The Carolina Algonquians

Part 3a of a four-and-a-half part series creating a map of the Chesapeake area and surrounding environs circa the year 1600.  Click for: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3b, Part 4.

 

            § 1.  Historical background

On eighteenth-century French maps of North America you can sometimes find an interesting label under Carolina:

 

Carolina, named in honor of King Charles IX, by the French who discovered and took possession of it in 15.... / until the year 1660.  This is in reference to the French Huguenot colony of the 1560s, which consisted of Charlesfort in southern Georgia and later Fort Caroline in northern Florida.  The French colony was destroyed by the Spanish in 1565, and while both locations were indeed named after King Charles the Ninth of France, the idea that he remained the namesake of English Carolina was as the kids say "cope".  Because the area labeled on the maps clearly is English Carolina which, after all, is named for King Charles II of England.  Furthermore, the French never even called that area "Carolina" before the English started doing it (cf Salley 1926).  They usually called it Florida, as on this map of La Floride Françoise:

 

Map of Pierre du Val, 1665.

 

I bring this up because actually, funnily enough, the Carolinas are still kind of named after more than one King Charles.

 

If I could alter history but was only allowed to make minor, cosmetic changes, I would see to it that South Carolina is called "Carolina", Virginia is called "Jacobia", and North Carolina is called "Virginia"—each named for the monarch under whom English colonization began.  That would be cleaner, but alas in our actual timeline things are slightly messy.  North Carolina was originally named "Virginia" when Sir Walter Ralegh's men tried planting the first permanent English settlement on Roanoke Island.  This as you know didn't take.  There were actually two Roanoke colonies: the first lasted from 1585-6 but was then evacuated by the legendary English sea captain Sir Francis Drake.  A second group of colonists was planted there in 1587 but was gone by 1590, their ultimate fate unknown: they are remembered in history and legend as "The Lost Colony" [see note A at bottom].

 

In 1607 when the English returned to settle the Chesapeake Bay, they were still within the general region they considered "Virginia" so they inherited the name... though by now "the Virgin Queen" Elizabeth was dead, and the capital of their new Virginia was named James Town after King James (he of the Bible).  For some time thereafter the present North Carolina—which the English still considered theirs though only the occasional lone adventurer existed to preserve their squatter's-rights—was sometimes called "Old Virginia" or "South Virginia".  One map from 1650 gives it the nickname "Rawliana":

 

Map of John Farrer, 1650.

 

Meanwhile, in 1629 a charter for a new colony was granted by King Charles, intended to be located between English Virginia and Spanish Florida.  However, nothing became of this planned colony as things quickly got too hot at home—with the beheading of Charles, the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell, and all that—and no one was in the mood for colonization.  In 1663, after things had settled down a bit, a new grant was issued by the restored Stuart monarch Charles II.  It was essentially the same as the old grant but with a slightly revised name: the original colony was to have been named "Carolana", but the younger Charles—perhaps to make it more "his"—named the new colony "Carolina".  Both charters defined the colony as all land lying from 31°N to 36°N between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans... which not only arrogated the territories of several dozen Indian tribes but by implication claimed Spanish New Mexico as well.

 

Map from Walbert, "A little kingdom in Carolina".

Thus Carolina was named after two kings named Charles—only neither of them was French.

 

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The fruit of the Carolina grant was the city of Charleston (or "Charles Town") founded in 1670 by a group of English planters from Barbados.  This wasn't their first attempt: an earlier "Charles Town" had been built at Cape Fear in 1664 but was abandoned in 1667.  They in turn had been preceded by some Puritans from New England who tried settling Cape Fear in 1663.  But the second Charles Town became the real nucleus and capital, and thenceforth the "history of Carolina" was for all intents and purposes the history of South Carolina.

 

 

North Carolina didn't really belong, and it should have gone on being called "South Virginia" as it had before.  If you look at the area of English settlement in America as giant amoebae, then North Carolina first appears as a pseudopod extending south from Virginia.  People had been moving in there since around 1655 and settling along Chowan River and north of Albemarle Sound: the district later known as the County of Albemarle.  These settlers apparently called the region "Roanoke" but officially they were Virginians.  They were Virginians still when the 1663 charter came, as its original terms defined the border further south than it is today.  Only in 1665, when the border was officially changed to its present latitude, did they become—on paper—Carolinians (cf Salley 1926, Butler 1971, McIlvenna 2009).

 

In short: North Carolina was settled by the English in 1585-7 (unsuccessfully).  It was later resettled (successfully) from 1655 onward.  The seven decades in between (let's call it the intercolonial period) are mostly dark in the historical record, and reconstructing the Native American political landscape circa 1600 A.D. requires some interpolation of the evidence.

 

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            § 2.  Primary sources

It's not my interest here to retell the whole saga of Sir Walter Ralegh and the Roanoke venture—if you need a refresher then Lemmin0's video on Youtube is pretty good about it.

 

We obviously have no writings from the Second or "Lost" Colony (except for "C R O A T O A N"), but we do have some from the First Colony (1585-6).  Alas they too are less extensive than we'd hope.  The colony's most interesting members were John White and Thomas Harriot—they were the two I mentioned in Part 1 who spent time among the Chesepioc.  White was an artist whose paintings are still our main visual reference for Virginia-Carolina Algonquian lifestyles—he also made paintings of Timucuas from Florida and Inuits from Greenland.  Thomas Harriot was a scientist and polymath who among other things is known for his contributions to the sphere-packing problem in mathematics.  Both of these men produced works which are now lost, but it's Harriot's writings in particular that I miss the most as they allegedly included a dictionary of the Secotan language [note B].  He had learned to speak this language (to some extent at least) while he was still in England, by conversing with two Indian captives taken during a scouting voyage in 1584.

 

Comparison of some Algonquian languages around Chesapeake Bay.

 

These two Indians returned home in 1585 on the same flotilla that brought the first colonists.  Despite the fact that they had essentially been kidnapped, one of them—a fellow by the name of Manteo—became something of an anglophile, even opting to visit England for a second time in 1586 [note C].  According to some he was even made a baron of the English Empire and invested with fiefdoms in America: "Lord of Roanoke and Dasamonquepeuc".  I've heard contradictory reports whether this is true or not—if it was it can't have much pleased Chief Wingina, who was the actual lord of Roanoke and Dasamonquepeuc, as well as several other places.

 

Thomas Harriot's papers were destroyed in the Great Fire of London.  Many of White's sketches were tossed into the sea during the evacuation of the first Roanoke colony in 1586.  Fire and water, blasted things.  But I shouldn't make it sound like all of their materials were lost to history—they were not.  Most valuable here for my purposes are two maps made by John White: one of the Carolina sounds region:

 

 

...and another of the general southeast:

 

 

(Incidentally, I only reference the first map, so if I say "White's map" that's the one I mean.)

 

Not 100% sure when these maps were made—I've seen them cited as from either 1585 or 1586.  Nor do I know whether they were made while White was still in America, but if they were then that might account for the presence of certain additions and corrections on the later Theodor de Bry map of 1590.  De Bry was the man enlisted to convert White's drawings into engravings that could be printed in the published account of the Roanoke colony.  Unlike White, De Bry was not an eyewitness to the colony, and his map is much less geographically accurate: consequently it's sometimes seen as less reliable.  Others however think that De Bry may have based it on an otherwise-unattested map of White's, or that he made it in consultation with White or another colonist.

 

 

The protruding horn of the Outer Banks that you see on these and other early maps wasn't a mistake—that's a real feature that used to exist, called Cape Kenrick.  It was destroyed by a hurricane in the early 18th century, leaving the Outer Banks as they are now.  It's not something I can reproduce on my own maps.

 

As for textual sources: the surviving works of Harriot and White are useful to anthropologists for reconstructing the life and culture of the Carolina Algonquians.  But when it comes to the geography and politics—what I need to make a map—they're of less use, and instead we have to rely on the writings of two other men: ship captain Arthur Barlowe, and Ralph Lane, commander of the first Roanoke colony.  It was Lane whose violent personality led to the First Colony's failure—in particular, his ordering the death of chief Wingina.  However, "[in] spite of the development of unfriendly relations between the natives and colonists under Lane's governorship, Lane's account shows him to have been an individual of ethnological discernment," according to Maurice Mook (1944:184).

 

As scant as the records are from the Roanoke era (1584-90), they're even scantier for the Albemarle era (1655+).  People at the time just didn't seem to write much about the Indians—or about the interior in general—and therefore neithor do modern authors.  Quoth the adventurer John Lawson:

 

"'Tis a great Misfortune, that moſt of our Travellers, who go to this vaſt Continent in America, are Perſons of the meaner Sort, and generally of a very ſlender Education; who being hir'd by the Merchants, to trade amongſt the Indians, in which Voyages they often ſpend ſeveral Years, are yet at their Return, uncapable of giving any reaſonable Account of what they met withal in thoſe remote Parts; tho' the Country abounds with Curioſities worthy a nice Obſervation.  In this Point, I think, the French outſtrip us."

(John Lawson, preface to A New Voyage to Carolina, 1709)

 

Lawson looms large in this story.  He came to America from England essentially as a tourist, and from him we get our most vivid description of the North Carolina Indians, as well as our only surviving data on the Woccon and Pamlico languages.  Later he became Surveyor-General of North Carolina (map below), and was instrumental in the founding of Bath and New Bern.  Even his death was important: his capture and murder at the hands of the Tuscarora ended up igniting the Tuscarora War—possibly the most significant event in colonial North Carolina history.

 

Map of John Lawson, 1709.

 

Anyway, aside from Mr. Lawson's j'accuse I really can't say why the Albemarle settlers wrote so little about the Natives.  Noeleen McIlvenna writes that the initial settlers were on fairly good terms with their Indian neighbors... but also, Patrick Garrow writes that the records are "replete with examples of the minor clashes" between Indians and whites (1975:18).  It's probably dangerous to generalize in either direction.  But whether the settlers liked the Indians or not, they evidently were not interested in writing lengthly ethnological treatises.

