Millsboro

Congradulations and thanks for sharing. I’d love to hear all you can share.

(I keep roaving around the MD, DE, southeast PA, northern VA, WV then on to OH and IN looking for clues to the origin of my GG Grandmother one of 2 whom the Blackfoot/possibly Cherokee story could have come; Susan/Susannah Goldsberry/Gouldsberry.)

Were the Nanticoke at Blackfoot town and are they considered Blackfoot or are they who the Saponi went to live among?

The Nanticoke are a coastal Algonquin-speaking group. There is only one vague reference from C. A. Weslager regarding one elderly gentleman named Hitchens, who claimed “Blackfoot” ancestry. My personal belief is that he may have been referring to some family member having come from the area of “Blackfoot Town” altho’ that name has long passed out of use in the area. Or, he may have simply been using Blackfoot” as many people have come to use “Cherokee”; as a word synonimous(sp) with “Indian”

Some of the Nanticoke went north, eventually to Six Nations around 1743, as did the Tutelo. There is nothing to indicate that the Tutelo, if they were on the Delmarva penninsula, were there more than briefly. They were not involved in the aborted uprising of 1742, nor did they sign the associated treaty of peace. There is nothing to indicate many cultural similarities between the two groups. There were contacts between the Nanticoke and the Shawnee, briefly, in 1742.

Street IS associated with the tribe. It is also not uncommon early on among whites and Blacks on the Penninsula. Weslager says it is also found among Nanticoke descendants at Six Nations, but I don’t know this for a fact. Most of the Nanticoke people live north of Millsboro around the old village of Oak Orchard, on the Indian River, altho’ many have scatted out accross the country in recent years

Without knowing what Scharf’s basis was for his statement, I would still have to say he was not accurate. Read Wesalager or Speck if you want well researched accounts of Indians in Delaware and the Eastern Shore. The second cite to me clearly shows the Tutelo were in Pennsylvania, not on the Eastern Shore or in Delaware. While they may have traveled there for a meeting, there is no evidence they were staying there.

Seems to me if they traveled there for a meeting they would probably have to stay there too as I don’t imagine there were any hotels around.;)

Yes, the Nanticoke are not Blackfoot or Tutelo, though with Weslager’s reports, and the high incidence of descendants from there with the ID, there clearly was a Blackfoot presence in that vicinity. What are you sources that there was definitely no Tutelo involvement in the part that took place on the Eastern Shore?

The above reference from the Maryland archives states that the Seneca and Tutelo were waging war on the English inhabitants in PA, MD and other adjacent locales, as well as the Indians in Sommersett and Dorchester Counties, MD, both of which are only 30 miles from Millsboro and Dagsboro, being in different states notwithstanding.

As for the Blackfoot ID being used generically as the Cherokee ID often has, we have shown repeatedly on this forum that the use of the name predates any popular usage of the word Blackfoot referring to the Montana Blackfoot by at least a century, and that its use is not random, but can be found within families that trace to common heritage and migrations.

Ok, it is not my intent to get in an arguement about this blackfoot id business. I have my opinions about it, other people have theirs, and it is something we will simply have to agree to disagree on. And that’s fine with me; we don’t always have to see things the same way. I will make the following points and then drop it.

(1) There is no documentation for the Tutelo or any other Siouan group being on the Eastern Shore or Maryland in any meaningful way or for any length of time.. That is, for more than a short visit, if that. What was Scharf’s basis for his locating them there? And just to further test Scharf’s knowledge of Indians in Delaware, does he mention either of the Indian communities of Delaware that exist today and existed in 1880, or does he make statements to the effect that all the natives were gone (when he was writing in 1880)

(2) There is no documentation that “Blackfoot Town” in Sussex County had anything to do with Indians, let alone Siouan speaking ones, any more than the “Black Ankle” community in central North Carolina does.

(3) If you examine the queries on this forum, it is pretty clear that the Blackfoot id found in many families does not originate in any specific locale; families from many divergent geographic origins have it. That, to me, indicates that it is being used similarly to “Cherokee” in these families to indicate Indian origins, even if the specific tribe is not known. If all the blackfoot id’d families originated in, say, Granville Co., for example, the theory might have some validity, but it appears to be pretty random.

(4) the migrations of the blackfoot id’d people in general do not differ from the general westward migrations of people without the id.

