Nottoway People - History

History

The Cheroenhaka, like their close Iroquoian neighbours, the Meherrin and Tuscarora, lived just west of the fall line. They were first visited and described by the explorer Edward Bland on an expedition from Fort Henry, as he noted in his journal for August 27, 1650. At the time, the people numbered no more than 400-500. Bland visited two of their three towns, on Stoney Creek and the Rowantee Branch of the Nottoway River, in what is now Sussex County. These towns were led by the brothers Oyeocker and Chounerounte.

The Nottoway and Meherrin became friendly with the English. They were the only tribes to send warriors to help the English against the Susquehannock (also Iroquoian speakers) in 1675. Following Bacon's Rebellion, both tribes signed the Treaty of Middle Plantation in 1677, thereby becoming Tributary Nations to the Virginia Colony.

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-language tribe that had formerly been part of the Powhatan Confederacy.

Although never numerous, the Nottoway were able to keep their organization. They did not disappear from records, merge into other tribes, or get pushed too far from their original homeland. Scholars believe the early Nottoway were similar in culture to the Tuscarora and Meherrin. The tribe depended on the cultivation of staples, such as the three sisters — maize, squash, and beans. This cultivation was typically done by women, while the men hunted game and fished in the rivers. They built multi-family dwellings known as longhouses, in communities protected by stockade fences.

The Nottoway suffered high fatalities from epidemics of new Eurasian infectious diseases, such as measles and smallpox, to which they had no natural immunity. These had been brought about by European contact, as the diseases were by then endemic among Europeans. Tribal warfare and encroaching colonists also lowered their numbers. When the Tuscarora migrated northward ca. 1720 to become the Sixth Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy in New York, some Nottoway also migrated there, while others remained in Virginia. It is probable that some Iroquois descendants, especially among the Tuscarora in New York and Canada, also have Nottoway ancestry.

Some Nottoway returned to the South, with bands of Tuscarora and Meherrin joining and merging with them. These groups went to South Carolina.