 

On the other hand, McIlvenna also says that the Albemarle settlers were mostly religious dissidents, escaped servants, slaves, and other such castoffs who'd fled beyond the ominously-named Great Dismal Swamp to escape the all-seeing eye of colonial authority.  They weren't "off-the-grid" exactly... but they at least tried to keep a low profile.  This might explain the dearth of primary literature on the Native North Carolinians, since other such primary descriptions were oftentimes written with the explicit purpose of advertising their respective colonies.

 

But besides that, there just weren't as many Indians in North Carolina in the latter-1600s as there had been a century before.  The obvious culprit here is Old World disease, to which our friend John Lawson adds liquor:

 

"The Small-Pox and Rum have made ſuch a Deſtruction amongſt them, that, on good grounds, I do believe, there is not the ſixth Savage living within two hundred Miles of all our Settlements, as there were fifty Years ago.  Theſe poor Creatures have ſo many Enemies to deſtroy them, that it's a wonder one of them is left alive near us."

(Lawson 1709:224)

 

None of this is surprising.  Lawson further targets "the continual Wars theſe Savages maintain, one Nation againſt another"... and while it's highly unlikely that the Indians simply exterminated themselves in this way, it is possible that the fracas between English and Powhatan up in the Chesapeake triggered second-order shockwaves which, among other things, intensified intertribal conflict in Carolina.  I wouldn't discount slave raiding either, though I haven't read anyone specifically mention it operating here at this time.  The Francis Yeardley narrative (in Salley 1911) implies that by 1653 white fur traders had regularly been visiting Roanoke Island—who knows how many such traders, and for how long, had been buffeting that area with germs?  It must not be forgotten that history was still unfolding in the hinterland beyond the main Euro-Indian frontier.  For a rare glimpse of such history, see note D.

 

Thus we have the situation where our best information on the Indians of the North Carolina comes not from the people who dwelt there for decades and decades after 1655, but from those far fewer people who lived there only a year, and whose records anyway were partially destroyed.

 

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            § 3.  Geography and Archaeology

As I've said, North Carolina is more of a "South Virginia" from the perspective of European settlement.  The same is true from the Native American perspective as well.  The North Carolinian Indians tended to belong to the same linguistic groups as those in Virginia: Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan.  The South Carolinian Indians on the other hand—the Peedee and Cusabo and such—well, no one really knows what languages they spoke, but it probably was something different.

 

Recall from part 1 that in North Carolina the tidewater line cuts through the coastal plain splitting it in half.  Incidentally, this also very roughly marked the border between the Iroquoians of the upper coastal plain and the Carolina Algonquians of the lower tidewater.  I can't entirely explain why such an unobtrusive natural boundary would be so determinative—some say that the lifestyles of the two groups focused on harvesting different manner of sea creatures who are sensitive to such things.  Or maybe the hassle of paddling upriver even during high tide simply vexed the thalassocratic Algonquians more than the landlubbing Iroquoians?  Of course the border doesn't actually match the tidewater line on any map I've seen—more of a guideline I suppose.

 

 

The Algonquians and Iroquoians are also distinguished by their different classes of archaeological ware.  Iroquoian sites are classified as belonging to the Cashie phase, and Algonquian sites to the Colington phase.  Since archaeology is still voodoo sorcery to me, I can't tell you precisely what distinguishes the wares from the two phases—however one difference is that the Algonquian used crushed shell fragments to temper their pottery (meaning they mixed the fragments into the clay to prevent shrinking and cracking) whereas the Iroquoians used sand.

 

 

This, part 3a, is about the Algonquians.  Part 3b will cover the Iroquoians.

 

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            § 4.  Secondary sources

The Carolina Algonquians get much less attention than either their relatives to the north (the Powhatans) or their rivals to the west (the Tuscaroras, who you usually get if you search "North Carolina Indians"), and what little press they do get is often sidelined by attempts to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony.  However I've found three sources in particular to be especially useful in constructing the borders of the Carolina Algonquians.

 

My first source is Maurice Mook, Algonquian ethnohistory of the Carolina Sound (1944).  Despite being almost eight decades old, it is to my knowledge still the most detailed and thorough analysis of the Indian tribes and the locations of their villages.  It includes a map:

 

 

My second source is David Beers Quinn, The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590 (1955).  Quinn's commentary on village names and locations is found in Appendix I.  It also comes with a map: this scan was made for me by a library out-of-state so I can't attest to what the paper quality is like, or whether anyone could make a better scan.

 

 

My third source is Bernard G. Hoffman, Ancient Tribes Revisited: A Summary of Indian Distribution and Movement in the Northeastern United States from 1534 to 1779 (1967).  Hoffman's article has a much broader focus, and therefore he may have less specific insight regarding North Carolina in particular—but he offers some corrections to Mook, and unlike him his map has borders:

 

 

Mook, Quinn, and Hoffman are my three main sources, and I cite them often.

 

For comparison, some other maps—which are less useful, but still worth looking at:

 

Map from Frank Speck, The Ethnic Position of the Southeastern Algonkian (1924).  I have a lot of respect for Speck, as he was one of the first who I'd call "modern scholars" studying Native American history, but I seldom find myself actually using his stuff:

 

 

Map from Bernard G. Hoffman, Observations on Certain Ancient Tribes of the Northern Appalachian Province (1964).  This was the original article which Revisited is the sequel to, and the map it comes with has numerous issues:

 

 

Maps from Lewis Binford (1964 and 1967).  Binford was the recognized authority on the Indians of the Carolina sounds but—since he wrote more on the culture of the people, and I was just looking for locations—I didn't use him much as a source:

 

 

Similar things can be said of Helen Rountree, a specialist in Powhatan history and culture.  Her newest book on the Carolina Algonquians (2022) is less focused on geography, but it does have a map (I've added the labels from the key caption):

 

 

Map from Gerald P. Smith (1971).

 

 

Some of these maps are from sources concerned more with either the Virginia Algonquians or the Iroquoians.  For the Carolina Algonquians, you can see that the uncertainties and disagreements increase as you go south.

 

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§ 5.  The Carolina Algonquian "chiefdoms?"

The Algonquians of North Carolina (sensu lato) were the Chowanoc, Weapemeoc, Secotan, Moratuc, Pamlico, and Neusiok.  These were the southernmost of all the Algonquian tribes, and the southernmost representatives of the vast Algic phylum of languages which extends north into Labrador and westward almost to the Pacific Ocean.  Let's set the Neusiok aside for now—I'll discuss them along with the Coree in the final section below, as the Neusiok language is unattested and may not have actually been Algonquian.  There's also good, reasonable doubt as to the affiliation of the Moratuc, although I personally think they were Algonquians too (cf Goddard 2005).  The Chowanoc and Weapemeoc languages are also unattested, but anyone who seriously doubts their Algonquianity is just being silly if you ask me.  Only for Secotan and Pamlico do we have direct and incontrovertible evidence that they spoke Algonquian dialects—I'm using "Secotan" here to refer to the linguistic data from the Roanoke expeditions, and "Pamlico" to refer to the Algonquian language recorded by John Lawson in the 1700s.  I'm not really equipped to say whether these were even separate and distinct languages.  Linguists usually just refer to it all as "Carolina Algonquian".

 

Being as they were, the Carolina Algonquians were similar to their neighbors and relatives the Virginia Algonquians, and this includes being ruled by chiefs.  As among the Powhatan, the Secotan leaders were called weroance, and as elsewhere the English tended to refer to these weroances as "kings".  So for instance, the Chowanoc were said to be ruled by a king named Menatonon, the Weapemeoc by a king named Okisco, etc.  The king of Secotan and of Roanoke island was a man known as Wingina (later changed to Pemisapan)—it was he whom the Roanoke colonists dealt with directly.  He would eventually be killed and beheaded on the orders of Ralph Lane.

 

John White painting of a weroance, believed to be Wingina.

 

The Carolina Algonquians led similar lives to those in Virginia and Maryland (in her book about them, Helen Rountree will often supplement data from the Powhatan in cases where direct info on the Carolinians is lacking).  So were they organized into chiefdoms and paramountcies, as the Powhatans and Piscataways were?  They may have been... but the evidence is much weaker.  Many will say they were not.  Wingina was weroance of Roanoke and Dasamonquepeuc, so they say, but was not paramount chief of all the Secotan; neither was Okisco of the Weapemeoc, et cetera.  Rather these nations were alliances of multiple chiefdoms, and if such a chief as Okisco had more credibility over his fellow Weapemeoc chieftains, it wasn't because of his birth.

 

The problem is that we really only have the Roanoke documents to go off of.  Because by the Albemarle era (1655+), the Carolina Algonquians had become shadows of echoes of what they once were.  The Weapemeoc had disintegrated into the small bands of Yeopim, Poteskeet, Currituck, Pasquotank, and Perquiman (some of whom may not have even existed, cf Mook 1944:221).  The Secotan had dissolved into the Mattamuskeet, the Hatteras, and the "Bay River Indians" (Mook 1944:223, Garrow 1975:18).  These tribelets were all tiny in population.  The Chowanoc, Pamlico, and Neusiok survived, though similarly decreased in number.  The Moratuc evidently were gone.

 

It's not clear just what exactly happened between 1586 and ca. 1700, and that makes it hard to interpolate the data... balancing uncertainties on one end with other, different uncertainties on the other.  Thus it may be that the Poteskeet, Pasquotank, etc. had originally been component tribes of the united Weapemeoc, separating only when demographic conditions rendered such a large chiefdom unsustainable.  Or it may be that there never was a single "Chiefdom of Weapemeoc", but the Roanoke colonists merely assumed there was.  The Natives' subsequent population decline would have obscured the matter in either case.

 

Roanoke colonists lacked the vocabulary to give us a clear ethnographic picture, and "translating" their feudal terminology into something that makes anthropological sense is difficult.  However, I hate and reject the premise (implicit in some analyses) that the English were all just too stupid to understand what they were seeing with their own eyes—that they "only saw what they wanted to see" or other such wastrel.  It's also worth saying that, being subjects of Her Tudor Majesty, they did know a thing or two about the day-to-day reality of living in a monarchy.  And an Algonquian chiefdom is a monarchy of sorts, even if its parameters are different.  If the English said that Wingina was a king, then that clearly means... well, something anyway.

