Accomack, Accohannock, Gingaskin, Metomkin ...

They lived in small villages, situated along the streams and rivers that flowed into the Chesapeake Bay. Each village had it's own council and its own leader, making decisions in tribal affairs and in matters of war. Some of the southern villages like the Accomack and the Accohannock were under the dominion of the great Powhatan Confederacy to whom they paid tribute, some of the northern villages were loosely affiliated with another Algonquin speaking group, the Lenapes of southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Choptank, Ozinies, Assawomat...

They spoke an assortment of Algonquin dialects because they all probably derived from the same group of people who moved east from the Mississippi Valley over a thousand years ago; splitting off into hundreds of smaller, separate bands along the way until each band had become a separate tribal group with it's own dialect and set of customs. Many lived in fear of the powerful Iroquois-speaking Susquehannocks who roared down from Pennsylvania in their great dug-out canoes and raided the upper reaches of the Chesapeake.

Kictotank, Matchapungo, Onancock...

The village consisted of a group of closely related families. Each with it's own hut and it's own small garden. The women tended the crops, prepared the food and raised the children. The men fished with bone hooks and spears and nets woven from grasses. Between the time of planting and the time of harvesting, and during the cold winter months, the men would go into the woods to hunt or the entire village would go collecting clams and mussels from the seaside. There was also much visiting between villages, especially among young people in search of marriage partners.

Assateague, Wiccomiss, Tockwhogh ...

They held elaborate religious ceremonies to honor their dead and appease their supreme god, the Manito, and the lesser spirits that ruled their lives. There were festivals at harvest time and rituals connected with the cycles of the seasons. There were curing ceremonies for the sick and ceremonies to protect people for harm. There were plants that brought well being and plants used as posions.

Monoponson, Matapeake, Siconese...

They wove baskets, worked animal skins into clothing and created elaborate beadwork called wampum. They farmed and fished and built their houses. They fought their battles and enjoyed the bounty that the land and sea provided. In bad times they went hungry.

And in 1608, their world came to an end.

In 1608, Captain John Smith of the Virginia Colony made the first English foray into the Chesapeake Bay. He brought back reports of the people he found living along the coast. He also brought back a rough estimation of the number of fighting men he encountered. From this number he estimated that between five and ten thousand Indians occupied the Delmarva peninsula. Who knows how accurate he was in his estimation?

Although Spanish sailors had explored the Bay in the 16th century, moving north from their stronghold in Florida, it was the arrival of the English in Virginia that marked the beginning of English domination on the Delmarva. The Swedes and the Dutch dominated the Delaware Bay side of the peninsula up until the mid 17th century when they, too, were replaced by the British.

The 17th century was a time of great upheaval on the Delmarva peninsula as thousands of Europeans began arriving. These new arrivals were not explorers. They were coming to stay and they needed land and resources to do it. The Native people found themselves no match for the steady stream of immigrants arriving, hungry for land and food. More and more tribes found themselves driven from their lands, from their traditional hunting and fishing territories.

Gingoteague, Kuskaroake, Pocomoke ...

Many Indians were killed or died from European diseases, many moved away finding temporary sanctuary with other villages, many inter-married (or simply inter-bred) with the newly arriving whites and adapted to European ways (including adopting Christianity and English names). Freed blacks often found refuge in Indian communities, thereby introducing an African strain into some of the tribes.

By the 18th century little remained of the original tribes or their villages. The few Reservations that had been created were declared abandoned and the government, anxious to remove any further impediments to expansion, claimed that all of the Indians were gone. They were wrong.

Indian River, Mitsawoket, Nanticoke ...

Remnant groups still remained in isolated pockets throughout the Delmarva: still retaining a sense of their own history. Many of these people would gradually, over the years, merge into the white or black communities. But some would coalesce, in places like Cheswold and Indian River Delaware, into a separate community.