Book Description

Excerpt from Indians of the Eastern Shore of Maryland Where did they come from if, like a number of other tribes in the eastern United States, the Nanticoke and their relatives were not of ancient descent in the region where they were found by the first white people who came to the shores of the Chesapeake? Even the Pow batans of Virginia told the Jamestown authorities that their ancestors had been in Virginia only about 300 years before the coming of the English. The traditions of the Nanticoke claim that they had their earlier situations somewhere in the central regions of the United States, where they dwelt as members of a great tribal group before its subdi vision into the branches Which later became known to the first white explorers. Without actually knowing when or how the first movement toward the east began among these people, our imagination is left to picture to itself the causes and circumstances of its inception. We are told in the national migration legend of the Delawares which has come down to us in the form of a text, accompanied by a pictorial record, published by Dr. Brinton, and called the fl/a/am O/um, that warfare began the movement across the central prairies in Indiana and Ohio, and that subsequently the Alleghanies were crossed, at which point the Shawnee and Nanticoke went south. The main migration kept on eastward ultimately reaching the Atlantic ocean and settling down on the rivers of eastern Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. This accounts well enough for the Delawares, the neighbors of the Chesapeake bay tribes on the north, but it tells us little about the further movements and whereabouts of the Nanticoke in whom we are now interested. That they occupied the country about the upper Chesapeake region weknow by the fact that at the time of European contact these bands became known under the name of Nanticoke and appear to have formed a confederacy with the Nanticoke chief or emperor, as he was called by the Marylanders, at its head. A branch of this division separating from the main stream passed to the western shore of the bayand occupied the region between it and the Potomac, acqumng the name of Conoy, but nevertheless retaining its political affiliations with the Nanticoke. The dialect of the Conoy was not recorded in those days so we have no means of knowing accurately in how far it differed from that of the Nanticoke proper. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.