Early Tribal Ethnohistory and Name
Archaeological evidence from village sites along the Nottoway River, such as the Hand Site and Cactus Hill, demonstrate the presence of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) more than 10,000 years ago. The Hand Site—excavated in 1965, 1966, and 1969—has particular importance to the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway), as it provides invaluable information on the lived experiences of ancestors over a 1,000-year period. The Iroquoian-speaking ancestors of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County lived east of the fall line of the James River, along the Nottoway and Blackwater rivers. They lived in dispersed communities and hunted, fished, farmed, and buried their dead, or “Wa-he-hun,” on that land. Other tribes lived nearby, including the Algonquian-speaking Nansemond and the fellow Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin and Tuscarora, close to the border between present-day Virginia and North Carolina.
Between 1607 and 1609, English colonist John Smith and his exploring party traveled throughout the Chesapeake Bay and Tidewater region looking for gold, the Roanoke Colony, and a passage to the Pacific Ocean. Smith and his party visited the villages of Algonquian-speaking tribes. One outcome of that expedition, the Smith Map (1612), denotes the locations and Anglicized Algonquian-language names of certain Native groups and towns in Tidewater Virginia.
The word “Mangoags” appears on the Smith Map south and west of the Algonquian-speaking tribes in what is now Nottoway County. This is also where the Iroquoian-speaking Cheroenhaka (Nottoway), Meherrin, and Tuscarora tribes lived. Anthropologist and sociologist Douglas W. Boyce has suggested that the term Man-goak, transcribed by the English on the Smith Map as Mangoag, is an Algonquian-language term used to refer to some or all Iroquoian peoples. Boyce wrote in 1978 that the word “continues the Proto-Eastern Algonquian tribal name ‘me’nkew’w’ (i.e., Mohawk, Mango, etc.), perhaps also meaning ‘enemy.’”
Boyce also wrote that “Nottoway”—the term used most often in the written record to refer to the ancestors of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Virginia—may denote a derogatory Algonquian term. Meaning “enemy,” “snakes,” or “stealthy ones,” it comes from the Proto-Algonquian “*na’towe’wa” or “nadawa.” According to research by Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe historian Chief Walt “Red Hawk” Brown, the tribe’s historic name is Cheroenhaka, which means “people at the fork of the stream.” This is supported in the written record by a Nottoway word list created in the nineteenth century by James Trezevant, a lawyer in Jerusalem, Southampton County, and a member of Congress (1825–1831) who compiled the vocabulary of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) between 1831 and 1836. The list includes what Trezevant wrote was the tribe’s name for itself: Cheroenhaka. This self-name also appears in archaeologist Lewis Binford’s 1967 An Ethnohistory of the Nottoway, Meherrin and Weanock Indians of Southeastern Virginia and in ethnologist Albert Gallatin’s 1836 A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes Within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America. On March 4, 1820, John Wood, a professor of mathematics at the College of William and Mary, created the first written compilation of the tribe’s language, which he based on conversations with Edith “Edy” Turner, also known as Wane’ Roonseraw, who Thomas Jefferson wrote in the 1820s was the Queen of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe. While Jefferson initially believed that the language was Algonquian, French linguist Peter S. DuPonceau explained to him in a letter that the language was a dialect of Iroquois.
Colonial History
The earliest encounter between the English and the ancestors of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County that is documented in the written record occurred in 1608 at Tomohitton Creek in current-day Nottoway County. Another recorded encounter occurred in 1650 when English merchant and colonist Edward Bland and his party—which included an Algonquian-speaking Appomattox guide named Pyancha—were traveling south from Petersburg in the hope of establishing a trade relationship with the Tuscarora. Along the way, Bland recorded in his journal his encounters with an Iroquoian chief man of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Tribe named Oyeka, who acted as a guide to the Tuscarora village. Bland recorded that there were two “Nottoway” villages: Chounteroute Town, located in what is now Sussex County near Rowantee Branch/Creek, and Tonnatorah, now referred to as “Wootcourse” or Cactus Hill, situated on the south side of the Nottoway River. When the Algonquian speakers with Bland saw the Iroquoian speaker, Oyeka, they cried “Nadawa!” which meant enemy or snake. Hence, the derogatory word “Nottoway” entered colonial records instead of the tribe’s self-name, Cheroenhaka.
