In this portion of our web guide on the American Indian people, we will be focusing on the Nansemond, who traditionally lived in settlements on both sides of the Nansemond River, a tributary of the James River in Virginia.
The Nansemond people were members of the Powhatan Confederacy.
When Jamestown settlers explored the Nansemond River, following its oyster beds, in 1607, the Nansemond were wary and largely uncommunicative. Relationships between the Nansemond and the colonists deteriorated in 1609 when a group of Jamestown settlers were sent to trade ratchets and copper for food and never returned. A search party came across some Indians who told them that the group they were looking for had been killed, and their brains scraped from their skulls with mussel shells.
In retaliation, the colonists sent a force to Dumpling Island, where the head Nansemond chief lived and where the tribe's temples and sacred items were kept. They destroyed the temples and the burial sites of tribal leaders, ransacking Nansemond religious sites for valuables that were customarily buried with the bodies of leaders. By the 1630s, colonists began to settle on Nansemond lands.
John Bass, a white colonist, married Elizabeth, the daughter of the leader of the Nansemond Nation, in 1638. Although she had been baptized into the Anglican Church, it is believed that she raised their eight children in the Nansemond culture, as the tribe had a matrilineal kinship system in which children were deemed to have been born into their mother's clan.
Dr. Helen C. Rountree, emeritus professor of anthropology at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, who studied the history of the Virginia tribes from the 17th century to the 21st century, reported that, according to her research, all contemporary Nansemond tribal members are descended from this marriage.
The Nansemond tribe was divided in the face of European encroachment throughout the 17th century. Many of those who converted to Christianity adopted European manners of living, and some of them remained along the Nansemond River as farmers. Others, who were known as the Pochick, engaged in a brief and unsuccessful war against New England colonists in 1644, after which the survivors fled southwest to the Nottoway River, where they were assigned a reservation. By 1744, they had abandoned the reservation to live with the Nottaway Indians on another nearby reservation. They sold their reservation in 1792 and became citizens.
During the late 20th century and early 21st century, descendants of the Nansemond people began reorganization efforts. With about 400 tribal members, the Nansemond Indian Nation was given state recognition as a citizen tribe in 1984.
In 2013, the City of Suffolk transferred 100 acres, a portion of a 1,100-acre riverfront park along the Nansemond River, to the Nansemond. The tribe intends to reconstruct their village of Mattanock there, which will include a community center, a museum, a pow wow ground, and other facilities.
Federal recognition was granted in 2018. Currently, the tribe holds monthly tribal meetings at the Indiana United Methodist Church, which was founded as a mission to the Nansemond in 1850.
Another group, claiming Nansemond ancestry, has created a website for the Tripanick-Nansemond Family Indian Nation, although not much is known about this group or their intentions at this time.
Online resources for the Nansemond Tribal Nation or any other Nansemond tribe, organization, or association, whether recognized or not, are appropriate for this category, along with tribal businesses, enterprises, schools, medical facilities, and other entities, including businesses owned by individuals identified as Nansemond.
Recommended Resources
Descendants of the Great Dismal: Nansemond
The site includes several articles on the Nansemond people, in the context of indigenous life on the Nansemond River, surnames associated with the Nansemond tribe, Nansemond natural history and cultural reclamation, the Nansemond Homestead at Deep Creek, the Christianized Nansemond of Deep Creek, photographs from the 2016 and 2017 Nansemond Indian Pow Wow, the history of the Nansemond Indian Tribal Association, the Trummell family, and the Nansemond of the Great Dismal.
https://descendantsofthegreatdismal.com/tag/nansemond/
Encyclopedia Virginia: Nansemond Indian Nation
In partnership with the Library of Virginia, EV is a resource on the history and culture of Virginia, anthologizing the best and most current scholarship on a given topic. Its section on the Nansemond Indian Tribe features a summary of the tribe and the history of the Nansemond people from 1607 onward, including a discussion of its cultural and tribal identity, and legislation affecting the status of the tribe, along with a map showing its homelands and a historical timeline.
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/nansemond-tribe/
The federally recognized Indian Nation was formally organized in 1984, recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1985, and federally recognized in 2018. The history of the Nansemond people as well as the contemporary tribe, is told here, along with a map showing the location of the tribe's headquarters, contacts, and an online contact form. The Nation is a member of the Virginia Tribal Education Consortium, and its environmental program is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
https://nansemond.gov/
Tripanick-Nansemond Family Indian Nation
From the website, as it is at this time, little can be determined about the status, function, and intentions of the Tripanick-Nansemond Family Indian Nation. I can find no mention of it outside of this website, and most of its pages have not been completed. The site includes a message from its principal chief, Chief Bob Bass, and a summary of intended pages relating to its language, culture, history, and the status of the tribe today, but the proposed detail pages are incomplete.
https://nansemond.in/
