Kinwaw Paskestikweya | |
|---|---|
 Three Piscataway tribal leaders representing thePiscataway Indian Nation, Piscataway Conoy Tribe, and Cedarville Band of Piscataway received official recognition as tribes from the State of Maryland in 2012.Maryland GovernorMartin O'Malley is 2nd from right. | |
| Total population | |
| est. 4,103 Piscataway Indian Nation 500[3] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 United States ( Maryland) | |
| Languages | |
| English, formerlyPiscataway | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism, big house religion.[citation needed] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Mattawoman,Patuxent,Doeg,Nanticoke,Yaocomico |
ThePiscataway/pɪsˈkætəˌweɪ/pih-SKAT-ə-WAY orPiscatawa/pɪsˈkætəˌweɪ,ˌpɪskəˈtɑːwə/pih-SKAT-ə-WAY,PIH-skə-TAH-wə,[4] are anIndigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. They spoke the now extinctAlgonquianPiscataway, a regional dialect similar toNanticoke. The neighboringHaudenosaunee called them the Conoy, with whom they partly merged after a massive decline of population and rise in colonial violence following two centuries of interactions with European settlers. Some descendants of the Piscataway are citizens of the federally recognizedSix Nations of the Grand River First Nation in Ontario, Canada.
In the United States, two groups thatclaim to be descended from the Piscataway people[5] receivedstate recognition as Native American tribes from Maryland in 2012: thePiscataway Indian Nation[6][7] andPiscataway Conoy Tribe.[6][8] Within the latter group was included the Piscataway Conoy Confederacy and Sub-Tribes and the Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians.[6] All these groups descend from the Western Bank of the Chesapeake, spanning across Maryland, Virginia, D.C, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, and are primarily located inSouthern Maryland. None arefederally recognized as tribes.
The Piscataway were recorded by the English (in days before standardized spelling) as the Pascatowies, Paschatoway, Pazaticans, Pascoticons, Paskattaway, Pascatacon, Piscattaway, and Puscattawy.[citation needed]
They were also referred to by the names of their tributary villages:Moyaone, Accotick, or Accokicke, orAccokeek; Potapaco, orPortotoack; Sacayo, or Sachia;Zakiah, and Yaocomaco, or Youcomako, or Yeocomico, or Wicomicons.[citation needed]
The name "Kanawha" is also used for the Piscataway.[9]
Related Algonquian-speaking tribes included theAnacostan, Chincopin,Choptico,Doeg, or Doge, or Taux; Tauxeneen,Mattawoman, andPamunkey. More distantly related tribes included the Accomac,Assateague,Choptank,Nanticoke,Patuxent,Pocomoke,Tockwogh andWicomoco.[10]
ThePiscataway language was part of the largeAlgonquian language family.[11]Jesuit missionary FatherAndrew White translated the Catholiccatechism into Piscataway in 1640, and other English missionaries compiled Piscataway-language materials.[12]
The Piscataway dialect is largely dissipating among tribal members; current efforts of the community include learning the foundation of the Algonquin language while conducting linguistic studies to revive their dialect for generations. A small number of language speakers, none being fully fluent in the Piscataway dialect, along with institutional barriers and lack of funding for linguistic studies are major challenges in revitalizing the Piscataway Language dialect.[citation needed]
The Piscataway by 1600 were on primarily the north bank of thePotomac River in what is nowCharles, southernPrince George's, and westernSt. Mary's counties in southern Maryland, according toJohn Smith's 1608 map, "wooded; near many waterways". This also notes the severalPatuxent River settlements that were under some degree of Piscatawaysuzerainty. The Piscataway settlements appear in that same area on maps through 1700.[13][14][15]
Piscataway descendants now inhabit part of their traditional homelands in these areas. None of the recognized tribes noted above has reservation or treaty land. Their status as "landless" had long contributed to the difficulty in proving historical continuity and being recognized as a self-governing tribe.[citation needed]
The Piscataway relied more on agriculture than did many of their neighbors, which enabled them to live in permanent villages. They lived near waters navigable by canoes. Their crops included maize, several varieties of beans, melons, pumpkins, squash and (ceremonial) tobacco, which were mainly bred and cultivated by women. Men used bows and arrows to hunt bear, elk, deer, and wolves, as well as smaller game such as beaver, squirrels, partridges, and wild turkeys. They also did fishing and oyster and clam harvesting. Women also gathered berries, nuts and tubers in season to supplement their diets.[16][17]
As was common among the Algonquian peoples, Piscataway villages consisted of several individual houses protected by a defensive logpalisade.[18][19] Traditional houses were rectangular and typically 3 metres (10 feet) high and 6 metres (20 feet) long, a type oflonghouse, with barrel-shaped roofs covered with bark or woven mats. A hearth occupied the center of the house with a smoke hole overhead.[20]
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A succession ofIndigenous peoples occupied the Chesapeake and Tidewater region, arriving according to archeologists' estimates from roughly 3,000 to 10,000 years ago. Those people of Algonquian stock who would coalesce into the Piscataway nation, lived in thePotomac River drainage area since at leastAD 1300.[21] Sometime around AD 800, peoples living along the Potomac had begun to cultivatemaize as a supplement to their ordinary hunting-gathering diet of fish, game, and wild plants.
