Pre-contact A succession of
Indigenous peoples occupied the Chesapeake and Tidewater region, arriving according to archeologists' estimates from roughly 3,000 to 10,000 years ago. Those people of Algonquian stock who would coalesce into the Piscataway nation, lived in the
Potomac River drainage area since at least
AD 1300. Sometime around AD 800, peoples living along the Potomac had begun to cultivate
maize as a supplement to their ordinary hunting-gathering diet of fish, game, and wild plants. The Piscataway, represented by the Potomac Creek archaeological culture, was established by Owasco Culture Algonquian-Speakers coming from the Susquehanna River Valley, and while the administrative center of the Piscataway Werowance (and later tayac) known as
Moyaone was first established in 1100, their migration did not end until 1300 when the
administrative center of the Werowance of Patawomeck was established. By 1300, the Piscataway and their
Algonquian tribal neighbors had become increasingly numerous because of their sophisticated agriculture, which provided calorie-rich
maize,
beans and
squash. These crops added surplus to their hunting-gathering subsistence economy and supported greater populations. The women cultivated and processed numerous varieties of maize and other plants, breeding them for taste and other characteristics. The Piscataway and other related peoples were able to feed their growing communities. They also continued to gather wild plants from nearby freshwater marshes. The men cleared new fields, hunted, and fished. The onset of a centuries-long "
Little Ice Age" around 1300 put pressure on groups to migrate, which in turn caused conflict with local groups. One of these groups was the Montgomery Complex, in the Potomac Piedmont & Ridge and Valley. Starting from 1300, the populations moved themselves into fortified towns, likely from outside conflict with Keyser/Luray Complex peoples migration. The Keyser/Luray Complex had migrated to the region in order to dominate the lucrative Conestoga and Carolina Paths, which intersects in the region. and, most importantly, the Tayac, known to the English as "Emperor of Piscataway." The first Tayac was the Talak Uttapoingassinem of the Nanticokes from across the Chesapeake Bay, another member of the ancestral defensive alliance. Susquehannocks were the name given by Algonquians to the residents of the Susquehanna River (which translates to "muddy river"), therefore it was likely that the Susquehannocks controlled by Uttapoingassinem were not the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks encountered in historic times, but the likely Algonquian-speaking Shenks Ferry archaeological culture that predated the historic Iroquoian Susquehannocks. This is further supported by the similarity in material culture and the belief of some scholars of a migration out of Maryland being the origin of the Shenks Ferry culture. The Shenks Ferry Susquehannock might've subsumed themselves under Uttapoingassinem as a form of protection against the encroaching Andaste/Iroquoian-Speaking Susquehannock, seeing that palisades, castles and fortifications pop up among the Shenks Ferry Susquehannock around the same period a few decades after the Montgomery Complex moved in with the Piscataway (and presumably when Uttapoingassinem assumed control). Control over the Patawomecks is also supported by their own oral history which states some generations ago they were in allied union with the Piscataways. Over time, the ties between the constituent groups of Uttapoingassinem's polity disintegrated. The Shenks Ferry Susquehannock's defense came too late; their northern sites begin to disappear a decade after the establishment of the fortifications in ~1450. Despite this, relations remained amicable between the two "emperors," who recognize each other as family and remained in the ancestral defensive alliance.|alt= By 1600, incursions by the
Susquehannock and other Iroquoian peoples from the north had almost entirely destroyed many of the Algonquian settlements above present-day
Great Falls, Virginia on the Potomac River. The villages below the fall line survived by banding together for the common defense. They gradually consolidated authority under hereditary chiefs, who exacted tribute, sent men to war, and coordinated the resistance against northern incursions and rival claimants to the lands. A hierarchy of places and rulers emerged:
hamlets without hereditary rulers paid tribute to a nearby
village. Its
chief, or
werowance, appointed a "lesser king" to each dependent settlement. Changes in social structure occurred and religious development exalted the hierarchy. By the end of the 16th century, each werowance on the north bank of the Potomac was subject to the
paramount chief: the ruler of the Piscataway known as the
Tayac. The English explorer
Captain John Smith first visited the upper
Potomac River in 1608. He recorded the Piscataway by the name
Moyaons, after their "king's house", i.e., capital village or Tayac's residence, also spelled
Moyaone, located at Accokeek Creek Site at
Piscataway Park. Closely associated with them were the
Nacotchtank people (
Anacostans) who lived around present-day
Washington, DC, and the
Taux (
Doeg) on the Virginia side of the river. Rivals and reluctant subjects of the Tayac hoped that the English newcomers would alter the balance of power in the region. In search of trading partners, particularly for furs, the
Virginia Company, and later,
Virginia Colony, consistently allied with enemies of the settled Piscataway. Their entry into the dynamics began to shift regional power. By the early 1630s, the Tayac's hold over some of his subordinate werowances had weakened considerably. However, when the English began to colonize what is now Maryland in 1634, the
Tayac Kittamaquund managed to turn the newcomers into allies. He had come to power that year after killing his brother
Wannas, the former Tayac. He granted the English a former Indian settlement, which they renamed
St. Mary's City after Queen Henrietta Marie, the wife of King Charles I. The Tayac intended the new colonial outpost to serve as a buffer against the Iroquoian
Susquehannock incursions from the north.
