Frank Siebert suggested that the term natowewa stems from Proto-Algonquian *na:tawe:wa and refers to the Massasauga, a pit viper of the Great Lakes region.

[citation needed] A potential etymology in Virginia of *na:tawe:wa (Nottoway) refers to *na:t- 'seeker' + -awe: 'fur,'[2] or literally 'traders'[3] The earliest colonial Virginia reference to "Nottoway" also frames Algonquian/Iroquoian exchanges in terms of trade: roanoke (shell beads) for skins (deer and otter).

[4] The Algonquian speakers also referred to the Nottoway, Meherrin and Tuscarora people (also of the Iroquoian-language family) as Mangoak or Mangoags, a term which English colonists used in their records from 1584 to 1650.

He conjectured that the first element of the name was related to the Tuscarora term čárhuʼ (meaning "tobacco", as both tribes used this product in ceremonies).

These interpreters also served the adjacent Meherrin, as well as the Nansemond, who spoke Nottoway in addition to their own Algonquian dialect of Powhatan.

[citation needed] In the early 20th century, John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt (1910) and Hoffman (1959) analyzed the Nottoway vocabulary in comparison with Tuscarora, also Iroquoian, and found them closely related.

[citation needed] The Nottoway, like their close, fellow Iroquoian neighbors, the Meherrin and Tuscarora, lived just west of the Fall Line in the Piedmont region.

English explorer Edward Bland is believed to have been the first European to encounter them when he made an expedition from Fort Henry.

Bland visited two of their three towns, on Stony Creek and the Rowantee Branch of the Nottoway River, in what is now Sussex County.

[citation needed] A Nottoway representative signed the Treaty of Middle Plantation of 1677 in 1680, establishing the tribe as a tributary to the Virginia colony.

[1] By 1681, hostile tribes caused the Nottoway to relocate southward to Assamoosick Swamp in modern Surry County.

[10] The Nottoway suffered high fatalities from epidemics of new Eurasian diseases, such as measles and smallpox, to which they had no natural immunity.

[11] The Nottoway who remained in Virginia signed a treaty with the British in 1713, that secured two small tracts of land within their historical territory.

[14] At the end of the 19th century, the Weyanock merged completely into the Nottoway, with the surnames Wynoake and Wineoak appearing on public documents.

[18] In 1818, tribal members petitioned the Virginia General Assembly to be allowed to sell almost half of the remaining 3,912 acres of reservation land.