The Piscataway, represented by the Potomac Creek archaeological culture, was established by Owasco Culture Algonquian-Speakers coming from the Susquehanna River Valley, and while the administrative center of the Piscataway Werowance (and later tayac) known asMoyaone was first established in 1100, their migration did not end until 1300 when theadministrative center of the Werowance of Patawomeck was established.[22]
By 1300, the Piscataway and theirAlgonquian tribal neighbors had become increasingly numerous because of their sophisticated agriculture, which provided calorie-richmaize,beans andsquash. These crops added surplus to their hunting-gathering subsistence economy and supported greater populations. The women cultivated and processed numerous varieties of maize and other plants, breeding them for taste and other characteristics. The Piscataway and other related peoples were able to feed their growing communities. They also continued to gather wild plants from nearby freshwater marshes. The men cleared new fields, hunted, and fished.
The onset of a centuries-long "Little Ice Age" around 1300 put pressure on groups to migrate, which in turn caused conflict with local groups. One of these groups was the Montgomery Complex, in the Potomac Piedmont & Ridge and Valley. Starting from 1300, the populations moved themselves into fortified towns, likely from outside conflict with Keyser/Luray Complex peoples migration.
The Keyser/Luray Complex had migrated to the region in order to dominate the lucrative Conestoga and Carolina Paths, which intersects in the region.[22] Chiefs, or lords, all the way in Florida would export marine shell north through these trails, to be traded with groups in the Northeast where these marine shells hold ceremonial value.
This series of wars would tighten their alliance with the neighboring Piscataway, who shared a similar material culture and likely were both members of an ancestral defensive alliance that stretched as far north as modern dayAlbany under theMahican Confederation. This alliance was described to be "were so united, that whatsoever nation attacked the one, it was the same as attacking the whole." The Montgomery Complex were eventually forced to flee to the coast to their Piscataway allies in the late 14th to early 15th centuries.[22] In order to accommodate the new immigrants, and possibly also to aid the war effort, the Potomac Complex gradually centralized rule under the existing class of hereditary elite, indicated during contact period by their copper fish headdresses. These elite were composed ofWerowances, or regional chiefs,Wisos, who were held roles of priestly elders or great men[23] and, most importantly, the Tayac, known to the English as "Emperor of Piscataway."[24] The first Tayac was the Talak Uttapoingassinem of the Nanticokes from across the Chesapeake Bay, another member of the ancestral defensive alliance.[22] Likely through his power as both Talak of Nanticoke and Tayac of Piscataway (including the new Montgomery Complex immigrants), he held command over both thePatawomecks in the South and theSusquehannocks in the North.[25] Susquehannocks were the name given by Algonquians to the residents of the Susquehanna River (which translates to "muddy river"), therefore it was likely that the Susquehannocks controlled by Uttapoingassinem were not the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks encountered in historic times, but the likely Algonquian-speaking Shenks Ferry archaeological culture that predated the historic Iroquoian Susquehannocks. This is further supported by the similarity in material culture and the belief of some scholars of a migration out of Maryland being the origin of the Shenks Ferry culture.[26] The Shenks Ferry Susquehannock might've subsumed themselves under Uttapoingassinem as a form of protection against the encroaching Andaste/Iroquoian-Speaking Susquehannock, seeing that palisades, castles and fortifications pop up among the Shenks Ferry Susquehannock around the same period a few decades after the Montgomery Complex moved in with the Piscataway (and presumably when Uttapoingassinem assumed control). Control over the Patawomecks is also supported by their own oral history which states some generations ago they were in allied union with the Piscataways.