The tribe was among several represented in 1677 at the signing of the Treaty of Middle Plantation in Williamsburg, where Sarahoeque, king of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway), affixed his mark of three rivers to the treaty. This was a renegotiation of the Treaty of Peace (1646), which was signed to end the Third Anglo-Powhatan War (1644–1646) and was broken during Bacon’s Rebellion (1676). Although the tribe was not a part of the Powhatan political alliance of tribes that initially agreed to the Treaty of Peace, they likely agreed to the treaty of 1646, resulting in an existing tributary relationship with the English prior to signing the 1677 treaty. Further evidence to support this idea comes from the language in the 1646 treaty, which defined tribal territory as south of the Blackwater River—a geographic area frequented by the Nottoway, Nansemond, and other tribes in that part of the region.
In a census ordered in 1669 by the General Assembly to count the number of warriors in each tributary tribe, the census-takers counted ninety bowmen of the “Nottoways, two towns.” Later, referring to the tribe as the “Nottawayes” in Surry, historian Robert Beverley’s 1705 book The History and Present State of Virginia, estimated “about a hundred” Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) bowmen and called the tribe “a thriving and increasing People.” Based on Beverley’s estimate and historian William Strachey’s one-to-three ratio of warriors to total tribal population, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) would have comprised close to 300 total people at that time.
The tribes who signed the Treaty of Middle Plantation became tributaries to the king of England. They promised their fidelity to the English Crown, agreeing to provide an annual tribute of three arrows and twenty beaver skins to the governor of Virginia, who acted as the king’s proxy. The signatories also agreed to alert the colonists to any hostile activity by non-tributary tribes, to provide military support when needed, and to bring up any tribal disputes with the colonial courts. In return they received some defense against their enemies, assurances against further incursion by colonists, and recognition of some rights to their lands and livelihoods as hunters and watermen in the Tidewater region. The treaty also purported to protect against tribal member enslavement, but slavery would continue, particularly involving Indigenous children.
Despite the 1677 treaty’s acknowledgment of tribal land rights, the colonists continued to encroach on tribal territory, putting pressure on all local Indigenous groups. The lands west and south of the Blackwater River were particularly contested, with English colonists pushing into those areas set aside for Indigenous settlement well before the General Assembly legislated non-tribal access to those lands in 1705. Removing the Blackwater boundary that defined treaty-protected Indigenous lands encouraged further colonial encroachment. To avoid conflict with tribes that were hostile to them, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) moved south from Tonnatorah, in what is now Sussex County, to nearer the Assamoosick Swamp, in present-day Surry County. In 1705 the House of Burgesses granted two tracts of reservation land to the tribe: the Circle Tract and the Square Tract. Together, these tracts totaled some 41,000 acres, and despite their labels, neither tract was round or square but rather octagonal, as surveyed by the English metes and bounds system. The two tracts fell within what was then Isle of Wight County—now Southampton and Sussex counties.
Like other Virginia tribes in the early eighteenth century, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) dealt extensively with Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood, who made Indigenous relations a focus of his administration. In 1711 Spotswood, along with 1,600 armed men, visited the tribe’s reservation in what is now Southampton County. He had two goals: to ensure that the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe did not join forces with the Tuscarora people (of present-day North Carolina) who were at war with the colonists and to get the chief men of the tribe to send their sons to the Brafferton School, an institution at the College of William and Mary. The tribe was fearful that, rather than being educated as promised, their sons would be sold into slavery. Spotswood responded by offering to remit the annual treaty tribute of twenty beaver pelts. By November 17, 1711, two boys from the tribe were attending school at the Brafferton, and students whose surnames are affiliated with the tribe continued to appear on the school roster until the 1750s and 1760s. At the Brafferton, the students were instructed in English, math, and Christianity. Some of them—for example, Tom Steph (sometimes Step) and Aleck “Robin” Scholar—would go on to serve as interpreters and guides under George Washington during the Seven Years’ War (1754–1763).
On February 27, 1713 (1714 according to the Gregorian calendar), Ouracoorass Terheer, also called William Edmund, signed a “Stand Alone Treaty” with Spotswood on behalf of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway). This treaty is one of three that Spotswood signed with each tribe involved in the Tuscarora War (1711–1713): the Siouan-speaking Saponi and the Iroquoian-speaking Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) and Tuscarora. It reconfirmed the terms of the Treaty of Middle Plantation, reinstated the annual treaty tribute, affirmed each tribe’s land rights, and described their relationship with the colonial government. It also stipulated the parameters regarding the education of the tribe’s children. The annual tribute required only three arrows from the tribes that sent the sons of chief men to the Brafferton. Additionally, the treaty required that each tribe send twelve boys to the Fort Christanna school, which Spotswood established in present-day Brunswick County on land set aside for the Saponi and Occaneechi people. In doing so, Spotswood sought to incorporate the Nansemond with Saponi and the Meherrin with the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway). However, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) refused to attend the school at Fort Christanna.
