One Nation, A Diversity Article Series: Maryland’s First Born

by

Our State’s indigenous population has a storied history that’s wondrous, complex, but rife with struggle and the pursuit of dignity

“We have struggled for hundreds of years to maintain our identity, our culture, and to properly care for our families,” 

says Natalie “Standing on the Rock” Proctor with passion and firmness. The elected tribal chair of the Cedarville Band of the Piscataway Conoy Tribe says indigenous people have inhabited Maryland for at least 24,000 years, which explains their “strong connection to this land and our role as its caretakers.” Proctor says colonization took a huge toll on the population “with millions of acres of land and our resources taken.” 

Today, Proctor advocates and encourages people wanting to support Maryland’s tribes and indigenous people to donate private lands and assist lobbying efforts for the return of government-seized land as part of the tribe’s Landback Project.

“The Landback Project does not ask anyone to sacrifice anything or do without,” Proctor states. “These efforts would help to ensure that Maryland’s clans, bands, tribes, and other organizations would finally prosper and grow in our own homeland.”  

The Piscataway Conoy Tribe, which has its cultural center in Waldorf, is one of three tribes officially recognized by the state of Maryland. The other two tribes are the Accohannock Indian Tribe and the Piscataway Indian Nation. However, according to the Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs, nearly 60,000 people in the state identify as indigenous with most living around Baltimore and in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties. The commission serves not only the three tribes officially recognized by the state, but also several other tribes, including: the Assateague Peoples Tribe, the Nause-Waiwash Band of Indians, the Pocomoke Indian Nation, and Youghiogheny River Band of Shawnee Indian. Tribes granted Maryland Indian Status qualify for certain federal, state, and nonprofit assistance to provide resources to tribal members and to be used toward cultural education. 

Steps Etched in Time

Although the tribes in Maryland have vastly different histories, languages, cultural backgrounds, patterns of social organization, and religious beliefs, there are at least two things they share in common—a strong connection to the land and a mission to be stewards of the land.

Much of the American public mistakenly believes that indigenous history began when the Europeans arrived as settlers. But, archaeologists and historians say indigenous groups have lived in Maryland for 13,000 years or more, long before the Europeans arrived in Maryland in the 1630s. Much of the written history of Maryland’s indigenous populations is limited because the tribes only maintained oral histories. When Europeans arrived in Maryland, they wrote extensively about the indigenous people and their interactions with the settlers, defining the indigenous history solely from a European perspective. Development, farming practices, and sea-level rise have complicated efforts, making it difficult for archaeologists to gather and preserve many historic artifacts and to piece together a more in-depth picture of the lives, contributions, and history of the indigenous people of Maryland. But, scholars from different educational backgrounds continue to explore their history and write about it.

“The Archives is currently working with a team of students to create an index of sorts of all the variety of spellings referring to indigenous peoples that appear in the colony’s (and state’s) earliest records,” says deputy state archivist Elaine Rice Bachmann of the Maryland State Archives. “This will enable researchers to more accurately find and interpret early records, which tend to spell tribal names phonetically, or in a variety of ways, that make it difficult to make historical and interpretive connections.” 

Historians and archaeologists say the writings of the Europeans who arrived in the 1630s indicate Anne Arundel and Talbot Counties (with respective populations today of 5,347 and 213 indigenous people) were largely the seasonal sites for indigenous populations, not permanent villages, because of regular raids from the north by the Susquehannocks, who were given guns by Dutch and Swedish traders. Their arrival was not welcome as the indigenous communities had struggled with several of the driest decades in seven centuries. Competition with the English newcomers for scarce resources possibly lead to “migration, warfare, and population loss due to famine,” say authors Jean B. Russo and J. Elliott Russo, in their book Planting an Empire: The Early Chesapeake in British North America.

“Archaeologists have found evidence of their presence, but not of long-term residence,” says colonial Chesapeake historian Jean Russo. “Archaeological evidence gathered from (indigenous) skeletons, such as early ages at death and loss of teeth or bone, reveals significant malnourishment among groups inhabiting the region at the beginning of the 17th century.” 