 

On the other hand, though they did call them kings, the English did not refer to any of the chieftains as an "emperor".  The Powhatan mamanatowicks, the Piscataway tayacs, the Nanticoke tallecks—even the non-hereditary teethhas of the Tuscaroras—were all called emperors at one time or another.  Does it mean anything that the chieftains of the Roanoke era weren't?  Did Wingina lack the power and splendor to merit such a title?  Or are we just talking about the whims of different sets of Englishmen, using imperial titles in very vague ways?  The answer to the last question at least is yes.

 

As Michael Oberg says, "analogizing from what we know about the better-documented Algonquian Powhatans is risky" (2020:584).  Oberg argues that there were no chiefdoms here, but he uses very strict definitions of chiefdom and tribe.  The only author I found who explicitly says that the Carolina Algonquians were entire chiefdoms and not tribal alliances is Patrick Garrow (1975:16).  Most others seem to adopt a middling position where they might refer to a "chiefdom of Secotan" or a "chiefdom of Chowanoc," but I don't get the impression that they mean anything too specific or technical by it—it's just a label.  I do this as well.

 

The Chowanoc have the best claim to being a true chiefdom: accounts make it out to be the largest and most elaborate of the Carolina Algonquian nations.  Binford (1964:110) interprets the Roanoke documents as saying that the area of Chowanoc was split into two divisions with a separate king over each: the aforementioned Menatonon was king of one, and someone called Pooneno was king of the other.  Binford explicitly states that the Weapemeoc and Secotan were not Virginia-style paramountcies, but seems to accept that Menatonon and Pooneno were in fact true chieftains and not just primi inter pares.  Mook disagrees: he says that the document in question is confused, and that Pooneno was subordinate to Menatonon.  If so then this apparently makes Chowanoc fit the definition of a paramount chiefdom as given by David G. Anderson [note E].

 

We will never know for sure.  For the record I do think that at least some of these groups were paramount chiefdoms, with the usual caveats applying.  But since this is not firmly established, I don't label anything a "paramountcy" on my map.

 

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            § 5.1  The Chesepioc, Chowanoc, and Weapemeoc

Beginning from the north, the first chiefdom described by the Roanoke colonists was Chesepioc situated at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay—I covered them already in part 1.  Three other tribes are briefly mentioned as neighbors of the Chesepioc: the Mandoag, the Tripanick, and the Opossians.  "Mandoag" is probably a mistake for "Mangoag" i.e. the Iroquoians to the west, though some disagree.  As for Tripanick and Opossian: some have said they refer to groups later found within the Powhatan paramountcy, perhaps the Nansemonds or the Warraskoyacks.  "Opossian" does very vaguely resemble "Potcheack", a later alias of the Nansemonds (cf. Stanard:1900), but honestly I don't think there's anything to be found in these names.

 

There were several tribes and chiefdoms whose borders ran parallel to or intersected with the Chowan River, and in order to locate them it's necessary to identify and locate the major settlements built along this river.  On the west bank these were Ramushouuōg, Chowanoac, Ohanoak, Metackwem, and Tandaquomuc.  A few others were located on the east bank, but they tend to jump around a lot between maps so it's hard to know exactly which, or how many, were on the Chowan.  This section is a little weedy with archaeological site designations, but hopefully this map will keep things a little clear: dots are archaeological sites, and all locations are colored blue for Colington sites or sites otherwise associated with Algonquians, and red for Cashie/Iroquoians.

 

 

On the De Bry map, the Chowanoc town of Ramushouuōg [some read <Ramushouuōq> but the last letter is clearly a 'g'; for some reason Quinn suggests an intended <Ramushonnouk>] is located on the inner corner of the Chowan-Meherrin confluence—this corner was later termed the "Meherrin Neck" after a group of Meherrin moved there in the 1680/90's.  The Meherrin occupation is known from the Cashie-II archaeological site designated 31Hf1 (or just "Hf1"—in Smithsonian Trinomials all North Carolina sites begin with "31"), however Mook and Hoffman believed that at the time of the Roanoke colony Ramushouuōg belonged to the Chowanoc (Smith 1971:161 differs).  That the Meherrin Neck had once been Chowanoc territory was remembered by the English of Carolina during their later border dispute with Virginia (Dawdy 1994:81) [note F].

 

Continuing down the Chowan River on the west side, the next two towns of note were Chowanoac and Ohanoak—both Chowanoc settlements.  Several of my sources agree that Chowanoac was in the vicinity of Taylor Pond creek (aka Deep Swamp Branch?) and a cluster of sites designated Hf19, 20, 23, 24, 28, and 30 (Mook 1944:190, Petrey 2014:196, Wilson 1977:17, Mintz &al. 2011).  Ohanoak was either upstream or downstream from here, depending on who you ask.  One school of thought locates it upstream, at site Hf11.  Shannon Lee Dawdy mentions that there is "local tradition" which claims that the Hf11 area was the location of Ohanoak, but I put almost no stock in this.  The better argument for Hf11 is that it fits much better than Br3 according to the De Bry map—this must be the reason why 20th century archaeologists favored it (cf Wilson 1977:17).  However, Mook was critical of using the De Bry map in this way at the expense of the supposedly more accurate written account of Ralph Lane: the latter he says (and I agree) "clearly locates" Ohanoak downstream near the present town of Colerain (p.191).  My other modern historical (Quinn, Hoffman, Rountree) and archaeological (Mintz et al.; Petrey) sources concur that the Colerain area (site Br3) was the likely location of Ohanoak.

 

Curiously, one important piece of evidence is almost never brought up in the context of locating Ohanoak: the Nicholas Comberford map of 1657.  This map (which is not obscure, though it is damned impossible to find an edition with readable labels) was created using information learned from Nathaniel Batts, one of the earliest permanent white settlers in the region—I think he's known in NC as being the "First North Carolinan" or something.  The Comberford map is one of only two maps I know which provide fresh information on the Carolina Algonquians during the elusive intercolonial period.

 

Map of Nicholas Comberford, 1657.

 

It's not always clear on these old maps which tributary is supposed to be what, but there is one feature of the Chowan River which is entirely unambiguous: Holiday Island, the little eyot located on the first bend of the river.  This eyot isn't visible on White's map, but both the Comberford and De Bry maps clearly show Ohanoak ("Wohanock" on Comberford) as being upstream of it.  Colerain is downstream of Holiday Island.  This means that Ohanoak must've been at site Hf11, right?  Very likely... however, there is reason to think that the village may have been relocated (they did that sometimes) at some point between 1585 and the 1650s—see below in section §6 for that, and for the western border of the Chowanocs.

 

"Wohanock" on the Comberford map. Taken from Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps using my iphone and a magnifying glass.

 

The Weapemeoc tribe controlled an area which in later periods was occupied by the Yeopim, Poteskeet, Currituck, Pasquotank, and Perquiman—although Mook questions whether all of these groups even existed, or if some have been invented from the names of North Carolina counties.  The name "Yeopim" is more-or-less identical to "Weapemeoc" minus the Algonquian plural suffix –ak, so perhaps they had once been the dominant (and therefore eponymous) element within the Weapemeoc tribe/chiefdom/whatever.

 

I assume that the boundary between Weapemeoc and Chowanoc territory roughly followed the boundary between the watersheds of the upper Chowan River and the Albemarle Sound.  This border reached the Chowan River somewhere upstream from the Weapemeoc village of Mascomenge where the city of Edenton now stands (Mintz et al. specifically link Mascomenge to site Co30, but I can't find anything else confirming that site's existence much less its exact location).  A few other villages may or may not have been in the Edenton area as well, depending on which author you ask.  Several Colington-phase sites cluster in that area, though I can't say how many were active in the late 16th century.

 

Upstream a bit from Edenton on the Chowan River are two sites: Co14 and Co15.  I have not seen any archaeologist link them to an Algonquian village, but they are in the same location as Warowtani according to Mook, or Ricahokene according to Feest and Rountree... or they could be nothing.  Further upstream, site Co1 has been linked to either Warowtani or the village of Cautaking (Mintz et al. 2011:5, Petrey 2014:60).  The Comberford map shows Cautaking ("Katoking") somewhere in this area but it's hard to tell exactly where.  Quinn critiques Mook for placing Warowtani and Cautaking so far north, saying that he relied too much on the De Bry map at the expense of the presumably more accurate White map.  More importantly, though, Mook's position was that if Warowtani and Cautaking were so far north, they must have been Chowanoc towns rather than Weapemeoc.  So both the pro- and the anti-Mook position would agree that the area of Co1 and upstream of it was probably not Weapemeoc (though Co14/15 may have been).

 

The Reverend James Geary provided Quinn with an Algonquian etymology for Ricahokene ("place where combs are made"), but I personally cannot accept this since the name is almost identical to Rickahockan, a later tribe whose name (cognate with "Erie") is Iroquoian for "people of the cherry tree place" (something like [e]riʔkehakaʔ).  Rather than being a village of Weapemeocs, the Ricahokenes were a wandering Iroquoian group—they were later found in Virginia by 1608, and subsequently fled west over the mountains (cf Hann 2006:54) [note G].  Therefore the area around sites Co14/15 was not necessarily within Weapemeoc territory, but it does sound like the Ricahokene were associated—at least politically—with the Weapemeoc chiefdom.

 

Map of John Lederer, 1672. Note "Rickohockans" in the mountains.

 

Sites Co14 and Co15 are located on a stream called Rockyhock Creek, no doubt named for the Ricahokene/Rickahockan; on the Comberford map the people living here are called the "Rockahock".  So it's quite unlikely that Christian Feest is wrong in locating them here... despite the migrations aforementioned, at least some Ricahokenes must have stayed long enough to meet Nathaniel Batts in the 1650s.  Less secure than the Ricahokenes' location is their affiliation: if they were a wandering Iroquoian group, then cultural and linguistic differences might have kept them apart from the "other" Weapemeoc villages.  Lars Adams, in his article on the 1670s' Chowan River War, maps the Rockahock village within Chowanoke territory—he doesn't elaborate on why.  However, the Chowanoc don't seem to have suffered such a disintegration as the Weapemeoc did in the 17th century: a possible motive for the Ricahokene changing sides?

 

Map from Adams 2013.

