Native responses to the ongoing challenges of colonialism - Native peoples of the Chesapeake region and the enduring effects of colonialism - We have a story to tell: Native peoples of the Chesapeake region

Detail of 1775 painting of William Penn making a treaty with Indians when he founded the province of Pennsylvania in 1681.

John Hall’s 1775 painting depicts William Penn making a treaty with the Indians in 1681, when he founded the province of Pennsylvania. John Hall (1739–1797), after Benjamin West. William Penn’s treaty with the Indians, when he founded the province of Pennsylvania in North America, 1681. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photgraphs Division. About the painting

The pressures on Chesapeake Native peoples mounted as the populations of the colonies and later the United States grew. From the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, the communities were forced to devise a number of strategies to survive and to keep their Native identities, histories, and cultures alive.

Emigration

As the colonists acquired more and more Native lands, some tribes emigrated to other areas where they could live more peacefully. The Nanticoke and the Piscataway central chiefs and their councils convinced most of their people to move to Pennsylvania by the early 1700s. However, some of the people decided to remain. Despite the ongoing conflicts with the colonists, many Nanticoke and Piscataway people could not part with their original homeland. Some tribal members were able to become engaged in the colonial economy as farmers or in other occupations.

Pennsylvania’s tolerant attitude toward Indians lured Nanticoke and Piscataway emigrants to the colony. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, envisioned a society in which American Indians and whites would live as “neighbors and friends.” This was an important part of what Penn called a “holy experiment.” In a letter to the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) tribe, Penn expressed his hopes for an honorable peace:

I desire to win and gain your love and friendship by a kind, just and peaceable life.

— William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylania 1680–1684: A Documentary History. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983

Looking to govern Native Americans who sought refuge in the colony, Penn formed a partnership with the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, a powerful alliance of Native nations in the Northeast. The Iroquois, once enemies of the Chesapeake chiefdoms, became protectors of those Nanticoke and Piscataway who relocated. The Iroquois called the Piscataway the Conoy — a designation they eventually incorporated. They are now often referred to as the Piscataway Conoy.

Life was relatively peaceful for the Nanticoke and Piscataway in Pennsylvania until the French and Indian War broke out in 1754. The original harmony that William Penn hoped for suddenly vanished. Though few Pennsylvania tribes sided with the French, the English colony of Pennsylvania declared war on all Native peoples, even those who stayed neutral. At that point, some Nanticoke and Piscataway moved west to fight against the British. They would later join a movement of many tribes to form an American Indian country under the leadership of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa. Others moved north to become members of the Iroquois Confederacy.

The Continuing Struggle for Native Lands

The Native peoples of the Chesapeake region experienced enormous pressures to give up their lands over a long period of time. Except for the Mattaponi and Pamunkey, all tribes in the Chesapeake region that originally had reservations lost them. Despite losing their lands, many tribes continued to live within the old boundaries of their original reservations, and still do today. The communities that retained their reservations set up new governments made up of a chief and a men’s council. These governments were modeled after the colonial or state governments rather than the old chieftainships.

The Pamunkey and Mattaponi have struggled for decades to retain their reservation lands. In 1836, local whites asked the General Assembly of Virginia to sell the Pamunkey Reservation. At that time, Virginia was a slave-holding state with strict racial laws. A number of Virginia lawmakers wanted to expel all American Indians and free African Americans from the state. They accused the Pamunkey of being too different from their Pamunkey ancestors to still have a reservation, and argued that intermarriage with other races had changed them. The Pamunkey petitioned the General Assembly to keep their reservation and eventually won. The case was one of many that the Pamunkey and Mattaponi would have to fight to keep their reservations.

The [Nansemond] tribe managed to hold on to some of their lands until 1792. The petition filed to sell the remaining land holdings of the Nansemond was probably illegal and by law should never have taken place. But that’s another sad story, and I’m not sure that people are ready to hear about that part of our Virginia history.
— Chief Emeritus Oliver Perry (Nansemond), published in: We’re Still Here. Richmond, Virginia: Palari Publishing, 2006.

Assimilation

When people lose their own ways of living and take on new ones it is called assimilation. In the centuries after European contact, many Piscataway, Nanticoke, and Powhatan individuals either chose or were forced to assimilate non-Native ways of living. Language, religion, and other aspects of culture usually change as a result of assimilation. Sometimes Native Chesapeake peoples assimilated when they left their homes in search of work or after marriage to a person from a different ethnic background. Sometimes tribal members chose to assimilate in order to escape the shame inflicted by the larger society, which stereotyped Indian people as ignorant or backwards. Some saw assimilation as a way to avoid more wars and conflict.

English efforts to change Native peoples were often driven by a sense of superiority—that English people were civilized and that Native people were “savages.” Two major ways that the English brought about the assimilation of
Native peoples were education and religious conversion. The colonists were aware of the tremendous importance that language plays in culture. Therefore, Native children were forced to learn English in schools, erasing Native languages from most tribal members’ lives.

All Native American tribes had their own religions and spiritual beliefs long before Europeans arrived in North America. Conversion to European religions was not something all Native people of the Chesapeake were initially receptive to, but ultimately, many of them accepted the change. Some practiced their traditional beliefs in addition to the Christian customs, seeing no conflict between continuing their traditional religious observances and attending church.

Photograph of St. Ignatius Church, Port Tobacco, Maryland.

St. Ignatius Church, Port Tobacco, Maryland, where Piscataway families have worshipped since the 1640s. St. Ignatius Church, Port Tobacco, Maryland, where Piscataway families have worshipped since the 1640s. Courtesy St. Ignatius Church. Photo by Walter Larrimore, National Museum of the American Indian, 2006. . About the photograph

Ironically, churches and schools presented an unexpected opportunity that benefited Native Americans: they served as places where Chesapeake tribes could keep their communities together and maintain their identity. This positive aspect of Native churches and schools was an unexpected outcome of the racial segregation enforced by non-Natives. For example, the Chickahominy, the Mattaponi, and other Powhatan tribes formed their own Baptist congregations because they were not allowed to attend white churches. At the same time, a number of tribes started their own schools because their children could not attend schools with white children. For Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway peoples who had lost their reservations, churches and schools helped to sustain distinctive communities.

Assimilation did not erode all Native cultural practices. Among the Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway, there have always been those who specialize in healing the sick and attending to the spiritual needs of the people. They knew which plants could heal certain illnesses; they knew how to care for injured people or those suffering from emotional disturbances, grief, or extreme hardship. Because non-Natives viewed Native cultures as inferior, some Native people had to practice these healing traditions in secret. Others, however, were open about their abilities and used their knowledge to help tribal members and people of other races as well.