Mark Leone, a professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, says several indigenous groups grew crops around the Chesapeake Bay and set up temporary camps in different spots around the bay so when they faced a lean season in terms of food, they moved around to fish, hunt deer, or capture geese and ducks. Since there was no vinegar or refrigeration, the indigenous communities used salt and smoke to preserve meats and seafood. Leone says the colonists often traded with them for their food products. 

“They were who people traded with during tough times and there was no food,” Leone says of the indigenous groups 

However, the way the indigenous used the land seasonally for cultivation, hunting, or foraging was not understood by settlers who wanted to establish homesteads and own titles to that same land.

“English colonists pursued a European ideal of land use—permanent, private ownership by individuals—that inevitably brought them into conflict with the indigenous populations,” the Russos say. “The indigenous understandings of land ownership were more fluid, with an emphasis on communal and productive relationships with the environment. They possessed land while they were using it, but land that had been vacated (left fallow to regain fertility, for example, or abandoned to follow the shifting habitat of deer) could be reoccupied in the future. Renewed use of land, not fences placed to mark territory, served to indicate ownership for the indigenous.”

Sites In and Around Annapolis

Archaeologists have identified two small sites important in the history of the indigenous populations present in Annapolis before settlers arrived. They are located off Spa Creek near Rowe Boulevard and the U.S. Naval Academy, says Leone. 

Further south in Anne Arundel County is a major archaeological site on the Patuxent River. Al Luckenbach, retired Anne Arundel County archaeologist, led a groundbreaking excavation beginning in 2009 at Pig Point on Jug Bay. Though some other similar sites have been found by others, archaeologists say those were not properly excavated, making Luckenbach’s findings more important in the understanding of Maryland’s indigenous history. Luckenbach’s excavation led to the discovery of thousands of items dating back 9,300 years ago and a sacred burial pit containing teeth, smashed skulls, crushed pottery, broken pipes, spearheads, and other items. 

“They had a unique ceremony of the dead,” he says. “No one had seen that before and we didn’t know what they were thinking. We were shocked. Were they smashing their ancestors or their enemies?  We don’t know. We’ve got a certain amount of data, but we’re still unclear.”

Luckenbach says there is archaeological evidence of different indigenous groups living in the region for more than 13,000 years. The major problem indigenous groups faced in Anne Arundel County prior to the Europeans arriving was fighting with other indigenous groups. When Europeans arrived in Anne Arundel County, it almost appeared to be like “no man’s land” because the indigenous tribes here did not have guns and the tribes that did have guns pushed them further south, he says.

“But they never left the county,” he says. “They just moved around Anne Arundel. The Chesapeake was a wonderland because there was enough food to feed a large population.”

East of the Bay

The arrival of the Europeans in Maryland was significant to the history of the indigenous groups because it marked the beginning of a series of broken promises by the newcomers. According to the book Eastern Shore Indians of Virginia and Maryland, authors Helen C. Rountree and Thomas E. Davidson said the indigenous people of Maryland’s Eastern Shore first met Englishmen as explorers and then as traders. The English particularly wanted beaver pelts and food and the indigenous groups sought the woven cloth, weapons, and tools the settlers offered.

Between the 1620s and the 1640s only a handful of English colonists lived on the Eastern Shore because they were restricted to a small area near the end of the peninsula. Initially, relations were relatively peaceful because the English had experience dealing with the local Accomacs though some conflicts arose over trade disputes and small-scale raids of English plantations by the indigenous. The tribes were increasingly alarmed that the European encroachment caused them to lose corn-growing lands and “their ability to feed themselves.” The European settlers also often cut timber without permission on indigenous land, reducing their capacity to support the indigenous population. By 1642, Maryland’s colonial government declared war on several tribes because some Englishmen were attacked on Kent Island. 

“The English had a great deal of difficulty understanding that all Chesapeake Bay (indigenous) were not alike, and these (indigenous) had no unified government in the European sense of the term,” writes Rountree and Davidson. “The English authorities probably did not realize that the Susquehannocks and the Nanticokes were almost as alien to each other as each tribe was to the English.