 

The Weapemeoc also controlled a strip of territory west of the Chowan River, including the village of Metackwem—which I have seen connected to four different sites: Br38 (Wilson 1977:22), Br45 (Petrey 2014:60), Br49, and Br56 (Mintz et al. 2011).  This strip was bordered by the Chowanoc to the north, and to the south by the village of Tandaquomuc whose affiliation is obscure but which Hoffman, at least, seemed confident in assigning to the Moratucs.

 

Under the circumstances I think what I'm going to do is draw the border between Chowanoc and Weapemeoc north of Rockyhock Creek (Co14/15) and south of Co1 and Colerain (Br3).  Even if site Br3 was not Ohanoak, it may still have been a Chowanoc site.  Site Co1 is almost directly opposite the river from Colerain, and clusters more with other Chowanoc sites especially if you consider the waterways so favored by coastal Algonquians.  But since I'm not entirely confident in this, I will nudge the border a little to the north, say twice as close to Co1 than to Co14/15.  "Splitting the difference" in this way probably makes as much sense as the joke about the three statisticians who went duck hunting, but ehhh... it is what it is.

 

Probable village locations on the lower Chowan river.

 

§ 5.2  The Moratuc, Secotan, and Pamlico

The De Bry map is the only document which names the village of Tandaquomuc, and I think this shows that the map can be treated as a reliable source.  Theodor de Bry may have been wrong about a village's name or location, but it seems unlikely that he'd just make one up—someone must have told him.  I didn't find anyone connecting any archaeological sites to Tandaquomuc, but it does match the location and approximate date of site Br1 (cf Petrey 2014:60).

 

On the De Bry map, the village of Moratuc is on a large oxbow bend of the Roanoke River.  Hoffman's and Quinn's maps both place this on the first big meander of the Roanoke; Mook's map places it on the next meander upstream.  This needn't worry us, because as it happens both locations contain Cashie-phase archaeological sites: Br5 "Sans Souci" on the first meander, and Br7 "Jordan's Landing" on the second.  The Moratuc are supposed to have been Algonquian, whereas the Cashie series is associated with Iroquoians.  This might compell one to suppose that the Moratucs were actually Iroquoians [note H], or that they were Algonquians who nonetheless produced Cashie artifacts—neither is impossible.  However, the radiocarbon dates from Jordan's Landing most likely predate the Roanoke-era Moratucs, perhaps by centuries, and Sans Souci seems to be rather old as well (Killgrove 2002: 48-51, Heath & Swindell 2011: 17-18; Phelps & Heath 1998:6).  I take this to mean that they were once Tuscarora villages which were later taken over by Algonquians.  Or they may have simply been prime locations to build a village on.

 

The town of Mequopen was somewhere in the northern Secotan peninsula.  On the De Bry map, Mequopen seems to be in the same location where Moratuc is on both of the White maps.  However I am suspicious of how the De Bry Map—and not the White maps—accurately depicts the excessive meandery-ness of the Roanoke River, so I'm not willing to just toss out the De Bry map here on the assumption that White's maps are always superior.  This may be a case where John White conveyed corrected data to Theodor de Bry.

 

Mook implied that Mequopen belonged to the Secotans, but Hoffman said it was "possible" they were Moratuc; Quinn said they were "unlikely" to be Secotans and that they (and the Tandaquomuc) likely "belonged to a tribe occupying the southern shore of Albemarle Sound and the swamp-forest behind".  If this is some other tribe separate from all the rest, then Quinn's speculation here is the only indication of its existence given by any of the authors, past or present.  For the sake of parsimony then, it's best to assume that Mequopen was a Moratuc village.  According to Hoffman, Mequopen was just east of Roanoke River or Mackeys Creek, but everyone else locates it on Scuppernong River, and I agree that that is what it looks like on the De Bry map.

 

Since there is some uncertainty regarding the location and the political affiliation of Mequopen, I have drawn the eastern border of the Moratuc along Scuppernong River, even though such rivers were seldom used as political boundaries for the eastern Indians... more duck-hunting statisticians, I'm afraid.

 

*

 

In the fullest interpretation, the Secotan domain included most of the Secotan peninsula and the northern Pamlico-Neuse peninsula, as well as Roanoke Island where Ralegh's colonists settled, and Hatteras Island a.k.a. Croatoan of "carved into a post" fame.  Like the Weapemeoc, the Secotan dissolved into separate tribes by the late 1600s, into the Machapunga/Mattamuskeet, the Roanoke, the Hatteras, and the so-called "Bay River-" or "Bear River Indians".

 

The White and De Bry maps show three towns in the southern, "core" Secotan region, and the names of these towns don't exactly make sense.  Two of them—"Secoton" and "Secotaóc" per White—appear to have the same root, only inflected with different endings (someone suggested a reflex of Proto-Algonquian *-o·te·nayi "town" for a toponym and a reflex of *-ote·waki "they well" for a demonym).  The third town "Seco" would then be the uninflected root, but that wouldn't explain why De Bry calls it "Cotan".  Quinn says that White's "Seco" may have been influenced by a Dry Driver or Rio Seco from earlier Spanish maps.

 

Altogether I don't get the impression that the English knew a whole lot about this area, but the Natives here were probably the ancestors of the later Bay River Indians.  Wesley Taukchiray says that the 18th century "Bay River" was actually the modern Pungo River (p31), but I can't find any corroborating evidence for that.  No contemporary map I know of ever calls the Pungo the "Bear River" or "Bay River": on the contrary, the Pungo is called the "Machapounga" as early as the 1657 Comberford map.  The first map to show a "Bay River" is Lawson's of 1709, where it's identical to the modern Bay River.  In fact Taukchiray quotes a letter from 1716 which refers to "the nation called Marosmoskees living formerly in the North of Renoque" (p56).  Assuming that Renoque is the same as Radauqua-quank (a village of the Bear River Indians according to Lawson), then this description would make more sense if that "Bear River" was the modern Bay, not the Pungo.

 

 

"Adioyning to this countrey aforeſaid called Secotan," saith Arthur Barlowe, "beginneth a countrey called Pomouik, belonging to another king whom they call Piemacum, and this king is in league with the next king adioyning towards the ſetting of the Sunne, and the countrey Newſiok, ſituate vpon a goodly riuer called Neus" (Hakluyt 1600:III:250).  Now that description doesn't make a lot of sense, until you consider that what Barlowe thought was west might've been closer to southwest.  For some reason a lot of early mariners on the Atlantic coast got disoriented this way: you can see it on some of the maps, and elsewhere in Barlowe's account where he is describing Ocracoke Island.

 

The borderland between Secotan, Neusioc, and Pamlico [=Pomouik] is so little known that you can't really blame modern map reconstructions for not bothering to try and put borders down.  That being so, I can do little better than to just copy Bernard Hoffman.

 

*     *     *

 

There are disagreements concerning the size and extent of the Secotan chiefdom/confederacy.  While the orthodox view is as aforementioned, there are dissenting voices which say that Roanoke, Secotan, and Croatoan were separate.  Lee Miller devotes Appendix A of her book Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony entirely to this question, and her conclusion agrees with the orthodox view that Secotan did include Roanoke:

 

"The primary evidence ... presents a convincing picture of Wingina as paramount leader of the Secotan, whose territory included Secota (the chief town), Aquascogoc, Pomeioc, and the towns of Dasamonquepeuc and Roanoke at the very least, and portions of the Outer Banks and Washington and Tyrrell Counties as well.  The evidence does not sustain a picture of a Roanoke tribe separate from the Secotan..."

(Miller 2012:269)

 

Miller is here mostly responding to David Beers Quinn (1985:44).  She doesn't specify if Croatoan was also a member of Secotan, but Quinn suggests it was—and if he is the more minimalist of the two then perhaps it's safe to conclude that Croatoan was a member of the Secotan chiefdom, at least in 1585.  Ocracoke Island certainly seems so, at least in Arthur Barlowe's narrative, and it's right next to Croatoan. 

 

Another dissenting view is that Pomeioke was a separate chiefdom, sandwiched in between Secotan and Roanoke (who were also separate).  This is the view of Helen Rountree (2021) and Michael Oberg (2020)—to some people the fact that these works are far more recent than the rest might mean they're more likely to be correct, but in my view modern scholarship stands alongside earlier scholarship, not overtop it.  Without getting into the weeds of it: my reading of the primary sources makes it clear that Pomeioke was not an independent chiefdom; Secotan was more plausibly independent, but Barlowe at least implies that it was not.  Rountree herself inadvertently(?) gives support for the unity of greater Secotan, in when she lists off the major chiefdoms and their rulers (my emphasis in bold and italics):

 

"Croatoan:  No chief was named, which is more evidence of its being a camp within some other chiefdom.  Manteo and Wanchese came from here.

Chowanoke:  The chief was Menatonon, but we cannot be certain whether he was that group's overall chief or only chief of the upriver towns, while Pooneno was chief of downriver ones.

Pomeioke:  The chief there was Piemacum.

Roanoke:  The chief was Wingina, who changed his name to Pemisapan after his brother died (before April 1586).  The brother, who governed in his absence, was Granganimeo, and his father's name was Ensenore (who, by the rule of chiefly inheritance, was not himself a chief).

Secota:  No chief's name was recorded.

Weapemeoc:  The chief was Okisko.  The satellite town of Chepanoke was governed by an unnamed woman, so the English called it "the woman's town.""

(Rountree 2021:81)

 

Huh...  No chief's name recorded for Secota, you say?...

 

It's worse than that though, because the Pomeioke line should say "no chief's name recorded" as well... except that Rountree is somehow confusing Pomeioke with Pomouik.  Both locations are named in the account of Arthur Barlowe and it is quite clear that they are meant to be two different places—and Barlowe is unambiguous in saying that "Piemacum" was the ruler of Pomouik [or "Pomovik" in the 1904 edition].  He locates this Pomouik in the same area where the De Bry map locates the village of "Pannauuaioc".  That name, for the record, also appears via Powhatan sources in the writings of John Smith ("Panawicke", "Panawiock") and William Strachey ("Pannawaick"), so that gives you an idea of what the word sounded like to the Englishmen and how they were wont to spell it (cf Barbour 1975).  This is why most people—myself included—believe that Barlowe's "Pomouik" is an error for "Ponouik".

