[cliff lowe]

Hello Mr. White Hawk, I wish I could give you more information on these people, but all I know is the lineage. And this information has come from other people’s research, not mine. I know Ms. Saj and Mr. Childs know a lot more than I do. I think it is neat that you and I have a common ancestor. Wouldn’t you like to see the look on Capt. Gideon’s face if he knew how two of his descendants are communicating with each other.

Thanks

Cliff

[White Hawk]

I found a site that listed a little Genealogy of the Machapunga Indians. They were combine with the Coree into one town next to Matamuskeet Lake as a kind of reservation after the Tuskarora War after 1715. It mentions a Pierce as a decendent of the Mattapunga town.

I wonder if my Pierce line is the source of the “Cree”/ Coree family lore?

I may have a chance to confirm Coree source. Yeah!!

Part of Web page:

REMNANTS OF THE MACHAPUNGA INDIANS

OF NORTH CAROLINA

By Frank G. Speck

(1916)

On Roanoke island and some of the adjacent sand islands and on the mainland of Dare and Hyde counties on the coast of North Carolina are a few families of mixed-blood, descendants of the local Indian tribes. Having recently visited these people to rescue, if possible, some facts concerning their early culture and language, I should like to make available to ethnologists the results of my trip, meager as they are.

According to the accounts furnished by Raleigh’s Expedition, 1 being the earliest notice that we have of these tribes, the region between Albemarle and Pamlico sound was the home of the Secotan Indians. John White, the artist of Raleigh’s expedition, gives some sketches of these people, who, from the evidence of a few place names, and through their relationship to the Weapemeoc and Pamlico bands, of whose language Lawson has left us a vocabulary, we know to be Algonkian, probably one of the southward drifting branches from the Powhatan group of Virginia. Lawson in 1714 2 has left us some more information bearing on these tribes, while the colonial documents of North Carolina contain a few later notices. Lawson names several local bands inhabiting the area embraced within the territory designated by White as Secotan, among them the Hatteras band occupying the sand banks off the coast, and the Machapunga on the mainland, near Mattamuskeet Lake. After the expulsion of the Tuscarora from North Carolina the coast tribes seem to have faded from history and, so far as I can find, we have no definite mention of them in the nineteenth century. Whether the bulk of these natives actually joined the migrations of the Tuscarora and the Siouan tribes to the north, or whether they scattered and became merged with the negroes and whites, we are at a loss to conclude.

A visit to their old home, however, and persistent inquiry among the settlers of Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, brought to knowledge a few individuals who are descended from Indians who came originally from Pungo river near Mattamuskeet Lake, Hyde county. These are evidently remnants of the Machapunga tribe who have left their name to Pungo River. Those whom I met traced their descent from one Israel Pierce, who was known as a Pungo River Indian. That English Christian names were common among the tribes of this general region as early as 1718, is shown by a list of chief’s names from the Chowan Indians, neighbors of the Machapunga given in the colonial documents. 3 I traced Pierce’s descendants through Mrs. M. H. Pugh, Pierce’s granddaughter, now a very old woman, estimating her age to be about eighty years, who was born and raised in the Pungo River district. Later in her life she moved to Hatteras island. She has four sons, daughters, and numerous grandchildren. At present the dark-skinned people living on Roanoke, Hatteras, and other neighboring islands of the Pugh, Daniels, and Berry families, largely of negro blood, and some of those named Westcott, of a lighter strain, are of this blood.

[Author]

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