For many years, scholars accepted that the Tomahittans were either Yuchi or Cherokee and that the town visited by Needham and Arthur was somewhere west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
[citation needed] Other sources record that Tomahitan was the name of the main town of the Nottoway people in Southside Virginia.
[1] According to archaeologist Gregory Waselkov, the Tomahittan are "a Hitichiti-speaking group, probably a splinter from the Ocute paramount chiefdom on the Oconee River who moved to this vicinity in the late seventeenth century after the fall of Ocute.
"[2] Gabriel Arthur claimed that the Tomahittans kept men of the "Weesock" tribe as warrior slaves.
[4] Using linguistics, Dave Kaufman believes that the Tomahittans are the Siouan speaking Biloxi people, and their name translates to "Big Town".