Spotswood’s methods for enforcing compliance were aggressive. In 1715, the king and eight great men of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) were invited to Williamsburg, where colonists put them in irons and chains until they consented to send twelve of their children to school at Fort Christanna. The men of the tribe sat in chains for three days before they were released. This was a violation of the treaty of February 27, 1713, as signed by the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe.
The Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) appear in the written record again in 1728, when William Byrd II of Westover served on the commission to establish a boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. He writes in his diary about visiting what he called “the Nottoway town,” describing it as about 200 people strong, residing in a square palisade fort with bark-covered round and long houses at the time of his visit.
The Trustee System and Reservation Allotment
At about the same time, encroachment and land sales became a major issue. English colonists continued to encroach on tribal reservation lands despite treaty assurances to the contrary. In 1735, the House of Burgesses relieved the tribe’s two interpreters, Thomas Wynn and Henry Briggs, and passed an act authorizing the tribe to sell a portion of the Circle Tract. This led to the first of many land deeds between the chief men of the tribe and the colonists, ultimately resulting in the sale of both the Circle and Square tracts—totaling 41,000 acres of tribal reservation land—between 1735 and 1877. The last remaining acreage of reservation land allotted to a tribal family, the Sykes family, was auctioned off for unpaid taxes in 1953.
In the late eighteenth century, the House of Burgesses appointed trustees to manage tribal land sales and to disburse the revenue from those sales. The trustees were white landowners empowered to make rules and regulations for the tribal government and for the expenditure of the money held in trust for tribal members. They were also to pay any remaining funds into the public treasury. In 1849, the tribe sued its former trustee Jeremiah Cobb over a land dispute, which resulted in the tribe being awarded $818.82 in 1851, with interest dating back to 1845. As tribal land was being sold off, many tribal members beginning in the 1830s relocated to an area referred to as Artis Town in Southampton County, wherein they purchased farmland, farmed, raised hogs, and trapped and cured hides for revenue. They also rented themselves out as farmhand laborers to the white farmers in the area. As of the 1990s, tribal descendants still owned land in Artis Town.
1918 to the Present
In 1918, the Diamond Grove Elementary School, believed to have been partially funded by the Rosenwald rural school building program, was built on Artis Town Road in Southampton County, near Artis Town. Many of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian descendants of Artis Town attended Diamond Grove starting in the 1918–1919 school year, and their descendants continued to attend until the school closed in 1957.
The Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Virginia, reorganized in 2002, and on December 7 of that year, the tribe filed a letter of intent to receive federal recognition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. On December 5, 2005, the tribe received petition number 264 from the Office of Federal Acknowledgment within the U.S. Department of the Interior. On September 21, 2004, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County was one of 500 tribes to march in the Grand Procession at the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. In honor and recognition, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe is listed on panel 4.22, line twenty, of the Honor Wall of the National Museum of the American Indian.
In 2004, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) began publishing issues of the WASKEHEE, an ethnohistorical journal covering the tribe’s history dating back to in 700 AD. The journal title means “to see” in the tribe’s Iroquoian language, Dar-sun-ke. As of 2024, all six published issues had been archived at the Library of Virginia. Also beginning in 2004, Chief Walt “Red Hawk” Brown, accompanied by other tribal members, has given presentations on the history of the tribe at Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University, Southside Virginia Community College, Elizabeth City State University, Tidewater Community College, the University of Richmond, and local elementary schools and every military installation in Hampton Roads, including the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Coast Guard. Media appearances include “My Hampton Roads” with Andy Fox on WAVY-TV in Portsmouth and “Another View” with Barbara Hamm Lee on WHRV-FM in Norfolk.
In 2010, the Commonwealth of Virginia extended state recognition to the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, and in 2011, The Virginia Department of Historic Resources approved The Hand Site marker (44SN22) in Southampton County at the intersection of Handsom Road and General Thomas Highway. The marker reads that the site was “long claimed by the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway).” The Smithsonian Institution has retained possession of the skeletal remains excavated from the site.
By 2016, the tribe had reclaimed 263 acres of land at Cattashowrock Town in Courtland that was part of the tribe’s former 41,000 acres of reservation land. The land consists of the Palisade Fort, traditional campsites, fish ponds, 90,000 longleaf pines, a ten-acre powwow ground, and walking trails with signage in the tribe’s Iroquoian language and in English, identifying the flora and fauna on the land. The tribe hosts two powwows per year: The Green Corn Powwow is on the first Saturday of July, and the Corn Harvest Powwow and School Day is on the first weekend of November. In September, normally on the third Saturday, the tribe hosts a Judeo-Christian Native American Revival.
