The information contained on this page was excerpted from the educational guide titled: We Have A Story To Tell, created by the National Museum of the American Indian Education Office, and the Native Peoples of Washington, D.C. Article authored by the National Park Service.

The Native peoples of the Chesapeake Bay region were among the first in the Western Hemisphere to encounter European explorers and colonists. Their stories, however, have usually been told by others, and usually only when their history helps to shed light on the birth and early development of the English colonies and the United States. Their perspectives have been overlooked and ignored in exhibitions, the media, educational materials, and most histories of the region. The history of the Native Americans of the Chesapeake region is a remarkable story of resilience and survival. [Goddard, 1978; Feest, 1978; Rountree, 1989 and 1990; Potter, 1993; Tayac, 1999] For thousands of years, until the late sixteenth century, they were sustained by and lived in balance with a verdant, pristine, and generous environment. The region was heavily populated and vibrant with human activity. The people spoke languages that were part of the immense Algonquian language family that reached from the Southeast up the Northeast coast into what is now Canada, across to the Great Lakes and even to some parts of the Great Plains and what is now California. These languages were not mutually intelligible but they bore enough similarities to enable peoples of the Chesapeake region to communicate with one another.

The communities were organized under chiefdoms, a sophisticated and multi-layered system of government. They practiced diplomacy and developed political and military alliances. They were deeply spiritual and expressed their religious values and beliefs in cyclical ceremonies and rituals that kept their world in balance. Long before Europeans arrived, Native people developed and participated in widespread trade systems that brought them into contact with people, goods, and ideas from distant places. Although change has always been part of Native American cultures and lives, Chesapeake peoples’ ways of life were destroyed in a relatively brief period of time when contact with Europeans occurred. Confronted with a catastrophic tidal wave of change, they incurred devastating losses and had to summon every ounce of ingenuity and strength to survive. Some were overwhelmed and extinguished, but some remain to tell their stories today. One of their descendants, Dr. Gabrielle Tayac, a member of the Piscataway Nation of Maryland, coauthored the materials presented on this page.

Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the area we think of today as metropolitan Washington, D.C. was rich in natural resources and supported local native people living there. The Anacostia and Potomac Rivers provided a variety of fish, including a dependable supply of migratory fish that converged seasonally at this “head of tidewater” location.

Additionally, the surrounding wilderness provided plenty of forest produce and wild game such as turkey, quail, geese, ducks, deer, elk, bear, and bison. The native peoples also grew corn, squash, beans, and potatoes in small cleared areas on the fertile floodplains. They quarried stone in nearby stream valleys and used it for tools. Local American Indians also traded with native people from distant regions, exchanging resources and materials from a wide area. There is evidence that the strategic location of the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers, tidewater and piedmont, made the area a major crossroads and trading center for coastal and interior tribes.

The village of Nacotchtank (from which the name Anacostia is derived) was the largest of the three American Indian villages located in the Washington area and is believed to have been a major trading center. The people of Nacotchtank, or Anacostans, were an Algonquian-speaking people that lived along the southeast side of the Anacostia River in the area between today’s Bolling Air Force Base and Anacostia Park, in the floodplain below the eastern-most section of today’s Fort Circle Parks. A second town, Nameroughquena, most likely stood on the Potomac's west bank, opposite of what today is Theodore Roosevelt Island. Another village existed on a narrow bluff between today’s Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and MacArthur Boulevard in the northwest section of the city.

Captain John Smith was the first European documented to have reached the navigable head of the Potomac River during his explorations in 1608. Smith’s explorations led to several subsequent contacts with American Indians, some friendly, some in outright conflict, and ultimately resulted in European take-over and settlement of the land and the virtual displacement of the local American Indians.

After only 40 years of contact with the Europeans, the population of local American Indians was only one-quarter of those that lived in the region prior to 1608. Many of the Nacotchtanks and other local American Indians died from diseases introduced by the Europeans and in wars. Others joined other tribes to the north, south, and west.