 

Rountree's confusion of Pomouik and Pomeioke may also be why she adopts the strange position that it was the Pomeioke—and not the Pomouik/Pannauuaioc—who were the ancestors of the later Pamlico.  Unfortunately she and her coauthor Wesley Taukchiray choose to not give any explicit rationale for this, so I'm forced to conclude that it's the superficial resemblance between "Pomouik" and "Pamlico" (they both sort of go <Pam...ik...>) compounded by the misreading of Barlowe that conflates the Pomouik with Pomeioke.

 

Painting of Pomeioke by John White.

 

The name "Pamlico" doesn't occur in the Roanoke documents; it comes from the 17th century, and has two variants—one with an L as in Pamlico, and one with a T as in Pampticough.  Of the two, the T variant is probably the original.  I haven't done a comprehensive search, but the first L variant spelling I could find in the Colonial Records of North Carolina was "Phampleco" in a text from 1681 (vol I:228).  This is preceded by several maps which use the T spelling: "Pemptico" on the Ogilby map of 1672, "Panticoe" on the Horne map of 1666, and what I think is "Pamxtico" on the Comberford map of 1657—though that last one is really hard to read.

 

 

Unfortunately William Bright's Native American Placenames of the United States doesn't give any etymology for "Pamlico" or "Pampticough".  But it was suggested to me by an acquaintance that it may be cognate with the word for "river" in Nanticoke: recorded as pamptuckquah!, peemtuk, or pèmp-tugu [note I].  This resembles neither Pannauuaioc nor Pomeioke nor any variant spelling thereof—nay, it's a different word entirely.  This is why it's no use squinting at the names in the Roanoke documents trying to find a resemblance.

 

A meaning of "river" is plausible, since the earliest tokens of "Pamlico" and its variants all refer to the Pamlico river, not the Indian tribe—I couldn't find any early text which explicitly locates the Pamlico Indians prior to their removal to the Mattamuskeet reservation.  Whoever they were they must have lived along the Pamlico river and were later named after it—much like the Bay River Indians.  This puts them in the same location as the Panauuaioc, and since both tribes otherwise lack a counterpart across the Roanoke-Albemarle divide, they must have been the same.  One might object that since the Pomeiokes lived along the Pamlico sound, then perhaps they could have been named after it?  But contemporary maps show that the people of that time did not conceive of the Pamlico River as gradually opening up into the sound as one continuous body of water.  Instead, the river is depicted abruptly debouching into the sound's western end, and anyway they didn't even call it the Pamlico Sound either, it was just "the Sound".

 

John Speed map, 1676.

 

All of this I take to mean that the Pomouik were the Pannauuaioc; that they were the same people as the Pamlico even though that name is at least partially unrelated; that they were not the same as the Pomeioke; and that both the Pomeioke and the various "Secota" towns were under the umbrella of the Roanoke chiefdom—even if it was a "chiefdom" in only a very loose sense.

 

*     *     *

 

§ 6.  The Situation in 1600

Gerald P. Smith's dissertation on the Nottoway has a comment about the Carolina Algonquians which caught my eye:

 

"The situation found by White in the Pamlico Sound area upon his return in 1587 is not very helpful.  At this time White [...] found it necessary to have the people of Croatan intercede for him with Secota, Aquascogoc, and Pomiock.  He appealed to them to accept English friendship with the mutual grudges of both sides to be forgotten.  There appears to have been no overall ruler of these towns, but simply ruled by independent town headmen.  The remnants of Wingina's people had driven off 15 Englishmen left by Grenville after Lane's departure with Drake and then abandoned Dasemunkepeuc.  What became of Wingina's people is unknown; they may have dispersed among several towns or have gone to Weapemeoc.  They apparently were no longer dominant over the southern towns.  The intended appropriation of any surviving crops at Dasemunkepeuc by the Croatan suggests Roanoke abandonment of the immediate vicinity, probably through fear of English vengeance.  Any formal political tie between the northern and southern towns seems to have been dissolved by this time."

(Smith 1971:158)

 

In other words, the subregions of Roanoke, Croatoan, Pomeioke, Secota, and Aquascogoc had all been united in 1585.  But the unique character and centripetal charisma of high chief Wingina were essential to keeping it together, and after his murder by Ralph Lane & company, the union of greater Secotan was shattered.

 

It is appealing in this view to see Wingina as a counterpart to his contemporary Wahunsonacock of Powhatan: both chieftains in the process of nationbuilding, of absorbing and uniting many different local chiefdoms into one overarching paramountcy.  It was said that the Powhatans modeled their political institutions after the Piscataway, and the Piscataway modeled theirs after the Nanticoke.  And note that the Chowanoc chiefdom was more powerful, centralized, and resilient than the others of Algonquian Carolina.  Clearly the whole "paramount chiefdom" thing was in the process of spreading southward in the 1500s.  The Secotans may have been next in line?  Perhaps if Wingina had had a successor strong enough to fill his shoes—an Opechancanough to his Wahunsonacock—then the process could have continued.  But that didn't happen.

 

Why does this matter?  Because remember, my main goal here is to make a map for circa 1600, not 1585.  So how had things changed by then?  Unfortunately I can't appeal directly to anyone else's work; no one else has asked what the Carolina Algonquian territories were in that specific year, and why would they?  So in this section I have to do some theorizing, hypothesizing, and speculatizing of my own—it is unlikely that all of it will be correct.

 

The narrative of Francis Yeardley describes visits to and by the Roanoke in the years 1653 and '54 (Salley 1911).  His account makes it clear that the chieftain of Roanoke controlled more than just the island at that point—in fact he's described in the text as the "emperor" of Roanoke, being an exception to the aforementioned naming trend.  Unfortunately it's not clear which parts of the mainland his chiefdom contained: the text almost makes it sound like it included the waters of the Currituck Inlet, which might be wrong.  But doubtless it at least included the mainland adjacent to the island—which is to say that the Roanokes had regained control of Dasamonquepeuc, likely decades since.  Yeardley mentions several "great men" of the "provinces" in ways which imply that the Roanoke ~empire~ at this point was more an alliance of local chiefdoms.  This would be consistent with what apparently happened with the Weapemeoc.

 

 

Gerald P. Smith's map depicts the remainder of the Secotan chiefdom as a single "sociopolitical unit" circa 1607.  In other words, he apparently doesn't think that Croatoan, Pomeioc, Aquascogoc, and Secotoac etc. had all gone their separate ways after the death of Wingina—though there's no saying what manner this "sociopolitical unit" was, if he's right.  Minus the Croatoan, that area is roughly equivalent to the later haunts of the Mattamuskeet/Machapunga and Bear River Indians—both groups together are at least sometimes referred to as "Mattamuskeet", and I will opt to label them thus on my map.  I could call them "Secotan" but then—if I ever make a chronological map—that would open the pointless question of exactly when they stopped being Secotans and started being Mattamuskeets.

 

*     *     *

 

The country to the west of the Chowan river also underwent changes in the intercolonial era, being a theater of war between the Chowanoc and the Tuscarora.  Presumably the Moratuc too were involved.

 

The entire strip adjacent the river, from Ramushouuōg to the mouth of the Roanoke, was in the hands of the Algonquians in the 1580s.  By 1644, however, the situation had changed: at that time, during the Third Anglo-Powhatan War, members of the Weyanock chiefdom broke away from the Powhatans and fled south into North Carolina, settling in the country west of the Chowan.  This historical event ended up being relevant to a boundary dispute between Virginia and Carolina, and in the early 1700s several depositions were taken (from mostly elderly Englishmen, Nansemonds, Meherrin, and Chowanoc) regarding the details, later collected and published as The Indians of Southern Virginia in 1900.  The deposed witnesses mostly agreed that when the Weyanocks migrated south they purchased the territory west of the Chowan river from the Tuscaroras (not from the Chowanoc, Weapemeoc, or Moratuc).  The Algonquians had evidently all been driven out (cf Parramore 1982:311).

 

How much of this strip was actually overtaken by the Tuscarora, and when did this conquest take place?  The tract bought by the Weyanocks was said to have extended from the Roanoke River to the mouth of the Meherrin—however, some statements in the depositions suggest that it only went up to Wicacon Creek.  Subsequent events show that the Chowanoc still controlled the land above this creek until their defeat in the Chowan River War of 1676-7 (Adams 2013).  Recall that the Comberford map shows that the town of Ohanoak still existed along the upper Chowan river in 1657.  If the Tuscaroras had invaded the lands below Wicacon Creek, then the Chowanoc would have fled upstream.  And if Comberford's "Wohanock" was as far upstream as Lars C. Adams believes it was (too far to be at site Hf11), then the village may have been relocated—perhaps from the Br3/Colerain area.  The absence on the Comberford map of Chowanoac, Metackwem, and Tandaquomuc suggests that these towns too had been destroyed or forced to relocate.

 

 

The Englishman John Pory visited the Chowanocs in 1622, and although his own account is not available, other writings refer to him crossing south of the Chowan river and visiting the "Choanoack" (Powell 1977:100).  Assuming that to be the town and not just a reference to the tribe in general (they are in fact the same name), then this means that Chowanoac was still standing at that time.  It probably wasn't directly threatened until after 1632, when the Powhatans lost their second war with the English and had to reduce their support for the Chowanoc against the western Indians (Parramore 1982; he writes "1622" but it looks like an error for 1632).  However, the Tuscarora invasion had likely already been progressing by then.

 

Remember how I said that the Comberford map is one of two maps that show fresh information for the post-Roanoke, pre-Albemarle period?  Well the other such map is the so-called Smith/Zuñiga map of 1608.  Its exact provenance is a little unclear, but it may have been copied from an original map by John Smith.  The information on the map came from Powhatan-speaking sources, and the names it uses for the North Carolina area tend to differ from the names we've been using and therefore aren't very helpful (the reverse is also true: John White's map using Carolina Algonquian names for the Chesapeake Bay region).  The geography isn't very good either, but you can at least make out the Chowan, Roanoke, Pamlico, and Neuse rivers.

