The Treaty of 1677 (also known as the Treaty Between Virginia And The Indians 1677 or Treaty of Middle Plantation) was signed in Virginia on May 28, 1677, between the English Crown and representatives from Native American tribes in Virginia, including the Nottoway, the Appomattoc, the Wayonaoake, the Nansemond, the Nanzatico, the Monacan, the Saponi, and the Meherrin following the end of Bacon's Rebellion.
The treaty designated those that signed as "tributary tribes", which signified that they were guaranteed control over their traditional homelands, hunting and fishing rights, the right to keep and bear arms, and other rights so long as they maintained their loyalty towards the English Crown. [1]
The twenty-one articles of the treaty were confirmed when the English sent gifts to the chiefs along with various badges of authority.
The Queen of Pamunkey, known as Cockacoeske to the English, [2] received a red velvet cap which was fastened with a silver frontlet and silver chains. [3]
Native American leaders who signed the treaty include:
Pocahontas was a Native American woman belonging to the Powhatan people, notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribes in the Tsenacommacah, encompassing the Tidewater region of what is today the U.S. state of Virginia.
The Powhatan people are Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands who belong to member tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy, or Tsenacommacah. They are Algonquian peoples whose historic territories were in eastern Virginia.
The Pamunkey Indian Reservation is a Native American reservation of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe in King William, Virginia, United States. It lies along the Pamunkey River in King William County, Virginia on the Middle Peninsula. It contains approximately 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) of land, 500 acres (2.0 km2) of which is wetlands with numerous creeks. Thirty-four families reside on the reservation and many Tribal members live in nearby Richmond, Newport News, and other parts of Virginia.
The Covenant Chain was a series of alliances and treaties developed during the seventeenth century, primarily between the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) and the British colonies of North America, with other Native American tribes added. First met in the New York area at a time of violence and social instability for the colonies and Native Americans, the English and Iroquois councils and subsequent treaties were based on supporting peace and stability to preserve trade. They addressed issues of colonial settlement, and tried to suppress violence between the colonists and Indian tribes, as well as among the tribes, from New England to the Colony of Virginia.
The Pamunkey Indian Tribe is one of 11 Virginia Indian tribal governments recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the state's first federally recognized tribe, receiving its status in January 2016. Six other Virginia tribal governments, the Chickahominy, the Eastern Chickahominy, the Upper Mattaponi, the Rappahannock, the Monacan, and the Nansemond, were similarly recognized through the passage of the Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act of 2017 on January 12, 2018. The historical people were part of the Powhatan paramountcy, made up of Algonquian-speaking nations. The Powhatan paramount chiefdom was made up of over 30 nations, estimated to total about 10,000–15,000 people at the time the English arrived in 1607. The Pamunkey nation made up about one-tenth to one-fifteenth of the total, as they numbered about 1,000 persons in 1607.
The Chickahominy are a federally recognized tribe of Virginian Native Americans who primarily live in Charles City County, located along the James River midway between Richmond and Williamsburg in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This area of the Tidewater is not far from where they were living in 1600, before the arrival of colonists from England. They were officially recognized by the state in 1983 and by the federal government in January 2018.
The Native American tribes in Virginia are the Indigenous peoples whose tribal nations historically or currently are based in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States of America.
The Mattaponi tribe is one of only two Virginia Indian tribes in the Commonwealth of Virginia that owns reservation land, which it has held since the colonial era. The larger Mattaponi Indian Tribe lives in King William County on the reservation, which stretches along the borders of the Mattaponi River, near West Point, Virginia.
Queen Ann appears in Virginia records between 1706 and 1718 as ruler of the Pamunkey tribe of Virginia. Ann continued her predecessors' efforts to keep peace with the colony of Virginia.
Tsenacommacah is the name given by the Powhatan people to their native homeland, the area encompassing all of Tidewater Virginia and parts of the Eastern Shore. More precisely, its boundaries spanned 100 miles (160 km) by 100 miles (160 km) from near the south side of the mouth of the James River all the way north to the south end of the Potomac River and from the Eastern Shore west to about the Fall Line of the rivers.
Cockacoeske was a 17th-century leader of the Pamunkey tribe in what is now the U.S. state of Virginia. During her thirty-year reign, she worked with the English colony of Virginia, trying to recapture the former power of past paramount chiefs and maintain peaceful unity among the several tribes under her leadership. She was the first of the tribal leaders to sign the Virginia-Indian Treaty of Middle Plantation. In 2004 Cockacoeske was honored as one of the Library of Virginia's "Virginia Women in History".
The Anglo–Powhatan Wars were three wars fought between settlers of the Colony of Virginia and the Powhatan People of Tsenacommacah in the early 17th century. The first war started in 1609 and ended in a peace settlement in 1614. The second war lasted from 1622 to 1632. The third war lasted from 1644 until 1646 and ended when Opechancanough was captured and killed. That war resulted in a defined boundary between the Indians and colonial lands that could only be crossed for official business with a special pass. This situation lasted until 1677 and the Treaty of Middle Plantation which established Indian reservations following Bacon's Rebellion.
Totopotomoi was a Native American leader from what is now Virginia. He served as the chief of Pamunkey and as werowance of the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom for the term lasting from about 1649 to 1656, when he died in the Battle of Bloody Run.
Necotowance was Werowance (chief) of the Pamunkey tribe and Paramount Chief of the Powhatan Confederacy after Opechancanough, from 1646 until his death sometime before 1655. Necotowance signed a treaty with the Colony of Virginia in 1646, at which time he was addressed by the English as "King of the Indians."
The association between the monarchy of Canada and Indigenous peoples in Canada stretches back to the first interactions between North American Indigenous peoples and European colonialists and, over centuries of interface, treaties were established concerning the monarch and Indigenous nations. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in Canada have a unique relationship with the reigning monarch and, like the Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand, generally view the affiliation as being not between them and the ever-changing Cabinet, but instead with the continuous Crown of Canada, as embodied in the reigning sovereign.
The Appomattoc were a historic tribe of Virginia Indians speaking an Algonquian language, and residing along the lower Appomattox River, in the area of what is now Petersburg, Colonial Heights, Chesterfield and Dinwiddie Counties in present-day southeast Virginia.
The Nanzatico (Nantaughtacund) community was a group of Native Americans that included remnants of earlier tribes displaced by English settlers in and around King George County, Virginia. The group was made up of Portobagos from Maryland, Patawomecks from the Northern Neck area, Matchotics, and Rappahannock tribe members along with others. The original Nantaughtacund were noted by that name living on the Rappahannock River by John Smith on 1608, represented on his map as a "king's house".
Opossunoquonuske was a Weroansqua of an Appomattoc town near the mouth of the Appomattox River. Weroansqua is an Algonquian word meaning leader or commander among the Powhatan confederacy of Virginia coast and Chesapeake Bay region. She was known as the queen of Appamatuck, The community she led was large enough to provide an estimated twenty warriors to the Powhatan Confederacy.
The Weyanoke people were an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands.
Peracuta was a 17th-century leader of the Appomattoc tribe in what is now the U.S. state of Virginia. During his reign, he worked with the English colony of Virginia in an attempt to recapture the former power of past paramount chiefs and maintain peaceful unity among the tribe under his leadership.
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