Every place in the United States of America has an ongoing Native American story, and our nation’s capital is no exception. Washington, D.C. sits in the Chesapeake Bay region, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. For more than 10,000 years, Native peoples have created thriving societies along the shores of numerous rivers that feed into the beautiful and environmentally rich Chesapeake Bay. They lived in connection to the seasons and the natural resources of the region. They settled in villages made up of wooden longhouses inhabited by extended families. Labor was generally divided, with women responsible for agriculture and men for hunting. Everyone cooperated in harvesting fish and shellfish from bountiful rivers and estuaries. Throughout their histories these societies adapted to difficult circumstances and unforeseen changes. Adaptability has been necessary for survival of Native peoples and their cultures, even to the present day.

When the English established their first American colony in Jamestown,Virginia, in 1607, the Chesapeake Bay region included three major Native chiefdoms, systems of government made up of a group of tribes under the influence of a central chief. The three chiefdoms included the Powhatan, the Piscataway, and the Nanticoke. Most of the tribes living in the Chesapeake Bay region belonged to one of these three chiefdoms, although there were some tribes who kept their independence. The people spoke related languages from a language family known as Algonquian. The central chiefs were men selected from families that inherited and passed their leadership rights from generation to generation. They usually lived in larger towns and oversaw a system of village commanders, or weroances, who could be men or women. An elders council advised the chiefs. The members of the council were called wisoes, and decisions were made in a council house called the matchcomoco. Holy men—elders who conducted spiritual ceremonies— also had a voice in the chiefs’ decisions. There were also “medicine men,” who were tasked with physical and spiritual healing. Leaders called cockarouses assumed command in times of war. The chiefs were unlike European kings or emperors; they were expected to work like everyone else and usually made decisions in consultation with other leaders. [Feest, 1978; Rountree, 1989, 1990; Tayac, 1999; Hall, 1910; Hariot, 1972]

Most of the Chesapeake Native tribes who have survived and continue to thrive today descend from the Powhatan, Piscataway, and Nanticoke chiefdoms. The tribes that did not originally belong to a chiefdom often became part of one in order to be afforded greater protection from the colonists. Other independent tribes dispersed to various parts of the continent, where they merged with other tribes. Centuries of dispossession from their original lands have left far fewer Native tribes in the present than there were in 1607. Yet, the people remain and so do many Powhatan, Piscataway, and Nanticoke names on the landscape, evidence of the rich cultures that once inhabited the entire region. The nature of the struggles facing Chesapeake Native peoples today has changed, but they continue to live with the difficult legacy of colonial history.

Colonial Indian-White Relations

In some ways, the Jamestown colony served as the beginning of the United States of America. It was also the place where some of the first policies towards Native Americans were enacted. Many of the difficulties experienced by Chesapeake Natives were mirrored over the centuries by other Native Americans as other white settlers moved across the continent.

European Settlement and Conflict

The Spanish were the first Europeans known to have explored the Chesapeake. In 1562, the Spanish cartographer Diego Gutierrez recorded the Chesapeake Bay on a map. He called it the “Bahia de Santa Maria.” Because they were looking for gold and found none in the Chesapeake, the Spanish did not spend much time in the region. They did, however, capture a number of young Powhatan boys during their expeditions. These incidents unsettled the Powhatans and raised concerns about future contact with Europeans.

The English arrived in 1607, forty-five years after the Spanish. Their colony, Jamestown, was a business enterprise funded by the Virginia Company for the purpose of finding gold. The English colonists were not adept at farming in the North American soil and climate and lacked the skills for surviving in unfamiliar territory. Many died of starvation. During this early period, the Powhatan people took pity on the colonists and gave them food to help them survive.