(5)I have seen no documentation that it (the blackfoot id) is older than the third quarter of the 1800’s in any of these families.

(6) What sources would prove the Tutelo did not take part in the action on the eastern Shore? I would say that the fact is there are no sources that prove they did, and that the only evidence that I have seen weighs against the idea. The Indians of Pennsylvania and the western shore of Md. visited the Nanticokes and other Eastern Shore tribes in 1742, got something started, and then left them (the Eastern Shore Indians) holding the bag. Particularly since it seems that the uprising in Pennsylvania that supposedly the Tutelo were going to take part in did not take place.

Weslager states that Jacob Pattashook, Jemmy Smallhominy,Sam Isaac, Peter Monk, Jemmy Cohonk, and others were coerced under threat of hanging to inform against their fellows after having been arrested by Maryland authorities, which calls into question, at least to some extent, the accuracy of their testimony. The alternative possibility is that Pattashook was a traitor to his people, in which case his testimony is still suspect.

The tribal communities that signed the July, 1742 treaty of peace consisted of the Assateague, Pocomoke, Broad Creek, Locust Neck/Choptank,Chicacoan, and Indian River/Nanticoke settlements. These communites cover what is now Sussex Co. Delaware, and Dorchester, Somerset, Worchester, and Wicomoco counties in Maryland The Tutelo did not have to sign the treaty, which indicates they were NOT on the lower Eastern Shore of Maryland, but almost certainly in Pennsylvania, which is in line with what Pattashook said. (Assuming he was not lying to make himself look good to the white authorities in Maryland) Pattashook never says the Tutelo were on the Eastern Shore; in fact, he never even says they were at Conoy Town. If the Tutelo were to attack the “back inhabitants”, it certainly indicates that they (Tutelo) were further west and North in Pa., and pretty far removed from the lower Eastern Shore.

(7) Tom is correct, and again, Weslager’s works, as well as those of Frank Speck, give some accounts of the Nanticoke descendants on Six Nations. (Speck visited there in 1914)

Forest,

I will definately be posting on this matter after I thoroughly research it. I must say up front.

My family with the Blackfoot story left Loudon County VA right around 1807 for OH ……way before the 3rd quarter of the 1800’s. Where did you get that idea about the 3rd quater of the 1800’s? I have a picture of a many Great Uncle, The son of the first Derflinger. This uncle was born in 1771. He is very light complected with very light eyes. Somewhere between 2 Grandmothers came the Blackfoot Story. One died in 1823 and the other was born in 1817. Between these 2 ladies everyone became dark complected and saying they were Indian. I believe my families oral history.

As I’ve been researching names I believe the Delaware in IN were before that and I recall Blackfoot with them, I think. What I know definately is my family.

When I read your first post in this thread, it seemed to me that you are not acknowledging that we today are just gaining access to archived materials all over being dug out locally and posted online. We have the large world wide search engines to locate archived materials. I can’t imagine Speck and anyone working in the 19th century could have had such wide resources. They were also always approaching the topic from a very ethno-centric view point….recording the “Vanishing Indian”. They didn’t vanish and we’re here on the other side having a look at the old buried records across the original colonies without the air of Euro-superiority used in the 1800’s. While the writings of the ethnologists are excellent tools they’re only a starting point. What they found in the last decades of the 1800’s and turn of the century reflects little on the authenticity of records kept in the 1600’s to mid-1700’s. Because it had changed doesn’t mean it wasn’t true when it was written. Much was already changed. Because anthopologists didn’t re-record it or reiterate or even know about it doesn’t subtract from it’s truth.

It is my firm belief that Indians never were very static and confined to neat little groupings. I belive they would travel 1,000’s of miles to trade and migrate. You put any kind of boat in a large river and you’ld be far fast. Indians often married within other nations. It seems to me many people like to think of Indians always living in neat little isolated “reservations”. Given the great number of small “tribes” and languages all around and how they understood and spoke one another’s languages seems to show me they were well traveled and integrated.

Forest, in my first post this thread, I assumed Blackfoot Town was a place where Indians of the Blackfoot ID lived, just as all tribes groupings were identified in a like manner. I think westward expanding Americans are the only ones who name their towns for Indians that don’t live there. I thought you said a whole lot more than Nanicoke were Algonquin. I understood you to say the Tutelo or Blackfoot Identified tribes never lived in Blackfoot Town/Dagsboro.