 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(January 2017) |
 A noblewoman of Pomeiock | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Extinct as a tribe | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| North Carolina | |
| Languages | |
| Carolina Algonquian (historical) | |
| Religion | |
| Tribal religion (historical) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Chowanoke, Machapunga |
The Pamlico (also Pampticough, Pomouik, Pomeiok) were Native Americans of North Carolina. They spoke an Algonquian language also known as Pamlico or Carolina Algonquian.
The Pamlico people lived on the Pamlico River in North Carolina. Named after them were Pamlico Sound, the largest sound in North Carolina, and Pamlico County. They are one of the most southerly Algonquian tribes on the Atlantic seaboard and the most southerly ones for which scholars collected a vocabulary.
The Raleigh colonists referred to the Pamlico in 1585-86 by the name Pomoui.
In 1696, smallpox, called "A great Mortality", devastated the Pamlico and neighboring Algonquian communities and reduced their populations. In 1701 the explorer John Lawson noted their Algonquian language and vocabulary (Lawson, 1860). By 1710 the Pamlico people were so limited that they lived in a single small village with only 15 "fighting men." [1]
By 1709 the total North Carolina Algonquian population was down to some 600 from at least several thousand at the time of English encounter. The Tuscarora War, 1711–1713, claimed more fatalities among the Algonquian allies than of the Tuscarora. In the late stages, the Tuscarora turned on some of their allies. They likely incorporated some of the Pamlico as slaves. By the end of the century, only a handful of Algonquians remained. [2]
With the decrease in numbers came the loss of tribal lands. Thus, the Weapemeoc people sold their lands on Albemarle Sound in 1660 and 1662 and started to move to the interior. By 1697 they complained against the encroachments of white settlers in their new location. The English assigned a reservation on Bennetts Creek to the Chawanokes (Chowan) before 1700; they reduced its sized from 12 to 6 square miles (16 km2) by 1707; the Chowanoke sold off land in 1713. After the Tuscarora War, the Machapunga also were assigned to a reservation. Other groups on the Pamlico Sound joined either the Machapunga or the Tuscarora.
With growing white presence in eastern Carolina, more products of European origin were introduced to the natives. Guns were regularly used instead of bows and arrows during the eighteenth century. Iron hatchets had likewise replaced wooden clubs. English clothes were also widely used by the natives. The Roanoke chief had an English-style house built in 1654.
Other practices persisted through the nineteenth century, including the women making baskets of rushes and silk grass. They decorated them with woven-in life motifs.
During the seventeenth century, the Chawanoke were in frequent and partly hostile contact with their Virginia Algonquian neighbors. Their traditional hostilities with the Iroquoian Tuscarora continued during that tribe's war with the whites, when they were actively engaged in expeditions against the hostiles. The Machapungas and other tribes of Pamlico Sound, however, changed their alliances: before 1700 they were still at war with the Tuscarora and Coree, but in 1711 they sided with them against the English colonists. The Hatteras, Weapemeoc (Paspatank or Pasquotank, Poteskeet, Perquimans and Yeopim) peoples were at that time the most acculturated groups; they remained on the side of the English.
Except for the Tuscarora War, there was little open fighting between the Algonquian and English colonists. They had suffered more from epidemics of infectious diseases. Due to small numbers, trade was of little importance.
Sale of strong liquors to the natives was probably the greatest problem created by white traders around 1700. Alcohol was banned from native towns in 1703, but the prohibition was never strictly enforced. Little was done for native education, even though native languages were being replaced by English during the eighteenth century.
A small number of natives were baptized as Christians by Anglican ministers throughout the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Tribe members starting adopting English names (sometimes as second names to be used occasionally) shortly after 1700. Native medicine men earned money by treating white settlers as well as their own people. Some settlers in North Carolina bought natives as slaves, and others transported them to northern markets. The extent of native servitude and slavery is not accurately known.
The Pamlico created distinctive dugout canoes, and traveled extensively. Pamlico artifacts have been found as far away as the North Atlantic.[ citation needed ]
They ate corn, fish, and other agricultural vegetables and fruits. Besides hunting and agriculture, the coastal groups still relied much on fishing and shellfish gathering, drying the products for preservation on reed hurdles over an open fire or in the sun. Sturgeon was not used as a food by the natives along the coast. Cattle raising is documented for the Paspatanks around 1700 (Lawson 1709). The Tuscarora War disturbed the economic balance of many of the Algonquian groups: the fields of the Machapunga and their allies were destroyed by English colonists. The Hatteras were prevented from planting by their enemies, and in 1714-1715 needed supplies from the colonial authorities to survive.
Political organization with hereditary chiefdoms was still functioning around 1700. Chiefs' corpses were buried in the temples as before. Commoners could purchase the right of burial in the temple precinct with enough money. Shell beads (wampum) served as money, for example, to compensate victims of crimes.
Marriage restrictions that prohibited marrying first cousins made it difficult to find mates within rapidly shrinking communities. Resulting marriages into other tribes certainly strengthened intertribal bonds.
The huskenaw rite appears to have been used as an initiation for both boys and girls. It was held around Christmas and lasted for five or six weeks, during which the adolescents were separated in a special building outside the village. There were some colonial reports that two of 50 families among the Machapungas practiced male circumcision, but this was not typical of the Native Americans.
The Tuscarora are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands in Canada and the United States. They are an Iroquoian Native American and First Nations people, based in New York and Ontario.
Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County, bordered by the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was named after the historical Roanoke, a Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English colonization.
The establishment of the Roanoke Colony was an attempt by Sir Walter Raleigh to found the first permanent English settlement in America. The colony was founded in 1585, but it was visited by a ship in 1590 and the crew found that the colonists had disappeared under unknown circumstances. It has come to be known as the Lost Colony, and the fate of the 112 to 121 colonists remains unknown to this day.
The Tuscarora War was fought in North Carolina from September 10, 1711, until February 11, 1715, between the Tuscarora people and their allies on one side and European American settlers, the Yamasee, and other allies on the other. This was considered the bloodiest colonial war in North Carolina. The Tuscarora signed a treaty with colonial officials in 1718 and settled on a reserved tract of land in Bertie County, North Carolina. The war incited further conflict on the part of the Tuscarora and led to changes in the slave trade of North and South Carolina.
John Lawson was an English explorer, naturalist and writer. He played an important role in exploring the interior of colonial North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, publicizing his expeditions in a book. He founded two settlements in North Carolina: Bath and New Bern, both located on rivers in the coastal plain. He was killed by Tuscarora people during the outbreak of the Tuscarora War.
The Meherrin people are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who spoke an Iroquian language. They lived between the Piedmont and coastal plains at the border of Virginia and North Carolina.
The Coree were a very small Native American tribe, who once occupied a coastal area south of the Neuse River in southeastern North Carolina in the area now covered by Carteret and Craven counties. Early 20th-century scholars were unsure of what language they spoke, but the coastal areas were mostly populated by Iroquois and Algonquian peoples.
The Machapunga were a small Algonquian language–speaking Native American tribe from coastal northeastern North Carolina. They were part of the Secotan people. They were a group from the Powhatan Confederacy who migrated from present-day Virginia.
The PamlicoRiver is a tidal river that flows into Pamlico Sound, in North Carolina in the United States. It is formed by the confluence of the Tar River and Tranters Creek.
Waccamaw Siouan Indians are one of eight state-recognized tribes in North Carolina. They are also known as the "People of the Fallen Star." Historically Siouan-speaking, they are located predominantly in the southeastern North Carolina counties of Bladen and Columbus. Their congressional representative introduced a failed bill for federal recognition in 1948. North Carolina recognized the group in 1971.
The Croatan were a small Native American ethnic group living in the coastal areas of what is now North Carolina. They might have been a branch of the larger Roanoke people or allied with them.
Eleanor Dare of Westminster, London, England, was a member of the Roanoke Colony and the daughter of John White, the colony's governor. While little is known about her life, more is known about her than most of the sixteen other women who left England in 1587 as part of the Roanoke expedition.
The Chowanoc, also Chowanoke, are an Algonquian-speaking Native American tribe who historically lived near the Chowan River in North Carolina.
Manteo was a Croatan Native American, and was a member of the local tribe that befriended the English explorers who landed at Roanoke Island in 1584. Though many stories claim he was a chief, it is understood that his mother was actually the principal leader of the tribe. This leadership would not have automatically passed down to her children as many English at the time may have assumed.
Carolina Algonquian was an Algonquian language of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup formerly spoken in North Carolina, United States. Carolina Algonquian was formerly spoken by Secotan, Chowanoke and Weapemeoc peoples.
The Secotans were one of several groups of American Indians dominant in the Carolina sound region, between 1584 and 1590, with which English colonists had varying degrees of contact. Secotan villages included the Secotan, Aquascogoc, Dasamongueponke, Pomeiock (Pamlico) and Roanoac. Other local groups included the Chowanoke, Weapemeoc, Chesapeake, Ponouike, Neusiok, and Mangoak (Tuscarora), and all resided along the banks of the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds. They spoke Carolina Algonquian language, an Eastern Algonquian language.
The Aquascogoc is the name given to a Native American tribe of Secotan people and also the name of a village encountered by English colonists during their late 16th century attempts to settle and establish permanent colonies in what is now North Carolina, known at the time as Virginia. Together with the rest of Secotan people they formed a part of the Native American group known as the Carolina Algonquian Indians, and spoke the now extinct Carolina Algonquian language. In 1585 the village of Aquascogoc was burned by Sir Richard Grenville, in retaliation for the alleged theft of a silver drinking vessel.
Woccon was one of two Catawban languages of what is now the Eastern United States. Together with the Western Siouan languages, they formed the Siouan language family. It is attested only in a vocabulary of 143 words, printed in a 1709 compilation by English colonist John Lawson of Carolina. The Woccon people that Lawson encountered have been considered by scholars to have been a late subdivision of the Waccamaw.
The Hatteras Indians were a tribe of Native Americans in the United States who lived in the North Carolina Outer Banks. They inhabited a village on what is now called Hatteras Island called Croatoan.
Tom Blount was a Tuscarora chief best known for his role in the Tuscarora War. During the conflict, he allied with the British colonies of North Carolina and South Carolina. He and his allies in the northern band of the Tuscarora fought alongside British colonists against the southern band after Blount was promised full control over the Tuscarora and a permanent alliance with the British if they did so. In 1712, Blount was able to capture southern Tuscarora chief Hancock, who was executed by the colonists. This would ultimately lead to the demise of the southern Tuscarora. In 1713, Blount's band had all but secured victory. Members of the southern band began to move north to New York and joined the Iroquois tribe. There would still be small skirmishes and raids until 1715.