In the 1650s the Susquehannocks had control of much of the Eastern Shore, fighting the English and other tribes, but by 1660, the lower Eastern shore was thrown open to settlement by the newcomers. The English would only recognize titles to land granted by their own authorities in Maryland, the authors say. The Choptank Indians initially were the only group to “own their land” because they paid an annual fee to the government and later signed a treaty with Maryland, establishing one of the first reservations on the Eastern Shore, based near Cambridge. But, by 1721, the government of Maryland watered down the agreement with the Choptanks, allowing them to occupy and use the land, but not really own it.

Other tribes that tried to secure the land with agreements were rebuffed. As the English sought to settle throughout the Chesapeake Bay for its resources, the indigenous tribes were repeatedly displaced further north up the Pocomoke River in Somerset County. Eventually, the Maryland government signed a proclamation in 1678 with the Nanticokes, the Pocomokes, and Assateagues that did not give them legal title to their town lands but warned English settlers to not encroach on specific tracts of land. Despite numerous treaties between the government of Maryland and the different indigenous groups, the terms, fully dictated by Maryland officials, did little to ensure the rights and interests of indigenous were protected. 

Records indicate indigenous people lived on the Eastern Shore through much of the 18th century. The county governments of the Eastern Shore did not keep records of the individual members of the tribes because they were not allowed to vote in elections, could not instigate court cases against the European settlers and did not pay taxes if they lived on a reservation. Also, very few indigenous names were recorded in Christian church parish registers even though some tribe members joined the churches and tithed. It is likely that tribal members who joined the churches adopted English names. The leadership of some tribes in Maryland encouraged members to assimilate and marry the Europeans to protect themselves and save the bloodline. 

Some indigenous tribe members belonged to the major tribes but chose to live off the reservations and “had found places for themselves in English society. Others were remnants of displaced tribes who had been forced off their traditional lands as a result of English expansion,” writes Rountree and Davidson. But many members of different tribes in Maryland eventually migrated to Pennsylvania to lands that the Iroquois had conquered from the Susquehannocks. The Iroquois sought to populate the territory with other indigenous groups who were willing to accept Iroquois authority. By the early nineteenth century, little effort was made by the local and state governments of Maryland to ensure that the culture, history, and identity of its indigenous people were protected.

“By the early nineteenth century on the Maryland Eastern Shore, even the awareness that there were still Indians present, and that not all people classified as free blacks were of African descent, seems to have faded from the minds of the white inhabitants of the region,” Rountree and Davidson say.

Preserving Their Legacy

Today, many of the tribes work to keep their cultures and ways of life alive by selling crafts, holding powwows, and teaching the young their languages, but some express concern about the future of the indigenous population in Maryland.

“Most of the tribal members are fifty years and older, and grew up living off the land and water, and learned traditional skills and technology,” explains the Accohannock Indian Tribe. “Today, only a few descendants of the tribe are able to continue the traditional occupations (watermen, hunters, and farmers) of their ancestors. Most members work in small family businesses or at local minimum wage jobs.”

The Accohannock tribal office is located in Marion Station, Maryland, just north of Crisfield. The tribe oversees and maintains Bending Water Park in Somerset County and hosts an annual “Healing of All Nations” powwow at the park. During the rest of the year, members of the tribe, who said in a press release that they helped the state’s European settlers learn how to live off the land, travel to powwows in neighboring states and sell crafts.

For Proctor, it is important for her tribe’s future to have ownership of some of the land her tribe’s ancestors worked on for thousands of years. For other tribes, an important first step toward healing a painful and contentious relationship is to have the state of Maryland recognize their existence.

“Today, even as government and public organizations seek to preserve the history of Indigenous peoples and support future generations, challenges persist,” states the Chesapeake Bay Program, which leads and directs all efforts on restoring the bay. “In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, it is crucial that we honor the history of Indigenous peoples and celebrate their culture as we do all members of the region.”

Editor’s Note: Multiple requests were made to interview a representative from the Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs, but unfortunately the office was unresponsive.