Turkey Tayac
| Philip Sheridan Proctor | |
|---|---|
| Turkey Tayac | |
| Piscataway leader | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1895 Charles County, Maryland |
| Died | 1978 |
| Resting place | Moyaone |
Turkey Tayac, legally Philip Sheridan Proctor (1895–1978), was a Piscataway Indian leader and herbal doctor; he was notable in Native American activism for tribal and cultural revival in the 20th century. He had some knowledge of the Piscataway language and was consulted by the Algonquian linguist, Ives Goddard, as well as Julian Granberry.
Proctor was a Native American activist who had served during World War I and also worked for the Internal Revenue Service. His activism spanned many decades.
A combination of factors had influenced the descendants of the Piscataway and other tribes in the Southeast. The tribe had been decimated by the early 18th century by infectious disease, and warfare with other tribes and the colonists. They had lost their land through colonial encroachment. Their last mention in historical records was at a 1793 conference in Detroit. Remaining Piscataway in Maryland merged with other tribes; others intermarried with both white and black neighbors and assimilated to various degrees.
The legacy of slavery and the post-Reconstruction environment had led to 19th-century legislation across the South creating racial segregation and more rigid binary classifications of society into "white" and "black"—the latter essentially meaning all other. With states' enforcement of the "one-drop rule" (carried to extremes in Virginia), anyone with discernible African ancestry was classified as "negro," "mulatto," or "black," thereby discounting any other ancestry. Although a few families identified as Piscataway Indians into the early 20th century, prevailing racist attitudes tended to classify mixed-race people as black. Throughout most of the 19th century, the US census had no provision for classification of Indians. Census takers might classify them as free people of color, or mulatto, or black. The loss of information about Native American individuals added to the perception that the tribes and people had faded away.
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