Nanticoke people

They also live in Ontario, Canada, where some ancestors resettled with Iroquois nations after the Revolutionary War.

[1] In 1608, the Nanticoke came into known European contact, when British captain John Smith encountered them.

[2] In 1668, the Nanticoke emperor Unnacokasimon signed a peace treaty with the proprietary government of the Province of Maryland.

While settled along the Susquehanna River, the Nanticoke regularly used a path that they had established during their migration to return to the Delmarva Peninsula for seasonal gathering of fruits, nuts and roots, and fishing.

In 1778, two hundred Nanticoke moved north to Fort Niagara in present-day Canada because of their alliance.

Later the British resettled them at the Six Nations Reserve with Iroquois peoples, near Brantford, Ontario, Canada.

Decades later, in 1867 after the Civil War, they were forced to move with the Lenape to Indian Territory (what became the state of Oklahoma in the early 20th century after Native American land rights were extinguished).

In the early summer of 1742, members of the Nanticoke, Shawnee, and Choptank tribes, wanted to avenge themselves against the English colonists.

[4] The tribes decided to meet on Winnesoccum Island in the middle of the Pocomoke Swamp located in Maryland.

Chiefs Robin Hood, Hopping Sam, Simon Alsechqueck, and Messowan gathered their people to meet in the swamp for six days where they discussed plans of attack, and related their adverse encounters with the English.

Following the United States gaining independence, the federal government made an official treaty of peace with the tribes that was signed on July 24, 1792.

[7][8] Efforts to revive the language have been undertaken since the late 20th century by tribal members and linguists from Georgetown University.

They reorganized as the Nanticoke Indian Association, with 31 official members, and were recognized in 1881 as a legal entity by the state.

[12] Today all persons seeking membership in the Nanticoke of Delaware tribe must prove descent from the original 31 members of the Incorporated Body, who shared a total of eight surnames.

In August 2023, the Native American Advancement Corporation, affiliated with the state-recognized tribe, acquired 63 acres in Salem County, New Jersey, which had been ancestral territory of the Cohanzick Lenape.

[12] After years of intermarriage, numerous members have mixed Nanticoke and Lenape ancestry.