Nansemond

Native American tribe

The Nansemond are the Indigenous people of the Nansemond River, a 20 mile long tributary of the James River in Virginia. Nansemond people lived in settlements on both sides of the Nansemond River where they fished (with the name "Nansemond" meaning "fishing point" in Algonquian), harvested oysters, hunted, and farmed in fertile soil. Today, Nansemond people belong to the federally recognized Nansemond Indian Nation. Gradually pushed off their lands in the colonial and following periods, the Nansemond struggled to maintain their culture. They reorganized in the late 20th century and gained state recognition from Virginia in 1985. They gained federal recognition in 2018 after Congress passed a bill. Many members of the tribe still live on former ancestral lands in Suffolk, Chesapeake, and surrounding cities.

The Nansemond language is believed to have been Algonquian, similar to that of many other Atlantic coastal tribes. But only six words have been preserved, which are not enough to identify it. The six words, which may have been corrupted in memory by the time they were written down in 1901, are nĭkătwĭn (one), näkătwĭn (two), nikwásăti (three), toisíaw’ (four), mishä́naw (five), and marímo (dog).

The Nansemond people were members of the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom, which consisted of about 30 tribes, estimated to have numbered more than 20,000 people in the coastal area of what became Virginia. They paid fealty to a paramount chief, known as the Powhatan. They lived along the Nansemond River, an area they called Chuckatuck. In 1607, the Jamestown settlers had begun to explore the Nansemond River, following the river's oyster beds. Relationships between the colonists and the Nansemond, already strained by Indian raids, deteriorated further in 1609 when a group of Jamestown settlers were sent to the Indians to trade ratchets and copper for food. The colonists never returned. A search party was formed and coming upon some Indians, were told the group was sacrificed, their brains cut and scraped from their skulls with mussel shells. In retaliation the colonists went to Dumpling Island, where the head chief lived and where the tribe's temples and sacred items were kept. The raiding party destroyed the burial sites of tribal leaders and temples. Houses and religious sites were ransacked for valuables, such as pearls and copper ornaments, which were customarily buried with the bodies of leaders. They had eight children together (Elizabeth, John, Jordan, Keziah, Nathaniel, Richard, Samuel, and William). Although Christianized, Elizabeth likely raised their children in Nansemond culture. The tribe had a matrilineal kinship system in which the children were considered to be born into their mother's clan and people. Some Nansemond claim descent from this marriage.</blockquote>

Affected by encroaching colonists throughout the 17th century, the Nansemond tribe eventually split apart. Those who had become Christians adopted European manners of living and stayed along the Nansemond River as farmers. The other Nansemond, known as the "Pochick," engaged in an unsuccessful war with New England colonists in 1644, and the survivors of the conflict fled southwest to the Nottoway River, where they were assigned a reservation by the House of Burgesses. By 1744 they had ceased using the reservation and gone to live with the Nottoway Indians [note: this was an Iroquoian language tribe] on another reservation nearby The Nansemond sold their reservation in 1792 and were known as "citizen" Indians. In November 2010, the Suffolk City Council agreed to transfer this land back to the Nansemond. In June 2011, everything stalled because of concerns that the tribe had with the proposed development agreement. In August 2013, the City of Suffolk transferred Nansemond ancestral lands back to the tribe. That November, members of the Nansemond Tribe gathered at the historic site of Mattanock Town and blessed the land. The tribe will use this site to reconstruct the settlement of Mattanock, as well as a community center, museum, pow wow ground, among other facilities. They plan to attract tourists by demonstrating their heritage. As a "citizen tribe", they gained state recognition in 1984 and federal recognition in 2018. The current chief is Keith Anderson. These landless tribes had each applied for federal recognition since the late 20th century through the regular process of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in the Department of Interior. They had difficulty showing cultural and political continuity since the period of their tribes' dealings with the colony and state. In part this was due to racial discrimination by the European Americans, magnified by Virginia's having been a slave society. As the Nansemond and other tribal peoples intermarried with whites or African Americans, European Americans assumed they were no longer "Indian". But if the mother was Nansemond, she usually raised her children in their tradition. During the early 20th century, Virginia passed a law establishing a binary system of the "one drop rule", requiring each individual to be classified as white or colored (the latter covered anyone with any known African ancestry, regardless of other ancestry or cultural context). Administrators refused to acknowledge families who claimed to be Indian and generally classified them as black, destroying the continuity of records. By contrast, tribal members who were Catholic continued to be registered by churches as Indian for baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Supporters of these tribes gaining federal recognition proposed a bill in 2003, the "Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act". In 2009 supporters again proposed this bill and by June 2009, the bill passed the House Committee on Natural Resources and the US House of Representatives. A companion bill was sent to the Senate the date after the bill was voted on in the House. That bill was sent to the Senate's Committee on Indian Affairs. On October 22, 2009, the Senate committee approved the bill, and on December 23 was placed on the Senate's Legislative calendar. The bill had a hold placed for "jurisdictional concerns" by Senator Tom Coburn (R OK), who urged they apply for recognition through the BIA. But as noted above, the Virginia tribes have lost valuable documentation because of the state's passage of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, requiring classification of all residents as white or black (colored). As implemented by Walter Plecker, the first registrar (1912–1946) of the newly created Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics, records of many Virginia born tribal members were changed from Indian to "colored" because he decided some families were mixed race and was imposing the one drop rule. After more delays, the bill was finally passed in January 2018, and six tribes in Virginia gained federal recognition.