Nottoway people

The Nottoway (also Nottaway) are an

The term Nottoway may derive from Nadawa or Nadowessioux (widely translated as "poisonous snake"), an Algonquian-language term.

A potential etymology in Virginia of *na:tawe:wa (Nottoway) refers to *na:t- 'seeker' + -awe: 'fur,'[2] or literally 'traders'^[3] The earliest colonial Virginia reference to "Nottoway" also frames Algonquian/Iroquoian exchanges in terms of trade: roanoke (shell beads) for skins (deer and otter).^[4]

The Algonquian speakers also referred to the Nottoway, Meherrin and Tuscarora people (also of the Iroquoian-language family) as Mangoak or Mangoags, a term which English colonists used in their records from 1584 to 1650. This term, Mengwe or Mingwe, was used by the Dutch and applied to the Iroquoian Susquehannock ("White Minquas") and Erie people ("Black Minquas").^{[citation needed]}

The name Cheroenhaka is an autonym for Nottoway people.^[5] The meaning of the name Cheroenhaka (in Tuscarora: Čiruʼęhá·ka·ʼ^[6]) is uncertain. (It has been spelled in various ways: Cherohakah, Cheroohoka or Tcherohaka.) The linguist Blair A. Rudes analyzed the second element as -hakaʼ meaning "one or people who is/are characterized in a certain way." He conjectured that the first element of the name was related to the Tuscarora term čárhuʼ (meaning "tobacco", as both tribes used this product in ceremonies).^[7] The term has also been interpreted as "People at the Fork of the Stream".^[8]

The

By 1820, three elderly people still spoke Nottoway.[7] In that year John Wood collected over 250-word samples from one of these, Chief Edith Turner (Nottoway, ca. 1754–1838). He sent them to Thomas Jefferson, who shared them with Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. In their correspondence, these two men quickly confirmed that the Nottoway language was of the Iroquoian family. Several additional words, for a total of about 275, were collected by James Trezvant after 1831 and published by Albert Gallatin in 1836.^{[citation needed]}

In the early 20th century, John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt (1910) and Hoffman (1959) analyzed the Nottoway vocabulary in comparison with Tuscarora, also Iroquoian, and found them closely related.^{[citation needed]}

The Nottoway, like their close, fellow Iroquoian neighbors, the Meherrin and Tuscarora, lived just west of the

By 1681, hostile tribes caused the Nottoway to relocate southward to Assamoosick Swamp in modern Surry County. In 1694 they moved again, to the mouth of a swamp in what is now Southampton County. Around this time, they absorbed the remnants of the Weyanoke, an Algonquian-speaking tribe that had formerly been part of the Powhatan confederacy.^[10]

The Nottoway suffered high fatalities from

The Nottoway who remained in Virginia signed a treaty with the British in 1713, that secured two small tracts of land within their historical territory.[11] They sold the smaller of the two tracts in 1734. In 1744, they sold 5,000 acres of their remaining land,^[11] followed by sales in 1748 and 1756.^[13]

By 1772, only 35 Nottoway lived on their land, of which they leased half.^[14] At the end of the 19th century, the Weyanock merged completely into the Nottoway, with the surnames Wynoake and Wineoak appearing on public documents.^[15] When the tribe sold more land in 1794, the Nottoway consisted of 7 men and 10 women and children.^[16]

From 1803 to 1809, Southampton County courts heard a protracted land dispute.^[16] At the time, as historian Helen C. Rountree wrote, "The Nottoway had no formally organized government. European-American trustees tasked with overseeing tribal issues were charged with drafting bylaws for the tribe.^[16] Tribal members married European-American and African-American spouses.^[13]

In 1808, only 17 Nottoway survived, including Billy Woodson and Edith Turner, who became a chief. They owned 3,900 acres and cultivated 144 acres of corn.^[17] Turner, who ran a successful farm on the reservation, successfully advocated for four Nottoway orphans to return to the tribe.^[18]

In 1818, tribal members petitioned the Virginia General Assembly to be allowed to sell almost half of the remaining 3,912 acres of reservation land. The petition stated that there were only 26 Nottoways.^[19] By 1821, 30 Nottoways requested termination and for their land to be allotted in fee simple title.^[20] The Virginia General Assembly rejected that request and another in 1822.^[21] In 1823, Billy Woodson (Nottoway), an educated son of a European-American, requested termination, and in 1824 Virginia passed a law that would gradually terminate its responsibility and allowed remaining Nottoways to request individual allotment of land.^[22] Woodson (under the name Bozeman) and Turner applied for their allotment and shares of a fund in 1830.^[23] When Turner died in 1838, her estate went to Edwin Turner (Nottoway), whose children owned the last of the Nottoway reservation.^[24] While other tribal members received individual land allotments through the years, Turner kept his and purchased more land.^[25] The last tribally held land was allotted in 1878.^[26]

Despite an 1833 Virginia law that stated descendants of English and American Indian people were "persons of mixed blood, not being negroes of mulattos"; however, with the end of the reservation, white Virginians considered them to be "free Negroes because of their African ancestry," as Rountree wrote.^[27]

The tribe depended on the cultivation of staples, such as the

The tribe likely had clans, but ethnographer John R. Swanton wrote, "the fact cannot be established."^[28]

In the early 18th century, Nottoway girls wore wampum necklaces.^[29]

The state of Virginia recognized two