The Machapunga were a small Algonquian language–speaking Native American tribe from coastal northeastern North Carolina.
[4] Anthropologist John Reed Swanton wrote that Machapunga meant "bad dust" or "much dirt" in their Algonquian language.
[6][2] Early 20th-century ethnographer Frank Speck believed that the historical Machapunga and other Algonquian tribes in North Carolina had probably been earlier connected to the larger population based in coastal Virginia.
He believed the tribes in North Carolina were part of an early and large Algonquian migration south after European contact.
[7] When the British founded their colonist on Roanoke Island that lasted from 1586 to 1685, displaced Secotan people moved in with the Machapunga.
[1] By 1715, the English colonists assigned a tract of land on Mattamuskeet Lake to the surviving Machapunga and Coree, who lived in a single village.