The Nansemond are the Indigenous people of the Nansemond River, a 20-mile-long tributary of the James River in Virginia. Nansemond people lived in settlements on both sides of the Nansemond River where they fished (with the name "Nansemond" meaning "fishing point" in Algonquian), harvested oysters, hunted, and farmed in fertile soil. Today, Nansemond people belong to the federally recognized Nansemond Indian Nation.
Gradually pushed off their lands in the colonial and following periods, the Nansemond struggled to maintain their culture. They reorganized in the late 20th century and gained state recognition from Virginia in 1985. They gained federal recognition in 2018 after Congress passed a bill. Many members of the tribe still live on former ancestral lands in Suffolk, Chesapeake, and surrounding cities.
Language
The Nansemond language is believed to have been Algonquian, similar to that of many other Atlantic coastal tribes. But only six words have been preserved, which are not enough to identify it. The six words, which may have been corrupted in memory by the time they were written down in 1901, are nĭkătwĭn (one), näkătwĭn (two), nikwásăti (three), toisíaw’ (four), mishä́naw (five), and marímo (dog).
History
The Nansemond people were members of the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom, which consisted of about 30 tribes, estimated to have numbered more than 20,000 people in the coastal area of what became Virginia. They paid fealty to a paramount chief, known as the Powhatan. They lived along the Nansemond River, an area they called Chuckatuck. In 1607, when a group of settlers led by the explorer John Smith arrived on the north side of the James River and established the settlement of Jamestown, the Nansemond were initially wary.
In 1607, the Jamestown settlers had begun to explore the Nansemond River, following the river's oyster beds. Relationships between the colonists and the Nansemond, already strained by Indian raids, deteriorated further in 1609 when a group of Jamestown settlers were sent to the Indians to trade ratchets and copper for food. The colonists never returned. A search party was formed and coming upon some Indians, were told the group was sacrificed, their brains cut and scraped from their skulls with mussel shells. In retaliation the colonists went to Dumpling Island, where the head chief lived and where the tribe's temples and sacred items were kept. The raiding party destroyed the burial sites of tribal leaders and temples. Houses and religious sites were ransacked for valuables, such as pearls and copper ornaments, which were customarily buried with the bodies of leaders. By the 1630s, colonists had begun to encroach on Nansemond lands. The two peoples had differing ideas about the concept of ownership of land.
Marriage of John Bass and Elizabeth
John Bass, a colonist in early 17th-century Virginia, married Elizabeth, the daughter of the leader of the Nansemond Nation. After she was baptized into the established Anglican Church of the colony, they married on August 14, 1638. Bass had been born 7 September 1616; he died in 1699. They had eight children together (Elizabeth, John, Jordan, Keziah, Nathaniel, Richard, Samuel, and William). Although Christianized, Elizabeth likely raised their children in Nansemond culture. The tribe had a matrilineal kinship system in which the children were considered to be born into their mother's clan and people.
Some Nansemond claim descent from this marriage. Based on her research, Dr. Helen C. Rountree says that all current Nansemond descend from this marriage.
William H. Weaver is sitting; Augustus Bass is standing behind him. The Weaver family were indentured East Indians (from modern-day India and Pakistan) who were free in Lancaster County by about 1710. By 1732 they were "taxables" [note: free blacks (generally free people of color) and Indians (Native Americans) had to pay a tax] in Norfolk County, and taxable "Mulatto" landowners in nearby Hertford County, North Carolina by 1741. By 1820 there were 164 "free colored" members of the family in Hertford County. In the 1830s some registered as Nansemond Indians in Norfolk County. Smithsonian Institution, "Nansemond Indians, ca. 1900."