Peaceful relations did not last long. At first, the Indians granted the English permission to live on pieces of land within their territories. The English saw this as a right to own and permanently occupy the land. For their part, Native people believed that the newcomers had no right to permanently possess Native lands. In addition, Native people sometimes left their villages to hunt, fish, or gather resources. Frequently, they returned to their villages only to find the land occupied by colonists. The Powhatans grew increasingly angry as the colonists took over more of their lands. When the English began raiding Powhatan villages for food, sometimes killing women and children in the process, Native leaders retaliated. A series of wars started in the Chesapeake Bay region that continued through the seventeenth century. [Feest, Rountree, Tayac]

Native Responses to the Ongoing Challenges of Colonialism

The pressures on Chesapeake Native peoples mounted as the populations of the colonies and later the United States grew. From the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, the communities were forced to devise a number of strategies to survive and to keep their Native identities, histories, and cultures alive.

Emigration

As the colonists acquired more and more Native lands, some tribes emigrated to other areas where they could live more peacefully. The Nanticoke and the Piscataway central chiefs and their councils convinced most of their people to move to Pennsylvania by the early 1700s. However, some of the people decided to remain. Despite the ongoing conflicts with the colonists, many Nanticoke and Piscataway people could not part with their original homeland. Some tribal members were able to become engaged in the colonial economy as farmers or in other occupations. [Feest; Rountree; Tayac; Porter; Weslager, 1948, 1978, 1983; Speck, 1922, 1927]

Pennsylvania’s tolerant attitude toward Indians lured Nanticoke and Piscataway emigrants to the colony. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, envisioned a society in which American Indians and whites would live as “neighbors and friends.” This was an important part of what Penn called a “holy experiment.” In a letter to the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) tribe, Penn expressed his hopes for an honorable peace:

“I desire to win and gain your love and friendship by a kind, just and peaceable life.”

—William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylania 1680–1684: A Documentary History. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.

Looking to govern Native Americans who sought refuge in the colony, Penn formed a partnership with the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, a powerful alliance of Native nations in the Northeast. The Iroquois, once enemies of the Chesapeake chiefdoms, became protectors of those Nanticoke and Piscataway who relocated. The Iroquois called the Piscataway the Conoy—a designation they eventually incorporated. They are now often referred to as the Piscataway Conoy. [Feest; Rountree and Davidson; Speck, 1927; Weslager, 1948, 1983]

Life was relatively peaceful for the Nanticoke and Piscataway in Pennsylvania until the French and Indian War broke out in 1754. The original harmony that William Penn hoped for suddenly vanished. Though few Pennsylvania tribes sided with the French, the English colony of Pennsylvania declared war on all Native peoples, even those who stayed neutral. At that point, some Nanticoke and Piscataway moved west to fight against the British. They would later join a movement of many tribes to form an American Indian country under the leadership of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa. Others moved north to become members of the Iroquois Confederacy. [Ibid., Tanner, 1987]

In the first 100 years of contact, the Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway suffered severe loss of life. Although it is difficult to obtain precise population figures, scholars estimate that the Powhatan chiefdom included about 12,000 people when Jamestown was settled in 1607. Only 1,000 were left by 1700. The Piscataway chiefdom had about 8,500 members at the time of English settlement, but only 300 remained by 1700. [Feest; Thornton,1987]

Epidemic diseases were the primary cause of death. Native peoples had no immunity to new illnesses, including smallpox, cholera, and measles, which the Europeans brought to the Americas. Many tribes suffered huge losses–often, up to ninety percent of the population was wiped out. Because diseases spread from person to person, some communities were affected by European diseases transmitted by other Native peoples, and many populations were weakened even before contact with European settlers. In 1608, Chief Powhatan, who also was known as Wahunsenacawh, told the English explorer and trader Captain John Smith how diseases had affected his people: “You may understand that I having seene the death of all my people thrice, and not any one living of these three generations but my selfe...” —Travels of Captaine John Smith. NY: MacMillan, 1907. Epidemics were not the only cause of death. Wars, loss of land, social upheaval, and disease combined to devastate Native communities. Population losses weakened Native culture. Oral tradition was critical for preserving cultural knowledge; when elders died, it was like having entire libraries burn down. [Feest; Rountree; Thornton; Moretti- Langholtz and Waugaman, 2006]

“They gave us a piece of land that they termed as a reservation for the Piscataway people. They put us there, with the idea that they would protect us forever, took all weapons away from us and in turn gave them to a group of Indians who swore death to us, known as the Susquehannas. . . We found out we couldn’t trust the Maryland colonists and our people fled.”

