Ozinie

Last updated
Ozinie
Wicomiss
Total population
Extinct as a tribe
Regions with significant populations
Maryland
Languages
Eastern Algonquian
Religion
Native American religion
Related ethnic groups
Nanticoke

The Ozinie, also known as the Wicomiss, [1] were a group of Native Americans living near modern-day Rock Hall, in Kent County, Maryland. [2] They were hunter-gatherers and fished. [1]

Contents

Territory

At the time of the arrival of English settlers in the 1630s, they lived in a village near Chester River that flowed in the Chesapeake Bay. [1] Dr. Jon Seidel recently speculated Indiantown Farm in modern-day Queen Anne's County as a possible location of the village. [3] The Ozinie may have used Eastern Neck Island for shellfishing. [1]

Population

They had an estimated population of 255 people. [2]

Language

The Ozinie spoke an Algonquian language and were related to the Nanticoke, [4] another Algonquian-speaking tribe,

17th-century history

Captain John Smith encountered the Ozinie in 1608. [4] In his monograph, Talbot County: A History, Dickson J. Preston locates a "fortified village" of the Ozinie, "south of the Chester River in present Queen Anne's County" that was encountered by English settlers in the 1630s. [5] The Ozinie at that time were frequently at odds with the Susquehannocks, [3] and English settlers would go on to pit the different tribes of the Eastern Shore against the Ozinie as part of a strategy to eradicate their presence, as the Ozinie were among the most hostile of the region's tribes to English settlers and made it clear that they rejected English presence, laws and customs. [5]

Military extermination campaigns and settler incursions further scattered the Ozinie population over the following decades. Ozinie Indians themselves encountered a legal apartheid system, where incidents such as the murder of Ozinie Indians by English settlers would go unpunished, while violence by Ozinie Indians against English settlers were dealt with in colonial courts. In 1667, tensions came to a head, according to Talbot County historian Dickson J. Preston:

"In 1667 Captain James Odber, military commander of the district, and his servant were murdered, allegedly by Wicomesses [Ozinie] Indians. That produced demands for vengeance from white settlers throughout the Eastern Shore. The settlers enlisted the help of the other tribes and sent out an expedition which wiped out the entire nation, to that the last man, woman, and child, in what may have ben America's first genocidal war. [5]

According to Preston, the assistance of the Nanticokes in this campaign was negotiated in return for hunting and fishing rights. The campaign recruited men from a proportion of settler families in the area:

A colonial expedition with Major Thomas Ingram of Talbot County as field commander was quickly organized. He was authorized to raise an army of 400 men, including 60 from Talbot, by drafting every tenth able-bodied man in the province. Each man was to supply his own clothing, gun, sword, powder, shot, and flints, and every sixth man was to bring along an axe. Details of the war that followed have been lost, but it was certainly a great success from the whites' point of view. Philemon Lloyd, colonel of the Talbot militia who took part, later reported with grim satisfaction that it had "been brought to an end by the defeat and total destruction of a nation of savages called the Wicomesses." As nearly as can be determined, not a single man, woman, or child, was left alive. [5]

Other sources argue that Ozinie assimilated with the neighboring Nanticokes by the 1660s. [4] [2]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 William B. Cronin, The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake, p. 41.
  2. 1 2 3 "Maryland at a Glance: Native Americans". Maryland Manual On-Line. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  3. 1 2 Seidel, John (28 December 2022). "Indigenous Cultural Landscape Study of the Chester and Sassafras River Watersheds" (PDF). Retrieved 1 September 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 "Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge". U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Retrieved 7 April 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Preston, Dickson J.; Harrington, Norman (1983). Talbot County: a history (1st ed.). Centreville, Md: Tidewater Publishers. pp. 39–41. ISBN   978-0-87033-305-7.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Queen Anne's County, Maryland</span> County in Maryland, United States

Queen Anne's County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 census, the population was 49,874. Its county seat and most populous municipality is Centreville. The census-designated place of Stevensville is the county's most populous place with a population of 7,442 as of 2020. The county is named for Queen Anne of Great Britain, who reigned when the county was established in 1706 during the colonial period. The county is part of the Mid-Eastern Shore region of the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Delmarva Peninsula</span> Large peninsula on the East Coast of the US

The Delmarva Peninsula, or simply Delmarva, is a large peninsula on the East Coast of the United States, occupied by the vast majority of the state of Delaware and parts of the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Eastern Shore of Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Talbot County, Maryland</span> County in Maryland, United States

Talbot County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 census, the population was 37,526. Its county seat is Easton. The county was named for Lady Grace Talbot, the wife of Sir Robert Talbot, an Anglo-Irish statesman, and the sister of Lord Baltimore. The county is part of the Mid-Eastern Shore region of the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maryland Route 18</span> State highway in Queen Annes County, Maryland, US

Maryland Route 18 (MD 18) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The state highway runs 20.37 miles (32.78 km) from the beginning of state maintenance at Love Point east to MD 213 in Centreville. MD 18 is the main east–west local highway on Kent Island and east to Centreville, serving the centers of Stevensville, Chester, Kent Narrows, Grasonville, and Queenstown that are bypassed by U.S. Route 50 (US 50)/US 301. What is signed as MD 18 is actually a set of four suffixed highways: MD 18A, MD 18B, MD 18S, and MD 18C. There are also several unsigned segments of MD 18 scattered along the length of the signed portions.

