Accokeek people

Accokeek
Total population
Extinct as a tribe
Regions with significant populations
Maryland
Languages
Eastern Algonquian
Religion
Native American religion
Related ethnic groups
Piscataway and other Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Potomac River

The Accokeek[2] were a group of Native Americans living in Southern Maryland at the time of English colonization.[3] They lived along the Potomac River in present-day Prince George's County, Maryland. They were an Algonquian-language tribe and were related to the Piscataway, another Algonquian-language tribe.[4]

Accokeek, Maryland, a small unincorporated town in Maryland, was named after the Accokeek[5] tribe.[6]

Name

Accokeek is one of many Algonquian place names along the Potomac that were written down by early colonists, John Smith among them. It is generally translated as "at the edge of the hill".[7][8] Early records give the name in several forms, including Accocick, Accotick and Accokicke.[9]

History

The Piscataway and their bands

At the time of contact, the Piscataway were the largest and most powerful nation between the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac, holding territory across present-day Charles, Prince George's and St. Mary's counties. Smaller bands, among them the Chaptico, Moyaone, Nanjemoy and Potapoco, were bound together under a leader called a werowance, and later under a paramount chief known as a tayac.[10] Writers who describe the Accokeek as a separate band place them within this network and identify them with the Moyaone of Prince George's County.[11]

Moyaone and the Accokeek Creek Site

The Accokeek Creek Site, a large palisaded town on the Potomac between Piscataway and Accokeek creeks, is closely tied to the group. Alice L. L. Ferguson, who owned the land and excavated it between 1935 and 1939, identified the town as Moyaone, the village recorded as "Moyaons" on the 1612 map attributed to John Smith.[12] Later archaeologists have questioned that identification, and the precise location of Moyaone remains uncertain.[13][14]

In 1608 Moyaone was a sizeable stockaded settlement whose people were often at odds with the Powhatan towns on the Virginia shore. After the trader Henry Spelman and much of his party were killed on the Potomac in 1623, the Virginia governor Francis Wyatt ordered villages on both banks burned in retaliation. Moyaone appears to have been among them, and its inhabitants are thought to have withdrawn to a Piscataway fort on Piscataway Creek.[12] Ferguson's work uncovered successive palisade lines, hearths, storage and refuse pits, and several ossuaries holding well over a thousand people. Her findings were published in 1963 in what is still the main report on the site.[13][15]

Decline

English settlement spread quickly after the founding of the Maryland colony in 1634, and by the 1690s most Piscataway land in Prince George's and Charles counties had passed into colonial hands.[8] Some Piscataway left the region while others stayed in southern Maryland. The Accokeek band is generally said to have lost its separate identity, its members absorbed into the surviving Piscataway population.[11][10]

Legacy

The Accokeek name remains on the land in the town of Accokeek and in nearby waterways.[8] The Accokeek Creek Site, preserved within Piscataway Park across the river from Mount Vernon, is a National Historic Landmark and is regarded as one of the more important Native sites in the region.[14]The Piscataway, into whom the Accokeek are thought to have merged, still live in Maryland; the state recognized the Piscataway Indian Nation and the Piscataway Conoy Tribe in 2012.[11][10]

Sources

  • The prehistoric people of Accokeek Creek, p. 25

References

  1. ^ Clark, Patricia Roberts (21 October 2009). Tribal Names of the Americas: Spelling Variants and Alternative Forms, Cross-Referenced. McFarland. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-7864-5169-2.
  2. ^ Or Accocick, Accotick, Accokicke.[1]
  3. ^ "Native American Tribes & the Indian History in Accokeek, Maryland". American Indian COC. 2019-05-01. Retrieved 2020-04-27.
  4. ^ "A Brief History of Accokeek". Accokeek, Maryland. 2019-08-21. Retrieved 2020-04-27.
  5. ^ Bright, William (2004). Native American Placenames of the United States. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 21. ISBN 0-8061-3576-X.
  6. ^ "Maryland: Piscataway Park (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2020-04-27.
  7. ^ "Accokeek". Arcadia Publishing. Retrieved 13 July 2021.
  8. ^ a b c Hopkins, Jacob (November 23, 2021). "What's in a Place Name? Exploring the History of Piscataway Park and Accokeek Creek Site". Special Collections & University Archives. University of Maryland Libraries. Retrieved June 4, 2026.
  9. ^ Clark, Patricia Roberts (2009). Tribal Names of the Americas: Spelling Variants and Alternative Forms, Cross-Referenced. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-7864-5169-2.
  10. ^ a b c Hamilton, Tim (October 1, 2018). "Piscataway-Conoy: Rejuvenating Ancestral Ties to Southern Parks". Maryland Natural Resource. Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Retrieved June 4, 2026.
  11. ^ a b c "Guide to Resources on Indigenous Peoples' History at the H. Furlong Baldwin Library" (PDF). Maryland Center for History and Culture. September 27, 2024. pp. 7, 12. Retrieved June 4, 2026.
  12. ^ a b "Accokeek Creek". University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. Retrieved June 4, 2026.
  13. ^ a b "Accokeek Creek (18PR8)". Colonial Encounters: The Lower Potomac River Valley, 1500–1720 AD. Colonial Encounters Project. Retrieved June 4, 2026.
  14. ^ a b "Maryland: Piscataway Park". National Park Service. August 18, 2017. Retrieved June 4, 2026.
  15. ^ Stephenson, Robert L.; Ferguson, Alice L. L. (1963). The Accokeek Creek Site: A Middle Atlantic Seaboard Culture Sequence. Anthropological Papers, No. 20. with sections by Henry G. Ferguson. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
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