—Chief Billy Redwing Tayac (Piscataway), 2002.

As more and more English colonists flooded into the Chesapeake region, Native peoples lost more of their lands. These encroachments by the colonists led to violence, which the English attempted to quell by establishing treaties with Native peoples. A treaty is an agreement between two nations that becomes a law. In their treaties, the Powhatan, Piscataway, and Nanticoke agreed to submit to English control in exchange for peace. The English promised Native peoples rights to hunt in their territories and to fair treatment under the law. The treaties also set aside smaller parcels of original Native territories so that the Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway could live undisturbed by settlers. These lands were called reservations, or “manors.” [Feest; Rountree; Tayac; Rountree and Davidson, 1997; Porter, 1987]

While the treaties sounded good on paper, most of their provisions were not enforced. English settlers moved onto reservation lands and restricted Native uses of non- reservation lands. By the 1700s, Piscataway, Nanticoke, and Powhatan treaty rights were largely ignored.

Continuing Struggle for Native Land

The Native peoples of the Chesapeake region experienced enormous pressures to give up their lands over a long period of time. Except for the Mattaponi and Pamunkey, all tribes in the Chesapeake region that originally had reservations lost them.

Despite losing their lands, many tribes continued to live within the old boundaries of their original reservations, and still do today. The communities that retained their reservations set up new governments made up of a chief and a men’s council. These governments were modeled after the colonial or state governments rather than the old chieftainships. [Speck; Rountree and Davidson; Porter; Feest; and Tayac]

The Pamunkey and Mattaponi have struggled for decades to retain their reservation lands. In 1836, local whites asked the General Assembly of Virginia to sell the Pamunkey Reservation. At that time, Virginia was a slave-holding state with strict racial laws. A number of Virginia lawmakers wanted to expel all American Indians and free African Americans from the state. They accused the Pamunkey of being too different from their Pamunkey ancestors to still have a reservation and argued that intermarriage with other races had changed them. The Pamunkey petitioned the General Assembly to keep their reservation and eventually won. The case was one of many that the Pamunkey and Mattaponi would have to fight to keep their reservations. [Rountree; Moretti-Langholtz and Waugaman]

When people lose their own ways of living and take on new ones it is called assimilation. In the centuries after European contact, many Piscataway, Nanticoke, and Powhatan individuals either chose or were forced to assimilate non-Native ways of living. Language, religion, and other aspects of culture usually change as a result of assimilation. Sometimes Native Chesapeake peoples assimilated when they left their homes in search of work or after marriage to a person from a different ethnic background. Sometimes tribal members chose to assimilate in order to escape the shame inflicted by the larger society, which stereotyped Indian people as ignorant or backwards. Some saw assimilation as a way to avoid more wars and conflict. [Tayac; Rountree; Moretti- Langholtz and Waugaman; Porter]

English efforts to change Native peoples were often driven by a sense of superiority—that English people were civilized and that Native people were “savages.” Two major ways that the English brought about the assimilation of Native peoples were education and religious conversion. The colonists were aware of the tremendous importance that language plays in culture. Therefore, Native children were forced to learn English in schools, erasing Native languages from most tribal members’ lives. [Rountree; Tayac]

All Native American tribes had their own religions and spiritual beliefs long before Europeans arrived in North America. Conversion to European religions was not something all Native people of the Chesapeake were initially receptive to, but ultimately, many of them accepted the change. Some practiced their traditional beliefs in addition to the Christian customs, seeing no conflict between continuing their traditional religious observances and attending church. [Rountree; Moretti-Langholtz and Waugaman; Tayac]

Ironically, churches and schools presented an unexpected opportunity that benefited Native Americans: they served as places where Chesapeake tribes could keep their communities together and maintain their identity. This positive aspect of Native churches and schools was an unexpected outcome of the racial segregation enforced by non-Natives. For example, the Chickahominy, the Mattaponi, and other Powhatan tribes formed their own Baptist congregations because they were not allowed to attend white churches. At the same time, a number of tribes started their own schools because their children could not attend schools with white children. For Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway peoples who had lost their reservations, churches and schools helped to sustain distinctive communities. [Rountree, 1990]