Over time, the ties between the constituent groups of Uttapoingassinem's polity disintegrated. The Shenks Ferry Susquehannock's defense came too late; their northern sites begin to disappear a decade after the establishment of the fortifications in ~1450.[26] They probably retreated South to create the villages of Ozinies and Tockwogh.[22] The Patawomecks meanwhile, drifted away, 2 centuries later becoming bitter enemies of the Piscataway under their own Werowance. The Nanticoke too, likely split apart because of theirpatrilineal succession custom, as opposed to the Piscataway traditionallymatrilineal succession.[27] Despite this, relations remained amicable between the two "emperors," who recognize each other as family and remained in the ancestral defensive alliance.[22]
By 1600, incursions by theSusquehannock and other Iroquoian peoples from the north had almost entirely destroyed many of the Algonquian settlements above present-dayGreat Falls, Virginia on the Potomac River.[29] The villages below the fall line survived by banding together for the common defense. They gradually consolidated authority under hereditary chiefs, who exacted tribute, sent men to war, and coordinated the resistance against northern incursions and rival claimants to the lands. A hierarchy of places and rulers emerged:hamlets without hereditary rulers paid tribute to a nearbyvillage. Itschief, orwerowance, appointed a "lesser king" to each dependent settlement. Changes in social structure occurred and religious development exalted the hierarchy. By the end of the 16th century, each werowance on the north bank of the Potomac was subject to theparamount chief: the ruler of the Piscataway known as theTayac.[citation needed]
The English explorerCaptain John Smith first visited the upperPotomac River in 1608. He recorded the Piscataway by the nameMoyaons, after their "king's house", i.e., capital village or Tayac's residence, also spelledMoyaone, located at Accokeek Creek Site atPiscataway Park. Closely associated with them were theNacotchtank people (Anacostans) who lived around present-dayWashington, DC, and theTaux (Doeg) on the Virginia side of the river. Rivals and reluctant subjects of the Tayac hoped that the English newcomers would alter the balance of power in the region.[citation needed]
In search of trading partners, particularly for furs, theVirginia Company, and later,Virginia Colony, consistently allied with enemies of the settled Piscataway. Their entry into the dynamics began to shift regional power. By the early 1630s, the Tayac's hold over some of his subordinate werowances had weakened considerably.[citation needed]
However, when the English began to colonize what is now Maryland in 1634, theTayac Kittamaquund managed to turn the newcomers into allies. He had come to power that year after killing his brotherWannas, the former Tayac.[30] He granted the English a former Indian settlement, which they renamedSt. Mary's City after Queen Henrietta Marie, the wife of King Charles I.[citation needed]
The Tayac intended the new colonial outpost to serve as a buffer against the IroquoianSusquehannock incursions from the north.Kittamaquund and his wifeconverted toChristianity in 1640 by their friendship with the EnglishJesuit missionary FatherAndrew White, who also performed their marriage.[30] Their only daughterMary Kittamaquund became a ward of the English governor and of his sister-in-law, colonistMargaret Brent, both of whom held power in St. Mary's City and saw to the girl's education, including learning English.[citation needed]
At the age of 10, Mary Kittamaquund married the 38 year old English colonistGiles Brent, one of Margaret's brothers. After trying to claim Piscataway territory upon her father's death, the couple moved south across the Potomac to establish a trading post and live atAquia Creek in present-dayStafford County, Virginia.[31] They were said to have had three or four children together. Brent married again in 1654, so his child bride may have died young.[citation needed]
Benefits to the Piscataway in having the English as allies and buffers were short-lived. TheMaryland Colony was initially too weak to pose a significant threat. Once the English began to develop a stronger colony, they turned against the Piscataway. By 1668, the western shoreAlgonquian were confined to two reservations, one on theWicomico River and the other on a portion of the Piscataway homeland. Refugees from dispossessed Algonquian nations merged with the Piscataway.[citation needed]
Colonial authorities forced the Piscataway to permit theSusquehannock, an Iroquoian-speaking people, to settle in their territory after having been defeated in 1675 by the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee), based in New York. The traditional enemies eventually came to open conflict in present-day Maryland. With the tribes at war, the Maryland Colony expelled the Susquehannock after they had been attacked by the Piscataway. The Susquehannock suffered a devastating defeat.[citation needed]
Making their way northward, the surviving Susquehannock joined forces with their former enemy, the Haudenosaunee, the five-nationIroquois Confederacy. Together, the Iroquoian tribes returned repeatedly to attack the Piscataway. The English provided little help to their Piscataway allies. Rather than raise a militia to aid them, the Maryland Colony continued to compete for control of Piscataway land.[citation needed]
