Chowanoke

The Algonquian peoples who developed in what is now known as North Carolina likely migrated from northern coastal areas, and developed a culture modified by local conditions. The numerous tribes occupied an approximately 6,000-square-mile (16,000 km²) area of Carolina Algonqkian territory in northeastern North Carolina, from the Neuse River to the Chesapeake Bay. Tribes included the Chowanoke, Weapemeoc, Poteskeet, Moratoc, Roanoke, Secotan (Secoughtan), Pomuik, Neusiok, Croatan and possibly the Chesepiooc.[1]

Archeological excavation in the 1980s at the site of Chowanoke confirmed Lane's report of its location and elements of his description. The town had been occupied by humans for nearly 1000 years, with radiocarbon dating establishing 825 AD as the earliest date of culture related to the Chowanoke people. The town was a mile long, including large agricultural fields for cultivated crops. It was home to several hundred Chowanoke people and possibly as many as 2,100. Near the north end of what the archeologists called Area B, they found a precinct for the ruler and nobility of elite residences, public buildings, temples, and burials. This may have been the 30-longhouse cluster observed by Harriot. Evidence of other residences was found in areas that have been eroded at the edges of the peninsula, as the site has been reduced by the river.

Other parts of the site showed older habitation: occupation in the Middle Archaic Morrow Mountain phase (ca. 3500-4500 BC); and again in the Deep Creek (8000-300 BC) and Mount Pleasant (300 BC-AD 800) phases of the Woodland period. This is typical of other sites of indigenous habitation, in which different groups lived in certain areas and abandoned them for a time, and other groups later migrated to occupy the area again.

Infectious diseases transmitted by contact with European explorers and colonists, such as measles and smallpox, likely caused high fatalities and considerably weakened the Chowanoke, as took place with other coastal Carolina Algonquian peoples. None had natural immunity to such new diseases, which had been endemic among Europeans for centuries. The neighboring Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora, who had inhabited areas to the inland, moved in and expelled the remaining Chowanoke from the territory along the river.

According to the 16th-century English explorer Ralph Lane, the Chowanoke (Chowanoc, Chawonoc) had 19 villages, with the capital being the town of Chowanoke. Present-day Harrellsville in Hertford County developed near this historic site. The Chowanoke were the most numerous and most powerful of the Algonquian tribes in North Carolina. Lane described this town as being large enough to muster 700-800 warriors, which meant the capital's population was likely more than 2100. A later account by Thomas Harriot estimated that all the villages could muster 800 warriors. Lane's account was quite accurate in terms of his description of the town, its location and its structures, which was confirmed by later archeological excavations there. The population estimates may have accurately been between his (which might have been 4,000 for all the people, and Harriot's, about 2,100 overall).

In 1607 an English colonial expedition, in the area on orders from Captain John Smith of Jamestown, found that hardly any Chowanoke people were left along the Chowan River. They had been reduced to one settlement across the river in Gates County on Bennett's Creek.

Several decades later, in 1644 and 1675–77, the Chowanoke had regained sufficient strength to wage two wars against English settlers. They met defeat each time. After these wars, in 1677 the settlers designated the Chowanoke settlement on Bennett's Creek as the first Indian reservation in the territory of the present-day United States of America. It consisted of 11,360 acres.[2]

The Chowanoke through the 18th century gradually lost land through sales and other actions. Men's names were recorded on tribal land conveyance documents.