Assimilation did not erode all Native cultural practices. Among the Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway, there have always been those who specialize in healing the sick and attending to the spiritual needs of the people. They knew which plants could heal certain illnesses; they knew how to care for injured people or those suffering from emotional disturbances, grief, or extreme hardship. Because non-Natives viewed Native cultures as inferior, some Native people had to practice these healing traditions in secret. Others, however, were open about their abilities and used their knowledge to help tribal members and people of other races as well. [Weslager; Tayac; Speck]

Surviving Poverty

When the Chesapeake tribes lost their lands, they also lost much of their access to the region’s rich natural resources. They were forced to fish in less bountiful creeks, rather than at prime spots they had always occupied on the rivers. They no longer owned large plots of land to plant and harvest crops. Still, many Native people found ways to survive by fishing, hunting, and farming as they had for hundreds of years. They also earned income by selling crafts, such as baskets and pottery, and taking other jobs near their homes. In this way they kept their connection to the land and its resources. [Rountree; Tayac; Nelson and Richardson interview]

Lacking good educational opportunities, Native Chesapeake people often had to work as low-paid laborers, and many lived in poverty. As the United States changed from an agricultural to an industrial society in the early twentieth century, economic opportunities developed in cities. Many Powhatan, Piscataway, and Nanticoke people sought work in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New York, and Washington, D.C. While these jobs made it possible for many families to survive, they also made it more difficult for families to sustain their Native culture and for tribal communities to stay together.

Living with Racism

The Piscataway, Powhatan, and Nanticoke were subjected to racist social attitudes and laws that restricted their rights. Once reservations were lost, most Native Chesapeake peoples were classified as “free people of color.” Although they were not treated as terribly as enslaved African-Americans, Native peoples of the Chesapeake had far fewer rights than whites. They were segregated in churches, and were not allowed to legally marry white people in Maryland and Virginia. [Rountree, 1990; Tayac; Porter; Moretti-Langholtz and Waugaman]

“We were the third race in a two-race state. I remember once traveling with my father, and we pulled into a gas station because I had to go to the bathroom and there was one marked “white” and one bathroom marked “colored.”

I said, “Dad, what do I do?”

—Chief Stephen Adkins (Chickahominy), Style Weekly, September 2004.

Getting a basic education was difficult. In the first half of the twentieth century, Native Americans were barred from attending white public schools in the District of Columbia. Native children in southern Maryland were not allowed to attend white schools, but were allowed to attend black schools. However, some parents refused to send their children to black schools because they wanted to maintain their Native identity. To get an education, Native children often went to an informal “school” at a relative’s or neighbor’s home, where they learned to read and write. Sometimes Native Americans were able to attend private parochial schools if their families were church members. Virginia and Delaware funded a tri-racial system of segregated schools for blacks, whites, and Indians. Native children who attended integrated schools were often the targets of racial hatred from other students. [Rountree, 1990; Tayac; Moretti-Langholtz and Waugaman]

“There were bad feelings towards us when we were in school. We were harassed all the time by both the black and the white students just because we were different. “

—Reeva “Rose Eagle” Tilley (Rappahannock), published in: We’re Still Here. Richmond, Virginia: Palari Publishing, 2006.

Acquiring a college education was a virtual impossibility for Native Americans during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Affiliation with a church, however, occasionally opened a door for higher education. Chickahominy students who attended their community’s Baptist Church in Virginia were able to attend Bacone College in Oklahoma, a college that was established by the American Baptist Church in 1880 to serve American Indians.

