Nottoway People - Name

Name

The meaning of the name Cheroenhaka (Tuscarora: Čiruʼęhá·ka·ʼ) is uncertain. (It has been spelled in various ways: Cherohakah, Cheroohoka or Tcherohaka.) The late Iroquoian scholar Dr. Blair 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 čárhuʼ (tobacco). The term has also been interpreted as "People at the Fork of the Stream".

The term Nottoway may derive from Nadawa or Nadowessioux (widely translated as "poisonous snake"), an Algonquian-language term which speakers used for their competitors of the other language families, the Iroquoian- or Siouan-speaking tribes. Because the Algonquian occupied the coastal areas, they were the first tribes met by the English. The colonists often adopted such Algonquian ethnonyms, names for other tribes, not realizing at first that these differed from the tribes' autonyms, or names for themselves.

Frank Siebert suggests the term natowewa stems from Proto-Algonquian *na:tawe:wa and refers to the eastern massasauga or pit viper in the Great Lakes region. The extension of the meaning as "Iroquoian speakers" is secondary. In Algonquian languages beyond the geographical range of the viper (i.e. Cree and Southern Algonquian), the term's primary reference continues to focus on *na:t- 'close upon, mover towards, go after, seek out, fetch' and *-awe: 'condition of heat, state of warmth,' but no longer references the viper. Instead, particularly in the South, the 'Iroquoian' designation is primary. The semantic meaning may not relate to snakes at all, but refers to the cultural trading position of the Virginia-Carolina Iroquois as middle men between Algonquian and Siouan-speakers. Other historical developments in Algonquian languages extend the meaning of *-awe to 'fur or hair' (i.e. Cree, Montagnais, Ojibway, Shawnee), an obvious relationship to 'state of warmth.' A potential etymology in Virginia of *na:tawe:wa (Nottoway) refers to *na:t- 'seeker' + -awe: 'fur,' or literally 'traders' The earliest Virginia reference to "Nottoway" also frames Algonquian/Iroquoian exchanges in terms of trade: roanoke (shell beads) for skins (deer and otter)

The Algonquian speakers also called the Nottoway, Meherrin and Tuscarora (also of the Iroquoian-language family) — Mangoak or Mangoags, a term which the English used in their records from 1584 to 1650. This term, Mengwe or Mingwe, was transliterated by the Dutch and applied to the Iroquoian Susquehannock ("White Minquas") and Eries ("Black Minquas"). Another variation was the later Mingo, which referred to descendants of the tribes who had been partly assimilated into the Six Nations and moved into Ohio and the Midwest.