Nottoway people

Cheroenhaka
(Nottoway)

Chief Walter D. "Red Hawk" Brown III of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe
Total population
(Enrolled members: Cheroenhaka (Nottoway): Southampton County, Virginia: 272)
Regions with significant populations
United States Virginia
Languages
English, Iroquoian Nottoway (historical)
Related ethnic groups
Meherrin, Tuscarora

Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia

Chief Lynette Allston of the Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia
Total population
(Nottoway Indian Tribe of VA: Southampton County into Surry County: 180)
Regions with significant populations
United States Virginia
Languages
English, Iroquoian Nottoway (historical)
Related ethnic groups
Meherrin, Tuscarora

(Enrolled members:

The Nottoway (Nottoway Cheroenhaka) are a Native American tribe in Virginia. The Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia and the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe have both been recognized as tribes by the state of Virginia. The Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia live from Southampton County into Surry County and the Tidewater region, and the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe live in Southampton County and surrounding counties in Virginia and North Carolina. Since colonial times, treaties by regional government with the Nottoway attested to their presence as a distinct people.

Both contemporary tribes received state recognition in February 2010. Among several Virginia tribes that were deprived of their land during the colonial era, they are not federally recognized.

The meaning of the name Cheroenhaka (Tuscarora: Čiruʼęhá·ka·ʼ) is uncertain. (It has been spelled in various ways: Cherohakah, Cheroohoka or Tcherohaka.) The late Iroquoian scholar Blair A. Rudes analyzed the second element as -hakaʼ meaning "one or people who is/are characterized in a certain way". He conjectured that the first element of the name was related to the Tuscarora term čárhuʼ (meaning "tobacco", as both tribes used this in ceremonies). The term has also been interpreted as "People at the Fork of the Stream".

The term Nottoway may derive from Nadawa or Nadowessioux (widely translated as "poisonous snake"), an Algonquian-language term which speakers used to refer to members of competing language families, specifically the Iroquoian- or Siouan-speaking tribes. Because the Algonquian occupied the coastal areas, they were the first tribes met by the English. The colonists often adopted use of such Algonquian ethnonyms, names for other tribes, not realizing at first that these differed from the tribes' autonyms or names for themselves.

Frank Siebert suggests the term natowewa stems from Proto-Algonquian *na:tawe:wa and refers to the Massasauga, a pit viper of the Great Lakes region. The extension of the meaning as "Iroquoian speakers" is secondary. In Algonquian languages beyond the geographical range of the viper (i.e. Cree–Innu–Naskapi and Eastern Algonquian), the term's primary reference continues to focus on *na:t- 'close upon, mover towards, go after, seek out, fetch' and *-awe: 'condition of heat, state of warmth,' but no longer refers to the viper. Instead, particularly in the South, the 'Iroquoian' designation is primary. The semantic meaning may not relate to snakes at all, but refer to the cultural trading position of the Virginia-Carolina Iroquois as middle men between Algonquian and Siouan speakers. Other historical developments in Algonquian languages extend the meaning of *-awe to 'fur or hair' (i.e. Cree, Innu, Ojibway, Shawnee), an obvious relationship to 'state of warmth.' A potential etymology in Virginia of *na:tawe:wa (Nottoway) refers to *na:t- 'seeker' + -awe: 'fur,' or literally 'traders' The earliest colonial Virginia reference to "Nottoway" also frames Algonquian/Iroquoian exchanges in terms of trade: roanoke (shell beads) for skins (deer and otter).