Piscataway fortunes declined as theEnglishMaryland colony grew and prospered. They were especially adversely affected by epidemics ofinfectious disease, which decimated their population, as well as by intertribal and colonial warfare. After the English tried to remove tribes from their homelands in 1680, the Piscataway fled from encroaching English settlers toZekiah Swamp inCharles County, Maryland.[32] There they were attacked by theIroquois but peace was negotiated.[33]
In 1697, the Piscataway relocated across the Potomac and camped near what is nowThe Plains, Virginia, inFauquier County. Virginia settlers were alarmed and tried to persuade the Piscataway to return to Maryland, though they refused. Finally in 1699, the Piscataway moved north to what is now called Heater's Island (formerly Conoy Island) in the Potomac nearPoint of Rocks, Maryland. They remained there until after 1722.[34]
In the 18th century, the Maryland Colony nullified all Indian claims to their lands and dissolved the reservations. By the 1720s, some Piscataway as well as other Algonquian groups had relocated to Pennsylvania just north of theSusquehannah River. These migrants from the general area of Maryland are referred to as the Conoy and theNanticoke. They were spread along the western edge of thePennsylvania Colony, along with the AlgonquianLenape who had moved west from modern New Jersey, theTutelo, theShawnee and someIroquois.[35] The Piscataway were said to number only about 150 people at that time. They sought the protection of the powerfulHaudenosaunee, but the Pennsylvania Colony also proved unsafe.[citation needed]
Most of the surviving tribe migrated north in the late eighteenth century and were last noted in the historical record in 1793 atDetroit, following the American Revolutionary War, when the United States gained independence. In 1793 a conference inDetroit reported the peoples had settled in Upper Canada, joining other Native Americans who had been allies of the British in the conflict. Today, descendants of the northern migrants live on theSix Nations of the Grand River First Nation reserve in Ontario,Canada.[36]
Some Piscataway may have moved south toward theVirginia Colony. They were believed to have merged with theMeherrin[citation needed] and among someTuscarora remnants who had not yet moved north to the Six Nations of the Grand River.[37]
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Numerous contemporary historians and archaeologists, includingWilliam H. Gilbert,Frank G. Speck,Helen Rountree,Lucille St. Hoyme,Paul Cissna,T. Dale Stewart,Christopher Goodwin,Christian Feest, James Rice, andGabrielle Tayac, have documented that a small group of Piscataway families continued to live in their homeland. Although the larger tribe was destroyed as an independent, sovereign polity, descendants of the Piscataway survived. They formed unions with others in the area, including European indentured servants and free or enslaved Africans. They settled into rural farm life and were classified asfree people of color, but some kept Native American cultural traditions. For years the United States censuses did not have separate categories for Indians. Especially in the slave states, allfree people of color were classified together as black, in thehypodescent classification resulting from the racial caste of slavery.[citation needed]
In the late 19th century,archaeologists,journalists, andanthropologists interviewed numerous residents in Maryland who claimed descent from tribes associated with the former Piscatawaychiefdom. Uniquely among most institutions, theCatholic Church consistently continued to identify Indian families by that classification in their records. Such church records became valuable resources for scholars and family and tribal researchers. Anthropologists andsociologists categorized the self-identified Indians as atri-racial community. They were commonly called a name (regarded as derogatory by some) "Wesorts."[citation needed]
In the 19th century, census enumerators classified most of the Piscataway individuals as "free people of color", "Free Negro"[38] or "mulatto" on state and federal census records, largely because of their intermarriage with blacks and Europeans. The dramatic drop in Native American populations due toinfectious disease and warfare, plus a racial segregation based onslavery, led to a binary view of race in the former colony. By contrast,Catholic parish records in Maryland and some ethnographic reports accepted Piscataway self-identification and continuity of culture as Indians, regardless of mixed ancestry. Such a binary division of society in the South increased after theAmerican Civil War and theemancipation of slaves. Southern whites struggled to regain political and social dominance of their societies during and after theReconstruction era. They were intent on controlling thefreedmen and assertingwhite supremacy.[citation needed]
Although a few families identified as Piscataway by the early 20th century, prevailing racial attitudes during the late 19th century, and imposition ofJim Crow policies, over-determined official classification of minority groups of color as black. In the 20th century, Virginia and other southern states passed laws to enforce the "one-drop rule", classifying anyone with a discernible amount ofAfrican ancestry as "negro", "mulatto", or "black". For instance, in Virginia,Walter Plecker, Registrar of Statistics, ordered records to be changed so that members of Indian families were recorded as black, resulting in Indian families losing their ethnic identification.[39]
