The Nanticoke people consisted of several tribes: The Nanticoke proper (the subject of this article), the Choptank, the Assateague, the Piscataway, and the Doeg.
In 1608, the Nanticoke came into known European contact, when British captain John Smith encountered them. Through their trade of beaver pelts with the British, they made certain alliances.[1] The Nanticoke were located primarily in what are today's Dorchester, Somerset and Wicomico counties.[2]
In 1668, the Nanticoke emperor Unnacokasimon signed a peace treaty with the proprietary government of the Province of Maryland. In 1684, the Nanticoke and English governments defined a reservation for the indigenous people's use, situated between Chicacoan Creek and the Nanticoke River in Maryland (see Vienna).[1] Confronting encroachment on their land by Europeans, in 1707 the tribe purchased a 3,000-acre tract on Broad Creek in Somerset County, Maryland (now Sussex County, Delaware).
In 1742, the tribe met with neighboring tribes in nearby Wimbesoccom Neck to discuss a Shawnee plot to attack the local English settlers. When the gathering was discovered, the British arrested the leaders of the plot.
Some Nanticoke moved up to Pennsylvania in 1744, where they gained permission from the Iroquois Confederacy to settle near Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and along the Juniata River, territory of the Seneca people. The city of Nanticoke is named after one of their settlements. While settled along the Susquehanna River, the Nanticoke regularly used a path that they had established during their migration to return to the Delmarva Peninsula for seasonal gathering of fruits, nuts and roots, and fishing.[3]
The Nanticoke moved upriver a decade later again away from European Americans. They joined the Piscataway tribe; both were under the jurisdiction of the League of the Iroquois.[1] They sold the reservation on Broad Creek in 1768. Some Nanticoke migrated slightly north into New York, where they established a settlement in what became the town of Nanticoke there.
Members of the Conoy people joined the Nanticoke in the 1740s. Together they were neutral in the French and Indian War, although other Native American peoples allied with the French or British.
During the American Revolution, they allied with the British. In 1778, two hundred Nanticoke moved north to Fort Niagara in present-day Canada because of their alliance. Later the British resettled them at the Six Nations Reserve with Iroquois peoples, near Brantford, Ontario, Canada. The British gave them land in compensation for what they had lost to the American rebels.[1]
Other Nanticoke stayed at Buffalo River, New York. Another group of Nanticoke joined the Lenape of the mid-Atlantic and migrated to Kansas. Decades later, in 1867 after the Civil War, they were forced to move with the Lenape to Indian Territory (what became the state of Oklahoma in the early 20th century after Native American land rights were extinguished).[1]
Several towns and places are named for this tribe. These include Nanticoke, Pennsylvania and Nanticoke, New York, as well as Nanticoke and Nanticoke Acres, Maryland; and Nanticoke, Ontario.
Winnesoccum Incident
In the early summer of 1742, members of the Nanticoke, Shawnee, and Choptank tribes, wanted to avenge themselves against the English colonists.[4] The tribes decided to meet on Winnesoccum Island in the middle of the Pocomoke Swamp located in Maryland. Chiefs Robin Hood, Hopping Sam, Simon Alsechqueck, and Messowan gathered their people to meet in the swamp for six days where they discussed plans of attack, and related their adverse encounters with the English. As all members of the tribes, including women and children, had left their villages to gather in the swamp, colonists had become suspicious of the disappearance of the natives from their local villages.
Soldiers were sent to round up the tribal peoples in the swamp. Leaders of each of the tribes were questioned by the English. Each was said to give a different account as to why they had gathered in the swamp. Some said they gathered solely to hunt, while others said they were there to elect a new chief. The English decided that since no Indian attacks had been executed, no retaliation should be taken against the local tribes. Following the United States gaining independence, the federal government made an official treaty of peace with the tribes that was signed on July 24, 1792.[5]
Name
The Nanticoke name for themselves, their autonym, is Nentego, which means, "Tidewater People."[1] The Nanticoke chiefdoms are now known as the Wicomoco, Monie and Manokin. They occupied areas along the rivers that were named after them.[2]
The Nanticoke had an extensive trading network with tribes throughout the Chesapeake Bay area. Early 20th-century accounts referred to some of the Nanticoke tribes as the Arseek, Cuscarawoc, and Nause.[6]
Language
The Nanticoke language was distinct from the Algonquian languages spoken by tribes on the Western Shore of Maryland and along the Potomac River.[2] The last fluent speaker was Lydia E. Clark, who died in 1856.[7][8] Efforts to revive the language have been undertaken since the late 20th century by tribal members and linguists from Georgetown University.[9]
In 1744 some Nanticoke settled near the Indian River in Delaware. They reorganized as the Nanticoke Indian Association, with 31 official members, and were recognized in 1881 as a legal entity by the state. This group was known as the "Incorporated Body".[12] They have their headquarters in Millsboro.
In 1922 they were chartered as a non-profit organization. They organized annual powwows, carrying them on until the mid-1930s, during the Great Depression. In 1977 the tribe revived the annual event. Later they built a museum in Millsboro in honor of their heritage, to teach their children and other Americans.[12]
Today all persons seeking membership in the Nanticoke of Delaware tribe must prove descent from the original 31 members of the Incorporated Body, who shared a total of eight surnames. Today there are more than 700 members.[13]
After having long been forced off most of their lands, like other East Coast tribes, the Nanticoke have taken steps to regain ancestral lands. They acquired 30 acres in Millsboro in the fall of 2021.[14]
In 2002 Kenneth S. "Red Deer" Clark Sr., the head chief of the association, and Assistant Chief, his son "Little Owl" Clark, resigned.[17]
"Tee" Norwood was elected chief and served until 2008. That year Larry Jackson was elected as chief. Chief William H. "Thunder Eagle" Daisey led the organization until 2016.[18] Natosha Carmine was elected as chief in 2016 and served until 2023. [19] As of 2023, Lavery "Leaving Tracks" Johnson is chief of the association.[20]
Some Nanticoke settled across the Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey, where they joined the Lenape and intermarried with them, forming what is known as the Nanticoke Lenape Nation.[21] They had long been without any of their historic lands. In August 2023, the Native American Advancement Corporation, affiliated with the state-recognized tribe, acquired 63 acres in Salem County, New Jersey, which had been ancestral territory of the Cohanzick Lenape.
