Chesapeake people
K'che-sepi-ack | |
|---|---|
| Total population | |
| Extinct as a tribe | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Virginia, South Hampton Roads | |
| Languages | |
| Algonquian languages | |
| Religion | |
| Indigenous religions | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Nansemond |
The Chesepian or Chesapeake were a Native American tribe who lived near present-day South Hampton Roads in the U.S. state of Virginia. They occupied an area which is now the Norfolk County or Princess Anne County.
Name
The name Chesapeake is an anglicization of the Algonquian word, K'che-sepi-ack, which translates as "country on a great river." In 1585, their name was recorded by English colonists as Ehesepiooc. Their name is spelled many different ways and also listed as Chesapians.
Settlements
The main village of the Chesepian was on the Lynnhaven River in Princess Anne County. It was named Skicoke, located in the present independent city of Norfolk.
Two other Chesepian towns were Apasus and Chesepioc, both near the Chesapeake Bay in what is now the independent city of Virginia Beach. Chesepioc was located in near Great Neck Point. Archaeologists and others have found numerous Native American arrowheads, stone axes, pottery, and beads in Great Neck Point. Several Native burials are present as well.
A large Native American burial mound was discovered in the Pine Beach area of Sewell's Point, close to the 20th-century community named Algonquin Village.
Language and affiliation
Although they spoke an Eastern Algonquian language like many tribes within the Powhatan Confederacy, archaeological evidence suggests that the Chesepian people originally belonged to another group, the Carolina Algonquian.
History
In 1607, the Chesepians had about 100 warriors and a total population estimated at 350. By 1669, they ceased to exist as a tribe.
Demise
According to William Strachey's The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia (1618), the Chesepian were wiped out by the Powhatan, the paramount head of the Virginia Peninsula–based Powhatan Confederacy, sometime before the arrival of the English at Jamestown in 1607. The Chesepian were eliminated because Powhatan's priests had warned him that "from the Chesapeake Bay a nation should arise, which should dissolve and give end to his empire".
Though historians of the period express little doubt that the Powhatans eradicated the Chesapeake tribe, Strachey's belief that these rumored prophesies indicated the Christian God's intervention on behalf of the Jamestown Colony against "The Devil's Empire" appears, in hindsight, rather eccentric.