in the state and, by mid-19th century, one of the largest in the nation. In 1860 half of Petersburg`s population was black, and one-third of those people were free (3,224 people), constituting the largest free black population of the time.