History of Native Americans in Baltimore

Many of the Lumbee and Cherokee migrated to Baltimore during the mid-20th century along with other migrants from the Southern United States, such as African-Americans and white Appalachians.

The Baltimore County area northward was used as hunting grounds by the Susquehannocks living in the lower Susquehanna River valley who "controlled all of the upper tributaries of the Chesapeake" but "refrained from much contact with Powhatan in the Potomac region.

In 1608, Captain John Smith traveled 210 miles from Jamestown to the uppermost Chesapeake Bay, leading the first European expedition to the Patapsco River, a word used by the Algonquin language natives who fished shellfish and hunted.

[10] The name "Patapsco" is derived from pota-psk-ut, which translates to "backwater" or "tide covered with froth" in Algonquian dialect.

It is the seventh oldest surviving English place-name in the U.S., first applied as "Chesepiook" by explorers heading north from the Roanoke Colony into a Chesapeake tributary in 1585 or 1586.

[12] In 2005, Algonquian linguist Blair A. Rudes "helped to dispel one of the area's most widely held beliefs: that 'Chesapeake' means something like 'Great Shellfish Bay.'

[14] Beginning in the 1620s, English settlers from the Colony of Virginia began to trade with the Algonquians, in particular the Piscataway tribe of Southern Maryland.

Lord Baltimore also wanted to maintain friendly relations with the native Algonquians in order to create a buffer from the Susquehannock, an Iroquoian-speaking tribe to the north that was hostile to the English presence.

In 2011 the center established a Native American heritage museum, including exhibits on Lumbee art and culture.

Native Americans in Baltimore, the vast majority of whom are Lumbee, have the lowest income level of any ethnic or racial group, including white people, African-Americans, Asians, and Hispanics.

High levels of unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, and domestic violence are problems that plague the community.

The unidentified vandals declared the monument to be racist and denounced "European capitalism" and claimed that Christopher Columbus symbolizes "terrorism, murder, genocide, rape, slavery, ecological degradation and capitalist exploitation" directed against Native Americans and African Americans.

[21] The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have a land acknowledgement which states that the institution is located on "unceded lands of the Piscataway and Susquehannock peoples" and which recognizes "the enduring presence of more than 7,000 indigenous peoples in Baltimore City, including the Piscataway, Lumbee, and Eastern Band of Cherokee community members."

The statement also states that the institution acknowledges "the history of genocide and ongoing systemic inequities while respecting treaties made on this territory..." so that the university community can be held "accountable to tribal nations.