The Pamunkey Indian Tribe is one of eleven Virginia Indian tribes recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the state's only federally recognized tribe, receiving its status in 2015.

The historical tribe is part of the Powhatan paramountcy, made up of Algonquian-speaking tribes.

The Powhatan paramount chiefdom was made up of over thirty tribes, estimated to total about ten thousand to fifteen thousand people at the time the English arrive in 1607.

The Pamunkey tribe makes up about one-tenth to one-fifteenth of the total, as they numbered about one thousand persons in 1607.

When the English arrived, the Pamunkey were one of the most powerful groups of the Powhatan chiefdom.

They inhabited the coastal tidewater of Virginia on the north side of the James River near Chesapeake Bay.

[7][8]The Pamunkey tribe is one of only two that still retain reservation lands assigned by the 1646 and 1677 treaties with the English colonial government.

[9] The Pamunkey reservation is located on some of its ancestral land on the Pamunkey River adjacent to present-day King William County, Virginia.

The Mattaponi reservation, the only other in the state, is nearby on the Mattaponi River.