Kittamaquund and his wife
converted to
Christianity in 1640 by their friendship with the English
Jesuit missionary Father
Andrew White, who also performed their marriage. They were said to have had three or four children together. Brent married again in 1654, so his child bride may have died young. Benefits to the Piscataway in having the English as allies and buffers were short-lived. The
Maryland Colony was initially too weak to pose a significant threat. Once the English began to develop a stronger colony, they turned against the Piscataway. By 1668, the western shore
Algonquian were confined to two reservations, one on the
Wicomico River and the other on a portion of the Piscataway homeland. Refugees from dispossessed Algonquian nations merged with the Piscataway. Colonial authorities forced the Piscataway to permit the
Susquehannock, an Iroquoian-speaking people, to settle in their territory after having been defeated in 1675 by the Iroquois Confederacy (
Haudenosaunee), based in New York. The traditional enemies eventually came to open conflict in present-day Maryland. With the tribes at war, the Maryland Colony expelled the Susquehannock after they had been attacked by the Piscataway. The Susquehannock suffered a devastating defeat. Making their way northward, the surviving Susquehannock joined forces with their former enemy, the Haudenosaunee, the five-nation
Iroquois Confederacy. Together, the Iroquoian tribes returned repeatedly to attack the Piscataway. The English provided little help to their Piscataway allies. Rather than raise a militia to aid them, the Maryland Colony continued to compete for control of Piscataway land. Piscataway fortunes declined as the
English Maryland colony grew and prospered. They were especially adversely affected by epidemics of
infectious disease, which decimated their population, as well as by intertribal and colonial warfare. After the English tried to remove tribes from their homelands in 1680, the Piscataway fled from encroaching English settlers to
Zekiah Swamp in
Charles County, Maryland. There they were attacked by the
Iroquois but peace was negotiated. In 1697, the Piscataway relocated across the Potomac and camped near what is now
The Plains, Virginia, in
Fauquier County. Virginia settlers were alarmed and tried to persuade the Piscataway to return to Maryland, though they refused. Finally in 1699, the Piscataway moved north to what is now called Heater's Island (formerly Conoy Island) in the Potomac near
Point of Rocks, Maryland. They remained there until after 1722.
18th century In the 18th century, the Maryland Colony nullified all Indian claims to their lands and dissolved the reservations. By the 1720s, some Piscataway as well as other Algonquian groups had relocated to Pennsylvania just north of the
Susquehannah River. These migrants from the general area of Maryland are referred to as the Conoy and the
Nanticoke. They were spread along the western edge of the
Pennsylvania Colony, along with the Algonquian
Lenape who had moved west from modern New Jersey, the
Tutelo, the
Shawnee and some
Iroquois. The Piscataway were said to number only about 150 people at that time. They sought the protection of the
Haudenosaunee, but the Pennsylvania Colony also proved unsafe. Most of the surviving tribe migrated north in the late eighteenth century and were last noted in the historical record in 1793 at
Detroit, following the American Revolutionary War, when the United States gained independence. In 1793 a conference in
Detroit reported the peoples had settled in Upper Canada, joining other Native Americans who had been allies of the British in the conflict. Today, descendants of the northern migrants live on the
Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation reserve in Ontario,
Canada. Some Piscataway moved south toward the
Colony of Virginia and the
Province of North Carolina, where they merged with various tribes including the
Meherrin and the remaining
Tuscarora people who had not yet moved north to the
Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario. 30 Piscataway people were counted in a 1779 census taken at
Fort Niagara. In the 21st century, some documented descendants of the Piscataway who moved north to Canada are among the citizens of the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation. ==Brandywine people==