One of the most notorious examples of racism against the Native peoples of the Chesapeake region was the passage in 1924 of the Racial Integrity Act. The act was administered by a Virginia state official named Walter Plecker and others who sought to prevent interracial marriage. The law made it illegal for people to identify their race as Indian. It also implied that the Indian race no longer existed. Some members of Powhatan tribes were arrested for insisting that they were Indians; others were publicly humiliated when their children were expelled from white schools. [Rountree, 1990]

The law had a disastrous effect on the family and community structures of Virginia Native Americans. People were forced to move to other states so they could live freely and escape prejudice—travel when and where they wanted, marry who they chose to, and attend schools in their communities. The Racial Integrity Act remained an official law until it was overturned in 1967.

“The worst thing about Plecker [was] . . . the community. People just left . . . You wonder how anyone could be so consumed with hate. “

—Chief Kenneth Adams, (Upper Mattaponi), Style Weekly, September 2004.

The tribes have had to fight hard to assert the civil rights that were denied them since colonial times. Activism heightened in the 1920s with the organization of the Second Powhatan Confederation in Virginia and the founding of the Nanticoke Indian Association in Delaware. [Rountree, Weslager, Speck] In 1961, members of Chesapeake tribes joined more than 50 Native People representing 90 tribes and bands assembled at the American Indian Chicago Conference to exchange information and discuss the development of a formal statement of Native American social, economic and political aspirations.

During the 1960s and 1970s, some Piscataways were involved in the American Indian Movement, a nationwide Native effort to draw attention to the ongoing problems in Native communities and to encourage the U.S. government to honor its treaty-based commitments to tribal governments. Members of the American Indian Movement participated in a week-long takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C., in 1972, and the Longest Walk of 1978. [Billy Redwing Tayac Interview (NMAI), 2002] This protest action involved several hundred Native Americans who walked from San Francisco to New York City.

The Nanticokes at Bridgeton, New Jersey, were actively involved with national American Indian issues in the 1970s. At the same time, the Nanticoke Indian Association in Delaware focused on strengthening their tribal organization. This involved chartering and incorporating the tribe as a legal business. [Weslager; Porter; Tayac; Nanticoke Indian Association Interview] Powhatans were also active in the Coalition of Eastern Native Americans, an organization that was founded to secure recognition and eligibility for federal services for tribes that are not officially recognized by the federal government. [Rountree, 1990] In 1982, the Virginia Commonwealth created what is now known as the Virginia Council on Indians. This organization includes representatives from the eight tribes that are officially recognized by the state,and is responsible for conducting research and proposing recommendations on issues that affect American Indians in Virginia.

As a result of hard-won civil rights, participation in the Indian rights movement, and a strong commitment to fostering ethnic pride, all Native peoples have experienced a cultural and political renaissance over the past thirty years. In the Chesapeake region, the Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway peoples have also established new structures of governance and new avenues for cultural expression within their communities. Today, chiefs in most cases are still the main leaders of Chesapeake regional tribes. In some communities, chiefs are elected and serve a term. An elected tribal leader may also be called a chairperson. In other tribes, chiefs are still hereditary and hold lifelong positions. Most tribes also have councils that advise chiefs and vote on decisions. Gatherings such as social dinners, ceremonies, and powwows are now commonplace, and help to keep a sense of community alive. In the twenty-first century, tribal members generally live in the same ways as their non-Indian neighbors. There is, however, a continuation of certain practices including hunting, farming, and cultural arts that draw on ancestral traditions. The Pamunkey people have made significant efforts to maintain their tradition of pottery making. Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway people also maintain oral traditions, or stories and other teachings, that instruct their children about unique Native ways of relating to the natural world. These oral teachings sustain the children’s identities as Native peoples.

The Nanticoke and Piscataway tribes have made strong efforts to revive annual ceremonial practices. The current Piscataway Green Corn ceremony honors the most abundant harvest. It also honors and gives special recognition to women and children. The Piscataways believe that corn is female and the kernels are her children. For this reason, corn and women are honored because they are givers of life. Nanticokes are also participating in cultural exchanges with Lenapes in Canada and Oklahoma to gain a better understanding of specific dances. Other tribal members are actively involved in preserving the ancestral traditions that remain, as well as revitalizing those that were lost, including the languages. [Rountree; Moretti-Langholtz and Waugaman; Tayac; Tayac observation of Lenape Oklahoma/New Jersey Nanticoke- Lenape gathering in Bridgeton, NJ (2001)]

Contemporary Challenges and Responses

Protecting land and resources is an important concern of the tribes, including the preservation of sacred sites. For Native Americans, sacred sites are places where important spiritual or historical events have occurred. They might be ancestral burial grounds or places where ceremonies are held.

