17th century The Nottoway, like their close, fellow Iroquoian neighbors, the Meherrin and Tuscarora, lived just west of the
Fall Line in the
Piedmont region. English explorer
Edward Bland is believed to have been the first European to encounter them when he made an expedition from
Fort Henry. He noted meeting them in his journal on August 27, 1650. At the time, the Nottoway numbered no more than 400 to 500. Bland visited two of their three towns, on Stony Creek and the Rowantee Branch of the
Nottoway River, in what is now
Sussex County. These towns were led by the brothers Oyeocker and Chounerounte. A Nottoway representative signed the
Treaty of Middle Plantation of 1677 in 1680, establishing the tribe as a tributary to the Virginia colony. English squatters encroached on their lands. The Nottoway suffered high fatalities from
epidemics of new
Eurasian diseases, such as
measles and
smallpox, to which they had no natural
immunity. They contracted the diseases from European contact, as these diseases were by then
endemic among Europeans. Tribal warfare and encroaching colonists also reduced the population.
18th century Remnants of the
Nansemond and
Weyanock joined the Nottoway in the early 18th century. After the
Tuscarora War (1711–1715), Tuscarora people migrated north, where they became the sixth nation in the
Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and some Nottoway left with them. The Nottoway who remained in Virginia signed a treaty with the British in 1713, that secured two small tracts of land within their historical territory. By 1772, only 35 Nottoway lived on their land, of which they leased half. At the end of the 19th century, the Weyanock merged completely into the Nottoway, with the surnames Wynoake and Wineoak appearing on public documents. When the tribe sold more land in 1794, the Nottoway consisted of 7 men and 10 women and children.
19th century From 1803 to 1809, Southampton County courts heard a protracted land dispute. Turner, who ran a successful farm on the reservation, successfully advocated for four Nottoway orphans to return to the tribe. In 1818, tribal members petitioned the
Virginia General Assembly to be allowed to sell almost half of the remaining 3,912 acres of reservation land. The petition stated that there were only 26 Nottoways. By 1821, 30 Nottoways requested termination and for their land to be allotted in fee simple title. The Virginia General Assembly rejected that request and another in 1822. In 1823, Billy Woodson (Nottoway), an educated son of a European-American, requested termination, and in 1824 Virginia passed a law that would gradually terminate its responsibility and allowed remaining Nottoways to request individual allotment of land. Woodson (under the name Bozeman) and Turner applied for their allotment and shares of a fund in 1830. When Turner died in 1838, her estate went to Edwin Turner (Nottoway), whose children owned the last of the Nottoway reservation. While other tribal members received individual land allotments through the years, Turner kept his and purchased more land. The last tribally held land was allotted in 1878. Despite an 1833 Virginia law that stated descendants of English and American Indian people were "persons of mixed blood, not being negroes of mulattos"; however, with the end of the reservation, white Virginians considered them to be "free Negroes because of their African ancestry," as Rountree wrote. == Culture ==