Nanticoke people

Nanticoke

Total population
Approximately 1,200 in 1600 1,000 (1990)[1]
Regions with significant populations
United States (Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Oklahoma), Canada (Ontario)[1]
Languages
English, formerly Nanticoke language
Religion
Native American religion, Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Assateague, Choptank, Conoy, Patuxent, Piscataway, Pocomoke[1]

The Nanticoke people are a Native American Algonquian-speaking people, whose traditional homelands are in Chesapeake Bay area, including Delaware. Today they continue to live in the Northeastern United States, especially Delaware, and in Oklahoma. They also live in Ontario, Canada, where some ancestors resettled with Iroquois nations after the Revolutionary War.^[1]

The Nanticoke people consisted of several tribes: The Nanticoke proper (the subject of this article), the Choptank, the Assateague, the Piscataway, and the Doeg.

The Nanticoke people may have originated in Labrador, Canada, and migrated through the Great Lakes region and the Ohio Valley to the east, along with the Shawnee and Lenape peoples.^[1]

In 1608, the Nanticoke came into known European contact, when British captain John Smith encountered them. They allied with the British and traded beaver pelts with them.^[1] They were located primarily in 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 their use, situated between Chicacoan Creek and the Nanticoke River in Maryland, see Vienna.^[1] Non-native peoples encroached upon their lands, so the tribe purchased a 3,000-acre tract of land in 1707 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, but the gathering was discovered. The leaders of the plot were arrested. Some 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. 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 and fishing.^[3]

They moved upriver a decade later. They joined the Piscataway tribe; both were under the jurisdiction of the League of the Iroquois.^[1] The reservation on Broad Creek was sold 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. During the American Revolution, they allied with the British. In 1778, two hundred Nanticoke moved north to Fort Niagara because of their alliance. Later the British resettled them at the Six Nations Reserve with Iroquois peoples, near Brantford, Ontario, Canada, giving 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; in 1867, they moved with the Lenape to Indian Territory (what became Oklahoma in the 20th century).^[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.

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 as well as their stories of 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 tribes 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 stated that they gathered in the swamp 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 harm should be done to the local tribes. Following the United States gaining independence, the US made an official treaty of peace with the tribes that was signed on July 24, 1792.^[5]

Their autonym is Nentego, which means, "Tidewater People."^[1] The Nanticoke chiefdoms are now described as the Wicomoco, Monie and Manokin, which occupied areas along the rivers that were named after them.^[2]

The Nanticoke had an extensive an trading network with tribes throughout the Chesapeake Bay area. Early accounts described the Nanticoke tribes as the Arseek, Cuscarawoc, and Nause.^[6]

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]

Today, some Nanticoke people are part of the federally recognized Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in Ontario, Canada.^[1] Descendants of those who traveled west with the Delaware are part of the federally recognized Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma.^[10]

The Nanticoke Indian Association of Millsboro has been a state recognized tribe in Delaware since 1922.^[11] The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indians are a state-recognized tribe in New Jersey. Neither is federally recognized by the US.

In 1744 some Nanticoke settled near the Indian River in Delaware. They reorganized as the Nanticoke Indian Association and were recognized as a tribe by the state in 1881.^[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 honor of their heritage, to teach their children and other Americans.^[12]

Sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and associated with the Indian River Community, include: the Robert Davis Farmhouse, Harmon School, Isaac Harmon Farmhouse, Harmony Church, Ames Hitchens Chicken Farm, Indian Mission Church, Indian Mission School, Johnson School, Coursey and Daisey Indian Burial Ground and Warren T. Wright Farmhouse Site.^[13][14]

In 2002 Kenneth S. "Red Deer" Clark Sr., the head chief of the association, and Assistant Chief, his son "Little Owl" Clark, resigned.^[15]

"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.^[16] Natosha Carmine was elected in 2016 and was chief of the association until 2023. ^[17] As of 2023, Lavery "Leaving Tracks" Johnson is chief of the association.^[18]

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.^[19] They had long been without the land their ancestors had occupied. 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 Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation of New Jersey are recognized by that state and are based in Bridgeton.^[12] They have numerous members with mixed Nanticoke and Lenape ancestry. Both tribes were historically Algonquian speaking, and there have been years of intermarriage between them.

• Doeg people
• Indigenous peoples of Maryland
• Nacotchtank
• Unalachtigo Lenape

• Weslager, C. A. (1948). The Nanticoke Indians: A Refugee Tribal Group of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. OCLC 2222529.

• Nanticoke Indian Association, Delaware, official website
• Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indian Of New Jersey, New Jersey, official website
• Delaware Tribe of Indians, Oklahoma, official website
• Six Nations of the Grand River, Ontario, official website