Choptank is an unincorporated town and census-designated place on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in Caroline County, Maryland, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 129.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maryland Route 213</span> State highway in Maryland, US

Maryland Route 213 (MD 213) is a 68.25-mile (109.84 km) state highway located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the United States. The route runs from MD 662 in Wye Mills, Queen Anne's County, north to the Pennsylvania border in Cecil County, where the road continues into that state as Pennsylvania Route 841 (PA 841). The route, which is a two-lane undivided highway most of its length, passes through mainly rural areas as well as the towns of Centreville, Chestertown, Galena, Cecilton, Chesapeake City, and Elkton. MD 213 intersects many routes including U.S. Route 50 (US 50) near Wye Mills, US 301 near Centreville, and US 40 in Elkton. It crosses over the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal in Chesapeake City on the Chesapeake City Bridge. MD 213 is designated by the state as the Chesapeake Country Scenic Byway between the southern terminus and Chesapeake City with the portion north of MD 18 in Centreville a National Scenic Byway. In addition, the route is also considered part of the Atlantic to Appalachians Scenic Byway between Chesapeake City and MD 273 in Fair Hill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nanticoke people</span> Native American people

The Nanticoke people are a Native American Algonquian people, whose traditional homelands are in Chesapeake Bay and Delaware. Today they live in the Northeastern United States and Canada, especially Delaware; in Ontario; and in Oklahoma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piscataway Indian Nation and Tayac Territory</span> State-recognized tribe in Maryland that claims descent from the historic Piscataway tribe

The Piscataway Indian Nation, also called Piscatawa, is a state-recognized tribe in Maryland who identify as descendants of the historic Piscataway people. At the time of European encounter, the Piscataway was one of the most populous and powerful Native polities of the Chesapeake Bay region, with a territory on the north side of the Potomac River. By the early seventeenth century, the Piscataway had come to exercise hegemony over other Algonquian-speaking Native American groups on the north bank of the river. The Piscataway nation declined dramatically before the nineteenth century, under the influence of colonization, infectious disease, and intertribal and colonial warfare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piscataway people</span> Native American ethnic group

The Piscatawaypih-SKAT-ə-WAY or Piscatawapih-SKAT-ə-WAY, PIH-skə-TAH-wə, are Native Americans. 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 tribal confederation of Nanticoke of the Delmarva Peninsula and the Lenape of southern New Jersey and northern Delaware. They are recognized by the state of New Jersey, having reorganized and maintained elected governments since the 1970s. They are not a federally recognized tribe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yaocomico</span> Group of indigenous people native to North America

The Yaocomico, also spelled Yaocomaco, were an Algonquian-speaking Native American group who lived along the north bank of the Potomac River near its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay in the 17th century. They were related to the Piscataway, the dominant nation north of the Potomac.

Matapeake is an unincorporated community located south of Stevensville on Kent Island, Maryland, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doeg people</span> Native American people

The Doeg were a Native American people who lived in Virginia. They spoke an Algonquian language and may have been a branch of the Nanticoke tribe, historically based on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The Nanticoke considered the Algonquian Lenape as "grandfathers". The Doeg are known for a raid in July 1675 that contributed to colonists' uprising in Bacon's Rebellion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piscataway language</span> Extinct Algonquian language of Maryland, US

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.

Nanticoke is an Algonquian language spoken in Delaware and Maryland, United States. The same language was spoken by several neighboring tribes, including the Nanticoke, which constituted the paramount chiefdom; the Choptank, the Assateague, and probably also the Piscataway and the Doeg.

The Choptank were an Algonquian-speaking Native American people that historically lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland on the Delmarva Peninsula. They occupied an area along the lower Choptank River basin, which included parts of present-day Talbot, Dorchester and Caroline counties. They spoke Nanticoke, an Eastern Algonquian language closely related to Delaware. The Choptank were the only Indians on the Eastern Shore to be granted a reservation in fee simple by the English colonial government. The Choptank were a subdivision of the Nanticoke.

The history of Native Americans in Baltimore and what is now Baltimore dates back at least 12,000 years. As of 2014, Baltimore is home to a small Native American population, centered in East Baltimore. The majority of Native Americans now living in Baltimore belong to the Lumbee, Piscataway, and Cherokee peoples. The Piscataway people live in Southern Maryland and are recognized by the state of Maryland. The Lumbee and Cherokee are Indigenous to North Carolina and neighboring states of the Southeastern United States. Many of the Lumbee and Cherokee migrated to Baltimore during the mid-20th century along with other migrants from the Southern United States, such as African-Americans and white Appalachians. The Lumbee are state recognized in North Carolina as the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, but have no state recognition in Maryland. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina are a federally recognized tribe. There are three state recognized tribes in Maryland; the Piscataway-Conoy Tribe of Maryland, the Piscataway Indian Nation and Tayac Territory, and the Accohannock Indian Tribe. Maryland has no federally recognized tribes.

The Matapeake were an Indigenous Algonquian people who lived on Kent Island, which they referred to as Monoponson in their language. The Matapeake, along with the Choptank, Lenape, and Nanticoke, were the four most prominent Algonquian tribes living in Maryland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indigenous peoples of Maryland</span>

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.

References