 

 

People usually bring this map up because one of the captions seems to say what happened to the Lost Colonists.  But another caption shows a "morattico" on the southern shore of Pamlico River: far from their location 20 years earlier.  This might just be a mistake.  But on the 1657 Comberford map a "Morataux" is shown on Bennett's Creek north of the Chowan—which is also a completely "wrong" place.  So maybe these aren't mistakes, and the Moratuc were in fact a dislocated and wandering people.  The conclusion then is that by 1608, the Tuscaroras had already driven the Moratucs from their former lands on the Roanoke River.  To this I might add that the Tandaquomuc region is one of the plausible locations for the Lost Colonists to have relocated after 1587: a biological bomb planted in the heart of Moratuc country?

 

Hidden icon of a fort on John White map. Picture from Artnet News.

 

Lost Colonists or no Lost Colonists, though, the balance of the region could have been destabilized by the whole Roanoke venture and the death of chief Wingina.  If so then the dispersal of the Moratucs was likely sooner rather than later within the 1586-to-1608 interval.  I'm guessing the Tuscaroras had already descended the Roanoke by 1600.

 

These hypotheses are wide open to criticism.  I have to grasp at whatever straws I can find to try and date the changes that happened in the intercolonial period.  Two especially tenuous assumptions I make here—1: that the northwest of the Secotan peninsula was repopulated by the Roanokes after the dispersal of the Moratucs; and 2: that the western border of the Algonquians in 1585 was also the border of the Weyanock land grant in 1644 (assuming also that the town of "Towaywink" on the Roanoke river where the Weyanocks settled was in the same location as the old town of Moratuc in 1585).  These make intuitive sense to me but are really no more than guesses.

 

Conjectural reconstruction of the Tuscarora conquest of the Chowan.

 

*     *     *

 

§ 7.  The Southern Periphery: Neusiok and Coree

The Neusiok are the last and southernmost Algonquian group in North Carolina.  Or rather, they might be—calling them Algonquians tends to be accompanied by an implicit little tap on the nose, since the Roanoke colonists didn't interact with them at all and there is in fact no evidence whatsoever for what kind of language they spoke.  The same is true, or nearly so, for the Coree who were the next Indian group south of the Neusiok—the Coree inhabited the coastlines of Core Sound and Bogue Sound, and probably some distance further though here our knowledge gradually fades into smoke.

 

It's difficult to say much with certainty about either the Coree or the Neusiok.  Neither tribe is well known historically:  they appear in the records of the Roanoke colony although as far as I know they had no contact with them, and later they occupied minor roles in the Tuscarora War and events leading up to it.  Not long after the war both groups disappear from the historical record, and consequently not a whole lot is written about them.  A couple modern books devote a few pages each to the Coree: Brandon Fullam's The Lost Colony of Roanoke: New Perspectives (2017: pages 78-81) and David La Vere's The Tuscarora War (2013: pages 58-9).  Together with bits of Mook's article these are the fullest treatment of Coree history I know—even the Handbook of North American Indians allots them only a couple of lines.

 

The Coree went by a few names.  "Coree" itself was also spelled "Core" and it's not certain which spelling better reflects how the English pronounced the name: the modern local pronunciation in placenames like "Core Sound" is as one syllable (Goddard 2005:n33).  To the Roanoke colonists they were known as the Cwareuuoc, which is Algonquian for "the people of Core"—Goddard suggests something like kwa:ri:wak.  The same <cor> root is found in "Coranine" which is the name they went by in the late 1600s.  That is how John Lawson usually referred to them, however in one place in his book he clarifies that Coranine (and Raruta) are merely names of villages, and that the entire tribe is called Connamox.  The latter name pops up in another document from 1703 as "Connamocksocks" which is the same plus a couple extra Algonquian and English plural suffixes (Taukchiray 1983:30) [note J].

 

"The Coranines" on Neuse peninsula on the Comberford map. As far as I know it is the first attestation of the name "Coranine".

 

The Neusiok and Coree territories seem to have been undifferentiated by around 1700.  Around that time both tribes had villages within the diamond between the Neuse and Trent rivers—one Neusiok village named Chatooka in the eastern corner where the town of New Bern was later built, and two presumably Coree towns named Coram and Corutra upstream on the Neuse.  One of those may have been the same place otherwise known as Core Town, located somewhere on the Neuse between New Bern and the embouchure of Catechna Creek [note K].  In 1709 John Lawson records Coranines at the tip of the Neuse peninsula overlooking Cedar Island, and a Neusiok village Rouconk which may have been approximately where the earlier Neusiok town of Marasanico was located (Mook 1944:219).

 

John Lawson map, 1709.

 

Lawson's book also has this peculiar passage:

 

"This Morning, we ſet out early, being four Engliſh-Men, beſides ſeveral Indians.  We went 10 Miles, and were then ſtopp'd by the Freſhes of Enoe-River, which had rais'd it ſo high, that we could not paſs over, till it was fallen.  I enquir'd of my Guide, Where this River diſgorg'd it ſelf?  He ſaid, It was Enoe-River, and run into a Place call'd Enoe-Bay, near his Country, which he left when he was a Boy ; by which I perceiv'd, he was one of the Cores by Birth : This being a Branch of Neus-River."

(Lawson 1709:58)

 

This only makes sense if we assume the middle-lower Neuse river was considered part of the Eno river, contrary to the modern hydronymy.  Still though, why did he conclude his guide was Coree rather than Neusiok?  The disgorgement of the Neuse river is much closer to the two Neusiok villages than it is to either Core Town or the Core Sound.  This is also the only place in his book where Lawson refers to the tribe in question as "Cores", as opposed to Coranines or Connamox.  It's almost as if he considered "Core" to be a broader category including both the Coranines and the Neusioks?

 

However, Chatooka was still a relatively new installment as of 1710, when the Baron von Graffenried bought the land from the Neusioks to build his settlement of New Bern—according to Mook, those Neusioks had only recently moved from the southeast; Fullam and La Vere say the same of Core Town.  The maps of White and De Bry, such as they are, also show an apparently more clear-cut division between the Neusiok and Coree territories.  Thus the situation around 1700 was not what it had been in 1600 or 1585.

 

*     *     *

 

The Coree and Neusiok languages are completely unattested and—since they were hemmed in by the Algonquians to the north, the Woccon to the northwest (who were Siouan, or specifically Catawban), and by various Carolina tribes to the southwest (whose languages are unknown)—it's difficult to even guess at what their languages were like.  One sometimes sees an author state authoritatively that they definitely spoke Algonquian, or that they certainly spoke Iroquoian, or that it's a sure thing they spoke Siouan... but this is bullshit.  The only real evidence we have is this statement from John Lawson:

 

"I once met with a young Indian Woman, that had been brought from beyond the Mountains, and was ſold a Slave into Virginia.  She ſpoke the ſame Language, as the Coranine Indians, that dwell near Cape-Look-out, allowing for ſome few Words, which were different, yet no otherwiſe, than that they might underſtand one another very well."

(Lawson 1709:171)

 

I agree with Ives Goddard that this implies the Coree language was distinct from Tuscarora, Woccon, and Carolina Algonquian, though I don't share his confidence in Lawson's linguistic abilities that it "must indicate" as much (2005:22).  If this language from "beyond the Mountains" were something like, say, Cherokee (Iroquoian) or Biloxi (Siouan), then it would have sounded incomprehensible to even a fluent speaker of Tuscarora or Woccon.  And since he doesn't give any examples, unfortunately John Lawson is of very little use to us.

 

Nor does archaeology help.  The entire coast of Onslow Bay from the Neuse to Cape Fear rivers was occupied by people represented by the archaeological Oak Island (aka White Oak) phase, which is very similar to the (Algonquian) Colington phase.  Both Coree and Neusiok left Oak Island/White Oak artifacts, so this might mean that they were in fact Algonquians.  Brandon Fullam cites "local historical tradition" (by which he means the Swansboro Chamber of Commerce website) that the town of Swansboro on White Oak River was built over the ruins of an old Algonquian village—this is farther south than any known Coree location.  Even further south, three archaeological sites (On196, On305, and On309) show signs of Algonquian habitation in the 13th and 14th centuries (Killgrove 2002:44-8, Loftfield 1990).

 

The similarities with the Colington-phase may indicate that the Oak Island-phase represents an extension of Algonquian-speakers south past the Carolina Sounds, however some archaeologists believe these similarities are due to a Siouan population adopting northern traits.  On the other hand, the assumption that the Onslow Bay coast was inhabted by Siouan speakers at all is, I believe, based on some dubious assumptions [note L].

 

The rub is that the border between the Neusiok and the Coree, as well as the border between the Coree and their southern neighbors, are archaeologically invisible, since all three groups left Oak Island-phase artifacts.  The maps of modern authors—Speck, Mook, Quinn, Binford, Hoffman, Smith, Feest, and others—are also pretty inconsistent in their placement of both tribes.  I've followed Hoffman's map in assigning some Neusiok territory to the north of Neuse River (though I fear this may be influenced by their later northernish habitation of Chatooka).  Learning more requires locating the villages of Cwareuuoc and Newasiwac on the maps of White and De Bry.

 

 

John White's map doesn't name the Cwareuuoc, however there are two unlabeled dots located on Core Sound which may correspond to De Bry's Cwareuuoc and the unnamed village next to it.  David Beers Quinn suggests that this unnamed village was near Mansfield, west of Newport River.

 

Later maps continue to show Neusioock and Cwareuuock but offer no real insight on their exact location (see note M).  David Beers Quinn and Bernard Hoffman both located them like so:

 

 

These are in the same places as two known archaeological sites: "Neusiok" corresponds to the Garbacon Creek site (Cr86) and "Cwariooc" to the Broad Reach site (Cr218) (Killgrove 2002).  The dating and culture of Garbacon Creek is more-or-less consistent with a Neusiok affiliation.  Broad Reach has Algonquian and Siouan influences, leaning towards Algonquian, and is too early to cleanly be De Bry's Cwareuuoc but it may have been inhabited by different people at different times—at the very least it tells us that it was a good place to build a village.  I find the Quinn and Hoffman locations especially interesting because—as far as I know(?)—both archaeological sites were not excavated until after their studies were published... although I don't know, maybe they had heard from somebody that something was there.