Phillip Sheridan Proctor, legally changed toTurkey Tayac, was born in 1895. Proctor wished to revive the use of the titletayac, a hereditary office which he claimed had been handed down to him. Proctor/Tayac was instrumental in supporting theAmerican Indian Movement and tribal culture among Piscataway and other Indian descendants throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.[citation needed]
Proctor/Tayac was a prominent figure in the early and mid-twentieth century cultural revitalization movements. His leadership inspired tribes other than the Piscataway, and revival has also occurred among other SoutheasternAmerican Indian communities. These include theLumbee,Nanticoke, andPowhatan of the Atlantic coastal plain. During an era when American Indian identity was being regulated to some extent byblood quantum, outlined in theIndian Reorganization Act, Proctor/Tayac organized American Indian peoples that gave priority to self-identification.[citation needed]
There are still Indian people in southern Maryland, living without a reservation in the vicinity of US 301 betweenLa Plata andBrandywine. They are formally organized into several groups, all bearing the Piscataway name.[40]
After Proctor/Tayac died in 1978, the Piscataway split into three groups (outlined below): the Piscataway Conoy Confederacy and Subtribes (PCCS), the Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, and the Piscataway Indian Nation. The official burying of Proctor/Tayac was filled with tribal tension and drove a great wedge that still exists among them today. Despite having been granted congressional permission to bury Proctor/Tayac on their ancestral lands located at Piscataway Park of National Park Service, various tribal citizens celebrated the death by spitting, dancing, and singing over Proctor/Tayac's gravesite; some sought to immediately claim chiefdom over the community; others wished to focus on Piscataway Tribal Issues and not pan-Indian movements.
In response, the following groups were formed:
These three groups continue to disagree over a number of issues: seeking state and federal tribal recognition, developing casinos on their land if recognition were gained, determining which individuals are legitimately Piscataway, and if the Piscataway can once again unite or even work together.[2][42][41]
In the late 1990s, after conducting an exhaustive review of primary sources, a Maryland-state appointed committee, including agenealogist from the Maryland State Archives, validated the claims of core Piscataway families to Piscataway heritage.[43] A fresh approach to understanding individual and family choices and self-identification among American Indian and African-American cultures is underway at several research universities. Unlike during the years of racial segregation, when all people of any African descent were classified as black, new studies emphasize the historical context and evolution of seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century ethnic cultures and racial categories. The State of Maryland appointed a panel of anthropologists, genealogists, and historians to review primary sources related to Piscataway genealogy. The panel concluded that some contemporary self-identified Piscataway descended from the historic Piscataway.[44]
In 1996 the Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs (MCIA) suggested granting state recognition to the Piscataway Conoy Confederacy and Subtribes. Critics were concerned about some of the development interests that backed the Piscataway Conoy campaign and feared gaming interests. (Since the late twentieth century, many recognized tribes have established casinos and gaming entertainment on their reservations to raise revenues.) Gov.Parris Glendening, who was opposed to gambling, denied the tribe's request.[2]
In 2004, GovernorBob Ehrlich also denied the Piscataway Conoy's renewed attempt for state recognition, stating that they failed to prove that they were descendants of the historical Piscataway Indians, as required by state law. Throughout this effort, the Piscataway-Conoy stated they had no intent to build and operate casinos.[2][42]
In December 2011, the Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs stated that the Piscataway had provided adequate documentation of their history and recommended recognition. On January 9, 2012, Gov.Martin O'Malley issued executive orders recognizing all three Piscataway groups as Native American tribes. As part of the agreement that led to recognition, the tribes renounced any plans to launch gambling enterprises, and the executive orders state that the tribes do not have any special "gambling privileges".[45] Remaining debates include the legality of disenfranchising community rights to "gambling privileges" made in exchange, and the announcement of an MGM Casino in the National Harbor made shortly after the tribe's state recognition.
These are historical Piscataway people. List any modern or living Piscataway people under their specific tribe.
We are/pɪsˈkætəˌweɪ/ Indians, and that is actually the English way to say the name, and—/ˌpɪskəˈtɑːwə/.
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