The Lenape, also called the Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada.
The Ramapough Mountain Indians, known also as the Ramapough Lenape Nation or Ramapough Lunaape Munsee Delaware Nation or Ramapo Mountain people, are a New Jersey state-recognized tribe based in Mahwah. They have approximately 5,000 members living in and around the Ramapo Mountains of Bergen and Passaic counties in northern New Jersey and Rockland County in southern New York, about 25 miles from New York City.
The Shawnee are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language.
The Treaty of Easton was a colonial agreement in North America signed in October 1758 during the French and Indian War between British colonials and the chiefs of 13 Native American nations, representing tribes of the Iroquois, Lenape (Delaware), and Shawnee. Negotiations over more than a week were concluded on October 26, 1758, at a ceremony held in Easton, Pennsylvania between the British colonial governors of the provinces of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and representatives of 13 Indian nations, including the Iroquois, who sent chiefs of three of their nations to ensure their continued domination of their Ohio Country region; the eastern and western Lenape (Delaware), represented by two chiefs and headmen; Shawnee and others. More than 500 Native Americans attended the outdoor ceremony, after lengthy negotiations to bring peace to the regions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and the Ohio Country.
Nanticoke may refer to:
The Algonquians are one of the most populous and widespread North American indigenous North American groups, consisting of the peoples who speak Algonquian languages. They historically were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and in the interior regions along Saint Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes.
The Walking Purchase, also known as the Walking Treaty, was a 1737 agreement between the family of William Penn, the original proprietor of the Province of Pennsylvania, and the Lenape native Indians. In the purchase, the Penn family and proprietors produced a deed to claim that a 1686 treaty with the Lenape ceded an area of 1,200,000 acres (4,860 km2) in present-day Lehigh Valley and Northeastern Pennsylvania in colonial Pennsylvania, which included a western land boundary extending as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half, which led to its name.
The Delaware languages, also known as the Lenape languages, are Munsee and Unami, two closely related languages of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian language family. Munsee and Unami were spoken aboriginally by the Lenape people in the vicinity of the modern New York City area in the United States, including western Long Island, Manhattan Island, Staten Island, as well as adjacent areas on the mainland: southeastern New York State, eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware.
Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands include Native American tribes and First Nation bands residing in or originating from a cultural area encompassing the northeastern and Midwest United States and southeastern Canada. It is part of a broader grouping known as the Eastern Woodlands. The Northeastern Woodlands is divided into three major areas: the Coastal, Saint Lawrence Lowlands, and Great Lakes-Riverine zones.
The Unalachtigo were a division of the Lenape, a Native American tribe whose homeland Lenapehoking was in what is today the Northeastern United States. They were part of the Forks Indians.
The Piscatawaypih-SKAT-ə-WAY or Piscatawapih-SKAT-ə-WAY, PIH-skə-TAH-wə, are a Native American group indigenous to the east coast of North America. They spoke Algonquian Piscataway, a dialect of Nanticoke. One of their neighboring tribes, with whom they merged after a massive decline of population following two centuries of interactions with European settlers, called them the Conoy.
The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation is a state-recognized tribe and 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. They represent Nanticoke of the Delmarva Peninsula and the Lenape of southern New Jersey and northern Delaware. The state of New Jersey recognizes them, and they have maintained elected governments since the 1970s. They are not a federally recognized tribe.
Piscataway is an extinct Algonquian language formerly spoken by the Piscataway, a dominant chiefdom in southern Maryland on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay at time of contact with English settlers. Piscataway, also known as Conoy, is considered a dialect of Nanticoke.
The Mingo people are an Iroquoian group of Native Americans, primarily Seneca and Cayuga, who migrated west from New York to the Ohio Country in the mid-18th century, and their descendants. Some Susquehannock survivors also joined them, and assimilated. Anglo-Americans called these migrants mingos, a corruption of mingwe, an Eastern Algonquian name for Iroquoian-language groups in general. The Mingo have also been called "Ohio Iroquois" and "Ohio Seneca".
Mark Quiet Hawk Gould is a Leni Lenape politician and businessman who serves as Chief of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation and Vice-President of the Native American Advancement Corporation. The son of Marion Strong Medicine Gould and Wilbur Wise Fox Gould, Gould grew up while the tribe was in hiding from United States assimilation and forced removal policies that led to many of the Lenape being removed to Oklahoma. In the 1970s, during the Native American civil rights movement, he and a group of others publicly reorganised the tribe and came out of hiding, incorporating the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation as a legal entity in 1978. The Nation quickly became one of the "largest and most vibrant" Lenape groups on their traditional land, and was formally recognized by the state of New Jersey in 1982.
The Indigenous peoples of Maryland are the tribes who historically and currently live in the land that is now the State of Maryland in the United States of America. These tribes belong to the Northeastern Woodlands, a cultural region.
The Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania (LNPA) is one of more than a dozen cultural heritage organizations of individuals who identify as descendants of the Lenape people, also known as Lenni-Lenape or Delaware people. They are based in Easton, Pennsylvania.
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