 

 

Another site that's in an interesting location is Piggot Ossuary (Cr14), located at Gloucester, where the Neuse peninsula comes closest to the pointy bit of Cape Lookout (Killgrove 2002, Loftfield 1990).  This may have been one of the two "Connamox" villages that Lawson wrote about: Raruta and Coranine proper.  La Vere and Fullam both cite sources to this effect, though I can't get ahold of them to double-check.  La Vere's source favors Coranine proper for the Gloucester locale.  Fullam's source suggests that Raruta was to the west, past Newport River—the same location as De Bry's unnamed village according to Hoffman, and White's unnamed village according to Quinn.

 

Between Lawson's comments, the historical maps, and the archaeological digs, it's hard to say exactly how many Coree settlements there were here and whether any of them moved and/or changed names between 1585 and 1709.  But in general they seem to have inhabited the shore at least from Gloucester to White Oak River.  For the 1600 period I'm assuming that the Coree-Neusiok border just ran along the length of the Neuse peninula.

 

Fun fact: The area in and immediately surrounding the Coree homeland is the only place in the world where you find wild Venus fly-traps.

 

The "other" Coree village on Core-Bogue sound—the unnamed dots on the White and De Bry maps—may have had the name Warreā.  This is implied by a label on the so-called "Sketch Map" of 1585, drawn by an anonymous member of the Roanoke colony.  Quinn proposes a connection between this and a document from 1586 which shows that the Roanoke colonists were familiar with an otherwise-unattested "Waren" river.  Another explanation is that Warreā is just the same as Cwareuuoc only with the "k" sounds dropped for some reason.

 

 

I want to point out a possible connection also with the name of the White Oak River.  One might think that this river was named after oaks which are white, but in early documents the river and its Native inhabitants are referred to as the "Weetock".  This is far too unusual to just be a variant spelling of "white oak", and the –ock ending in particular makes it look like an Algonquian plural noun.  Indian names being reanalyzed in this way isn't unheard of (cf. Tawakoni > "Trois Cannes", or [Cree] Wīsahkēcāhk > "Whiskey Jack").

 

There are two faint indications that the territory of the Coree may have extended as far south as Cape Fear River, thus encompassing all of the non-Neusiok area of the Oak Island archaeological phase.  One is in an article by Blair Rudes wherein he suggests a connection between the Coree and the so-called "Chicora" of the Ayllón expeditions (Rudes 2003).  Chicora is usually supposed to be further to the south, but Rudes' analysis of apparently-Tuscarora words in the Ayllón documents puts it within the range of the general Coree area.  More specifically, Rudes mentions an old Spanish map [he doesn't say how old, nor afaict do his sources] on which the Cape Fear River is called the Rio 'Chico'.  The presence of quotation marks around the word "Chico" suggests to Rudes that this was a name, and not just Spanish for "Little River": maybe even short for Chicora?  Meanwhile, Chicora itself has that same <cor> element found in Coree, Coranine, Cwareuuoc, and Corutra.

 

The second, cited by Fullam, is the 1896 book Tales and Traditions of the Lower Cape Fear by James Sprunt—in which it is said that in 1669 [should be 1664] the Anglo-Barbadian colonist Sir John Yeamans purchased a tract of land on the Cape Fear River from a group of Indians called "Cape Fear Coree".

 

Frustratingly, in the annals of southern Carolina the Indians of Cape Fear were only ever just called the "Cape Fear Indians," and their language was never recorded.  Only one document actually refers to them by their presumably real name: Dawhee (Rudes & Goddard 2004).  In 1663 a scouting expedition for the Barbadians found a village called "Necoes" near the mouth of Cape Fear River, and a chieftain named "Wat Coosa" (Sprunt 1916:26-29).  Let's go wild for a bit: suppose that wat means "chief [of]" and that ne means "people [of]".  The latter looks very similar to nį, a dialect variant of yį in Catawba which does in fact mean "people [of]" (Rudes 2005/6).  If that were true then these people would have called themselves Coos(a).  Now that can't have been De Soto's Coosa—they were too far away... but doesn't it kinda sorta vaguely maybe resemble... "Cora"?

 

But no—not even I believe that.  Nor do I believe the thing about "Cape Fear Coree" either, whether that's local historical folklore, or what.  Especially since Sprunt says this:

 

"The Massachusetts settlers referred to the Cape Fear as the Charles river, which was applied, as was also the original name, Carolina, in honor of King Charles IX., of France, during whose reign Admiral Coligny made some settleents of French Huguenots on the Florida coast, and built a fort which he called Charles Fort, on what is now the South Carolina coast."

(Sprunt 1896:55)

 

Yeah.  That old chestnut.

 

*     *     *

 

Assisted in various questions relating to Algonquian linguistics by the author of the Mii Dash Geget blog and a couple other people I know well-versed in Algonkery.  Remaining errors are mine yada yada yada.

 

*     *     *

 

 

Notes

 

Note A:   It is not true, as sometimes said, that Walter Ralegh's name was never spelled <Raleigh> in his lifetime.  But it was evidently rarely done, which is why I call him "Ralegh".  My enumeration of the Roanoke colonies differs from some.  Two minor peoplings of the islands tend usually not to get a number: a cargo of African slaves released by Drake in 1586, and a contingent of soldiers dropped off by Richard Grenville later in the same year.  To increase the confusion, some people prefer to number the "voyages" rather than the "colonies", and in that system the "first colony" is equivalent to the "second voyage".

Note B:   I refer to the Algonquian language recorded by the Roanoke colonists as "Secotan" and to the related language later recorded by John Lawson as "Pamlico".  Some may prefer to refer to the former as "Roanoke".  The two may well have been the exact same language for all I know.  

Note C:   To be fair the records aren't clear on whether Manteo and Wanchese came willingly.  Helen Rountree believes they volunteered.  I think it's more likely—given the general track record of English voyagers in the 1500s—that they were captured.

Note D:   The account of Edward Bland's 1650 explorations south from Virginia into the North Carolina piedmont offers a rare glimpse of relations between the Powhatan and the Indians of N.C. at this time:

 

"After we had passed over this River we travelled some twenty miles further upon a pyny barren Champion Land to Hocomawananck River, South, and by West: some twelve miles from Brewsters River we came unto a path running crosse some twenty yards on each side unto two remarkeable Trees; at this path our Appamattuck Guide made a stop, and cleared the Westerly end of the path with his foote, being demanded the meaning of it, he shewed an unwillingnesse to relate it, sighing very much:  Whereupon we made a stop untill Oyeocker our other Guide came up, and then our Appamattuck Guide journied on; but Oyeocker [their Nottoway guide] at his comming up cleared the other end of the path, and prepared himselfe in a most serious manner to require our attentions, and told us that many yeares since their late great Emperour Appachancano came thither to make a War upon the Tuskarood, in revenge of three of his men killed, and one wounded, who escaped, and brought him word of the other three murthered by the Hocomawananck Indians [a Tuscarora tribe] for lucre of the Roanoake they brought with them to trade for Otter skins.  There accompanyed Appachancano severall petty Kings that were under him, amongst which there was one King of a Towne called Pawhatan, which had long time harboured a grudge against the King of Chawan, about a yong woman that the King of Chawan had detayned of the King of Pawhatan: Now it hapned that the King of Chawan was invited by the King of Pawhatan to this place under pretence to present him with a Guift of some great vallew, and there they met accordingly, and the King of Pawhatan went to salute and embrace the King of Chawan, and stroaking of him after their usuall manner, he whipt a bow string about the King of Chawans neck, and strangled him; and how that in memoriall of this, the path is continued unto this day, and the friends of the Pawhatans when they passe that way, cleanse the Westerly end of the path, and the friends of the Chawans the other."

 

And later:

 

"Some three miles from the River side over against Charles Island is a place of severall great heapes of bones, and heere the Indian belonging to Blandina River that went along wuth us at the Fals, sat downe, and seemed to be much discontented, insomuch that he shed teares; we demanded why those bones were piled up so curiously?  Oyeocker told us, that at this place Appachancano one morning with 400. men treacherously slew 240. of the Blandina River Indians in revenge of three great men slaine by them, and the place we named Golgotha..."

(Salley 1911:13-16)

(clarifications in brackets are from Dawdy (1994:69) who quotes a portion of this text)

 

The "Emperour Appachancano" is Opechancanough, the formidable chieftain who succeeded his brothers Wahunsonacock and Itoyatin as mamanatowick of the Powhatans (don't let the nomenclature confuse you: the "King of Pawhatan" here would have been a local chief of that village which the English happened to take for the name of the entire paramouncy).  This quote shows that he was engaging in warfare with the Tuscarora and Chowanoc during the same general period when he was fighting the English in the Second and Third Anglo-Powhatan wars.

 

Note E:   In Part One, I wrote that I had not yet seen an explicit definition of what a "paramount chiefdom" is and how it differs from a regular, albeit large and powerful, chiefdom.  Maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough.  Anyway, David G. Anderson gives such a definition, in Fluctuations between Simple and Complex Chiefdoms: Cycling in the Late Prehistoric Southeast:

 

"The number of levels in the administrative hierarchy, or steps in the chain of the chiefly command structure, thus provide an effective measure of the organizational complexity of a chiefdom.  The terms simple chiefdom and complex chiefdom are widely used to describe societies characterized by one and two administrative or decision-making levels above the local community, respectively ...  Three-level administrative hierarchies could also occur, specifically when one complex chiefdom acknowledged the authority of another, a situation indicated by archaeologically and in the early historic accounts from several parts of the Southeast ... The term paramount chiefdom has been proposed to describe the situation when a complex chiefdom exerts direct or indirect control over a series of other chiefdoms, including at least one other complex chiefdom."

 

 

A simpler and more generalized definition is given in Gavrilets et al. (2010):

 

"...simple chiefdoms [were those] in which one village controlled (and received tribute from) several subordinate villages.  More complex polities were characterized by greater numbers of subordinate levels, witih complex chiefdoms, paramount chiefdoms, and state societies typically defined as those polities with two, three, and four or more administrative levels above the local or primary community, respectively"

 

This can be made to fit the structure of the Powhatans in Lewis Binford's analysis (1964:82-7) which—if I'm reading him correctly—has four tiers of settlement: hamlets (not shown on John Smith's map), villages, local capitals (Smith's "Kings howſes"), and the paramount capital of Werowocomo.  It's less obvious whether this applies to the other paramountcies I mapped in parts 1 and 2—I suspect not everyone is using the same definition.  But does Anderson's definition apply to the Chowanoc?