“There’s a park in southern Maryland that’s known as Piscataway National Park. We have twenty acres that we consider sacred that’s inside the park. . . Our ancestors are buried there. . . It’s our Mecca, our Wailing Wall. . . There’s not a building on it. There’s not any kind of concrete in the ground, there’s no steel in the ground. It’s the same way [as] when God made it.”

—Chief Billy Redwing Tayac (Piscataway), 2002.

As land development continues, many historically and culturally important Native places are at risk. For example, since the early 1990s, the Mattaponi Tribe of Virginia has been engaged in a legal battle to halt a reservoir and dam project near their reservation. The Mattaponi are opposed to the project, which would flood more than 400 acres of wetlands, ancestral sites, and Mattaponi lands. Newport News city developers want the reservoir to meet future demands for water. The tribe says that the project would negatively affect the tribe’s treaty-based fishing rights on the Mattaponi River, restrict access to sites and resources, and destroy wildlife habitat and many important tribal historical sites. In 2006, the issue went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to take up the case and sent it back to the lower courts for consideration. The case is currently unresolved and pending further action.

“Over the years, we have lost much of our land to greed as other people have taken our resources. Now, with this reservoir, people want to take our river as well.” —Assistant Chief Carl Custalow (Mattaponi), Bay Journal, May 2003.

Native American tribes existed as nations long before the arrival of European colonists. However, in 2006, many of the Nanticoke, Piscataway, and Powhatan communities still seek official government-to-government recognition as tribes from the state and federal governments. Currently, no tribes from the region are recognized by the United States. Six tribes were officially recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia, but not until 1983, with two others being added in 1985 and 1989. These eight tribes are the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Mattaponi, Upper Mattaponi, Nansemond, Pamunkey, Rappahannock, and Monacan Indian Nation. The Monacan Indian Nation was not originally part of the Powhatan, Piscataway, or Nanticoke Chiefdoms. The Nanticoke tribe is recognized by the state of Delaware. The state of Maryland does not officially recognize any Native tribes. Native American communities desire these forms of legal recognition so that their long-standing status as nations will be acknowledged and further respected. They also want to exercise the rights and privileges granted to recognized tribes.

“We were approved by the Maryland legislators and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for state recognition. Everyone said we were qualified. Then the governor’s office decided that we weren’t Indian enough. Just because somebody says I’m not an Indian, doesn’t mean I’m not. Just as long as I walk this Earth I’ll be Indian. I’m sixty-three years old; they can’t take it from us.”

—Mervin Savoy, Tribal Chair, (Piscataway Conoy Tribe).

“We want the same rights that other Indians in our country have. We want our children to be eligible for the educational programs that other Indian children have access to, and we want our elders to be eligible for the health care they need.”

—Chief Barry Bass (Nansemond), Indian Country Today, September 2004.

For the Native Peoples of the Chesapeake region the events that began in the sixteenth century have created a legacy of ongoing challenges for more than 400 years these Native people have had to struggle just to survive and to carve out an existence for themselves in the post-colonial world. Today, the issues of identity, tribal recognition, civil rights, cultural revitalization and preservation, as well as land and resource protection remain at the forefront of that existence. With persistence and strength, the Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway will not only survive, but thrive into the twenty-first century and beyond. They will regain the heritage of the place that was theirs long before their encounter began with the strangers from across the sea.

“We’re still here and we’re not going away! We still have a long way to go, and I hope the Virginia Indians who follow us will be driven to continue working to improve things.”

—Assistant Chief Gene Adkins (Eastern Chickahominy Tribe), published in: We’re Still Here. Richmond, Virginia: Palari Publishing, 2006.