Spirits in the river : a report on the Piscataway people

176 Pages·1999·9.1 MB·English

by  Tayac, Gabrielle

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1999
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Spirits in the River:
A Report on the Piscataway People
by
Gabrielle A. Tayac, Ph.D.
for
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of the American Indian
Washington, D.C.
June 1999

Spirits in the River: A Report on the Piscataway People
by
Gabrielle A. Tayac, Ph.D.
for
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of the American Indian
Washington, D.C.
MR ? S
June 1999

Spirits in the River: A Report on the Piscataway People
Table of Contents
Executive Summary iii
1. Introduction 1
2. Piscataway Identity Until 1608 2
2.1 The Polity.......... 5
2.2 Resource Availability... 9
2.3 Global Impacts............ 10
2.4 Indigenous Relations........... 11
2.5 European Influences.....11
2.6 Early Colonization Attempts........12
2.7 Population Changes.............13
2.8 Common Traditions. 14
3. “To the Utmost Bownds:” Piscataway in Colonial Maryland, 1608-1700 20
3.1 The Maryland Colony: Endeavoring to Subjugate the Savage...22
3.2 Conversion to Dependency: Piscataway Loss of Self-Governance.27
4. Learning to Speak with One Voice: The Piscataway Enter Pennsylvania 32
4.1 Unification under the Great Law.......33
4.2 Fifty Years of Divine Inspiration: Pan-Indian Collective Action.38
5. The Piscataway Dark Days: 1812 - 1900 49
6. Piscataway Resurrection: 1974 to Present 53
Bibliography 65
Gabrielle A. Tayac

Spirits in the River: A Report on the Piscataway People
List of Tables
Table 6.1 Ethnic Piscataway population estimates over time. 53
List of Figures
Figure 2.1. Piscataway aboriginal territory, other indigenous peoples with whom they
interacted, and Piscataway locations during the migration period. 3
Figure 2.2. Indigenous peoples of the Chesapeake’s Western Shore. Source: Feest. 1978. 7
Figure 2.3. A village similar to Moyaone (Harriot, 1590) 8
Figure 2.5. Chief Turkey Tayac’s personal effect showing tobacco twist, personal pipe, red
cedar tamper, and gorget with beaver and wild turkey. 17
Figure 3.1. Father Andrew White’s Ten Commandments in Piscataway (Georgetown
University Archives). 29
Figure 5.1. Grace Faircloud Proctor Marsh in the 1950s. 50
Figure 5.2. Turkey Tayac wearing his typical eel skin wrap and resting on top of the ancient
ossuary at Moyaone, his eventual burial site, 1976. 51
Figure 6.1. A1 Wahacasso Proctor Marsh extending pipe to man in suit at a gathering of
expatriate Piscataways on Long Island, 1928. 54
Figure 6.2. Joseph Tayac, a Piscataway residing in New York, left home at age 16 in 1944
and joined the Merchant Marines. Over his forty-year career, Joseph made
over one hundred international sea voyages as a ship’s navigator. 54
Figure 6.3. Chief Billy Redwing Tayac at Moyaone holding the “old bonnet,” belonging to
his father and predecessor, Turkey, adorned with eel skin and “William Penn”
beads, 1996. 56
Figure 6.4. Public Law 98-87, 1979, zllowing for burtial of Chief Turkey Tayac at
Moyaone. 62
Figure 6.5. Maryland General Assembly Resoulution, 1979. 63
Gabrielle A. Tayac

Spirits in the River: A Report on the Piscataway People
Executive Summary
The Piscataway are the surviving indigenous people of the Potomac River, on the western shore
of the Chesapeake Bay in present-day Maryland. An Algonkian people, they descend first from
the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) and then the Nanticoke. “Piscataway” translates to “where the
waters blend,” referring to their capital location at Moyaone, at the confluence of the Potomac
and Piscataway Creek, about fifteen miles south of Washington D.C. in Accokeek, Maryland.
That site hosted human habitation for thousands of years. The integration of ancestral remains of
Piscataway ancestors in the land at Moyaone, binds the people to that land in a specific spiritual
relationship that founds traditional cultural identity.
Captain John Smith mapped the Piscataway at Moyaone in 1608. The Piscataway, headed by a
central chief, the tayac, dominated a loose alliance of peoples organized for mutual protection
including the Anacostan, Portobac, Mattawoman, Nanjemoy, and possibly the Maryland
Pamunkey and Yaocomoco as well as the Virginia Tauxenent. European incursions into the
Chesapeake, beginning with the Spanish in 1521, debilitated the indigenous population through
disease, land grabs, resource destruction, military assaults, and slave raids. King Charles deeded
Piscataway territories to Lord Baltimore in 1632, and Maryland settlers entered in 1634. By the
end of the century, the Piscataway and their allies were reduced from 8,400 in 1608 to 320
persons. Their lands and political autonomy were completely destabilized, and reservation
boundaries were not respected past 1700.
The Piscataway traditional government - for self-preservation - left Maryland by 1699, at the
invitation of the Iroquois Confederacy. They settled in Pennsylvania and became known by their
Iroquoian name, the Conoy. With other uprooted indigenous peoples, they eventually
participated in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the Forest Wars as
members of the Western Confederacy of the Old Northwest. After defeat by the United States at
the Battle of Fallen Timbers in Ohio in 1794, the remaining Piscataway polity, including the
tayac and 25 of his people went back home to Maryland. Other groups of migrating Piscataway
either became part of the Iroquois’ Cayuga Wolf Clan and settled at the Six Nations Reserve,
blended in with the Delaware, or filtered out into the broader society.
The returning Piscataway blended into rural Maryland society, in their old territory in Charles and
Prince Georges Counties, but without land. They dispersed onto farms to find wage labor and
incorporated into the Catholic Church. There was some blending with remnant Indian people, but
the repressive conditions of race casting and removal threats inhibited formal tribal
reorganization. Culture was practiced in the home, and most eventually lost their conscious tribal
identities by the turn of the century. A few individual families did overtly acknowledge and
Gabrielle A. Tayac
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