 

Binford compares the Powhatan villages with the seven known settlements of the Chowanoc, and the Powhatan hamlets with the many smaller Chowanoc settlements which are unnamed in the documents.  This might qualify it as a paramountcy, depending upon the status of Pooneno.  If, as Binford believes, Menatonon and Pooneno were two chiefs allied to each other, then the Chowanoc were an alliance of two complex chiefdoms.  If, as Mook believes, Pooneno was "the chief of one of the lower towns" and not anyone special, then the Chowanoc were a single complex chiefdom ruled by Menatonon.  If Menatonon did command over Pooneno, but the latter still held sway as a district chief, then you could say the Chowanoc was a paramountcy—one with two components (Menatonon would also have been district chief over his local district—that's how chiefdoms work, like if the President of the United States was also mayor of Washington D.C.).

 

 

We will never know with certainty exactly what the relationship between Menatonon and Pooneno was.  Personally if you ask me, then yes we might as well call it the "Chowanoc Paramountcy".  Wesley Taukchiray (who wrote chapter 8 of Manteo's World) also refers to "the Roanoke paramount chiefdom".  But as most authors are at least reluctant to use the big bad p-word for the Carolina Algonquians, I will refrain from doing so on my map—for now.

 

Note F:   The depositions of the Virginia-North Carolina border dispute (in Stanard 1900) also state that the Chowanoc had held territory on both sides of the Chowan up to the mouth of the Blackwater river.  The terms used in the depositions imply that the "Nottoway river" was considered at the time to include the part of the Chowan river above the confluence with the Blackwater.  Wesley Taukchiray (in Rountree 2022) says that the Chowan portaged over to the Nansemond river to visit their northern neighbors, and my map includes the Somerton Creek and Beaverdam Swamp watersheds in the Chowan territory.  My map also assumes that the Great Dismal Swamp was too great and dismal to be part of any tribe's active territory.

 

Note G:   The linguistic argument identifying the name of the Rickahockan with the Erie seems airtight in identifying them with the Erie-Westo after the Iroquois had driven them from the north.  However, the nonlinguistic evidence makes things much less clear.  For one, John White's Ricahokene can't have been the Eries since they weren't to be conquered and expelled by the Iroquois for another fifty years—this is why I say they were another Iroquoian group, bearing the same name.

 

Note H:   Shannon Lee Dawdy, in The Secret History of the Meherrin (1994), page 61, writes that "[Sir Richard] Grenville clarifies that the Moratoks and Mangoaks are "another kinde of Savages, dwelling more to the Westward of the said River"" (the "said River" is the modern Roanoke).  This sounds like Grenville is saying the Moratuc and Tuscarora were categorically distinct from the coastal Algonquians—i.e. that the Moratuc were Iroquoians.  However, I think Dawdy is misreading the document: for one the quoted passage is from Ralph Lane, not Grenville.  Lane is already speaking of the Moratucs in this passage when he writes: "I tooke a resolution with my selfe, having dismissed Menatonon upon a ransome agreed for, and sent his sonne into the Pinnesse to Roanok, to enter presently so farre into that River with two double whirries, and fourtie persons one or other, as I could have victuall to cary us, until we could meete with more either of the Moratoks, or of the Mangoaks, which is another kinde of Savages, dwelling more to the Westward of the said River" (Hakluyt 1900:VIII:326).  Grenville is saying that the Mangoaks are "another kinde of Savages" vs. the Moratuc, which means that at least to him the Moratuc appeared to be Algonquian (though he wouldn't have put it that way).

 

Note I:   The spellings are respectively those of Williams Vans Murray, John Heckewelder, and Thomas Jefferson, as printed in Frank Speck's booklet The Nanticoke and Conoy Indians (1927).

 

note J:   Blair Rudes (2003:table1) suggests that Lawson's Connamox may just be Cwareuuoc with the coronal and labial approximants converted into nasals (plus an English plural –s).  This kind of alternation between oral and nasal approximants is common in several Siouan languages, suggesting that maybe the Coree were Siouans.  However, recall that the original Cwareuuoc very much appears to end in an Algonquian (not Siouan!) –i:wak suffix meaning "people of [place]".  Then when you add "Connamocksocks" to the mix... that form requires that an original stem (kor or kwar) is first inflected with an Algonquian "people-of" suffix, then is nasalized like a Siouan word, then is pluralized with an English suffix, then is pluralized again with an Algonquian suffix, then is pluralized again with an English suffix... it's all a bit much don't you think?

 

note K:   The German version of Christoph von Graffenried's account says that Core Town was 30 miles upstream; the French version says 10 miles (Todd 1920:139,243,340,376).  The Tuscarora War journal of Col. John Barnwell says that Core Town was less than 20 miles from the mouth of Catechna Creek (or, possibly, from a crossing on the Neuse 6 miles up from the mouth of Catechna Creek) (Barnwell 1898:47).

 

note L:   The isnad for the archaeologists' claim that the Onslow Bay coast was Siouan leads back to Snow's article in the Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 15: Northeast.  His argument is a population replacement that happened circa 500 B.C. but, whatever the Siouo-Catawbans were doing at that time, this can have nothing to do with Algonquians because they were all up around the Great Lakes and Canadian plains at that time.

 

note M:   A comment regarding the "Coranine" locations indicated on John Lawson's map:

 

White's and De Bry's maps both depict the mainland coast turning south directly from the southern barrier islands.

 

 

Cwareuuoc was thus assumed by later cartographers to be located along a river.  However if you observe how their knowledge of the physical coastline improved, and then backtrack to the earlier maps, it is clear that the Cwareuuoc "river" was in fact just the Core and Bogue sounds.

 

 

For this reason I'm reluctant to take as-given the so called "Coranine R[iver]" on the 1709 map of John Lawson.  Even though our friend Lawson was well acquainted with the Coranine tribe, his Coranine river is clearly just copied from the earlier maps of Gascoyne, Mortier, and Moll—it's dubious whether these men knew the Coree as well as Lawson did, and they might've gotten the idea of a Cwareuuoc/Coranine "river" from those earlier maps.

 

 

A map by Nicolaes Visscher II from 1696 shows a dot for a settlement of "Coranne" near that river, as well as another for a settlement of "Cuvarunok" upstream the Neuse, which might represent Core Town.  However, this map uses a lot of old, pre-Comberford terminology ("Cuvarunok" being one) and seems very confused in general—many, many towns are in entirely the wrong place—so I don't trust it for the Coranine either.

 

Nicolaes Visscher II map, 1696.

 

*     *     *

 

 

Sources

 

Lars C. Adams (2013). "Sundry Murders and Depredations": A Closer Look at the Chowan River War, 1676-1677. The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol 90, No 2.

David G. Anderson (1996). Fluctuations between Simple and Complex Chiefdoms: Cycling in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. In Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States, ed. J. F. Scarry.

Philip Barbour (1975). Ocanahowan and Recently Discovered Linguistic Fragments from Southern Virginia, c. 1650. Papers of the 7th Algonquian Conference.

John Barnwell (1898) [1711-12]. Journal of John Barnwell. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol 5, No 4.

Lewis Roberts Binford (1964). Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Investigation of Cultural Diversity and Progressive Development among Aboriginal Cultures of Coastal Virginia and North Carolina. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan.

—  (1967). An Ethnohistory of the Nottoway, Meherrin and Weanock Indians of Southeastern Virginia.

Lindley S. Butler (1971). The Early Settlement of Carolina: Virginia's Southern Frontier. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol 79, No 1, Part 1.

Shannon Lee Dawdy (1994). The Secret History of the Meherrin. Master's thesis, College of William and Mary in Virginia.

Christian F. Feest (1978). The North Carolina Algonquians. In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 15: Northeast.

Brandon Fullam (2017). The Lost Colony of Roanoke: New Perspectives.

Patrick H. Garrow (1975). The Mattamuskeet Documents: A Study in Social History.

Sergey Gavrilets, David G. Anderson, & Peter Turchin (2010). Cycling in the Complexity of Early Societies. Cliodynamics, Vol 1, No 1.

Ives Goddard (2005). The Indigenous Languages of the Southeast. Anthropological Linguistics, Vol 47, No 1.

Richard Hakluyt (1903-5). The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation (12 vols). [Original edition in 3 volumes published 1599-1600].

John H. Hann (2006). The Native American World Beyond Apalachee: West Florida and the Chattahoochee Valley.

Charles L. Heath and E. Clay Swindell (2011). Coastal Plain Iroquoians Before and After European Contact. In The Archaeology of North Carolina: Three Archaeological Symposia, ed. Charles R. Ewen, Thomas R. Whyte, R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr.

Bernard G. Hoffman (1964). Observations on Certain Ancient Tribes of the Northern Appalachian Province. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 191, Anthropological Papers, No 70.

—  (1967). Ancient Tribes Revisited: A Summary of Indian Distribution and Movement in the Northeastern United States from 1534 to 1779. Ethnohistory, Vol 14, No 1/2.

Kristina Killgrove (2002). Defining Relationships between Native American Groups: A Biodistance Study of the North Carolina Coastal Plain. Master's thesis, East Carolina University.

David La Vere (2013). The Tuscarora War.

John Lawson (1709). A New Voyage to Carolina.

Thomas C. Loftfield (1990). Ossuary Internments and Algonquian Expansion on the North Carolina Coast. Southeastern Archaeology, Vol 9, No 2.

Noeleen McIlvenna (2018). A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713.

Lee Miller (2012). Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony.

John J. Mintz, Thomas E. Beaman, Jr., and Paul J. Mohler (2011). "...They In Respect of Troubling Our Inhabiting and Planting, Are Not to be Feared:" Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Native Coastal Populations before and after European Contact. In The Archaeology of North Carolina: Three Archaeological Symposia, ed. Charles R. Ewen, Thomas R. Whyte, R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr.

Maurice A. Mook (1944). Algonkin ethnohistory of the Carolina Sound. Part One in Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciencies, Part One: Vol 34, No 6, Part Two: Vol 34, No 7.

Michael Leroy Oberg (2020). Tribes and Towns: What Historians Still Get Wrong about the Roanoke Ventures. Ethnohistory, Vol 67, No 4.

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