20 Facts About Nacotchtank

Nacotchtank were an indigenous Algonquian people who lived in the area of what is Washington, DC during the 17th century.

The Nacotchtank village was within the modern borders of the District of Columbia along the intersection of the Potomac and the Anacostia river.

Nacotchtank spoke a language within the Algonquian subfamily, a language group whose variants are spoken among many tribes living along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.

Specifically, the Nacotchtank spoke the Piscataway dialect as they were closely associated with the larger Piscataway Chiefdom of Southern Maryland, whose Tayac or grand chief ruled over a loose confederacy of area tribes.

Nacotchtank paid tribute to the Piscataway chief who resided to the south in the nearby village of Moyaone.

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The Nacotchtank were last recorded in the late 1600s as taking refuge on nearby Theodore Roosevelt Island located in the Potomac River.

Etymologically, keeping the "A" is indeed a closer derivation of the term "anaquashtank, " but the Nacotchtank preferred to omit prefixes and suffixes from words.

Nacotchtank fell under the larger influence of the Piscataway Chiefdom.

Tribe's physical location, which had a mild, temperate climate in the mid-Atlantic, allowed for the Nacotchtank to become a flourishing, self-sustainable community with an abundance in myriad natural resources.

The Nacotchtank were accomplished in agricultural practices, as they would move inland from the rivers to occupy fertile and flat land and grow a variety of crop species, most of which belonged to the Three Sisters family— corn, beans, and squash.

One known intertribal network was with the Iroquois of New York, in which the Nacotchtank traded principally animal fur, which was readily available given their extensive supply of wild game.

Nacotchtank were first recorded by Captain John Smith, who visited their palisaded village during his First Voyage in 1608, in which he explored the land surrounding the Jamestown settlement of the Colony of Virginia.

The Nacotchtank were suspicious of the colonists, and a confrontation erupted into fighting.

Colony, in such close proximity to the Nacotchtank, now had the leverage to begin encroaching on Nacotchtank territory.

Additionally, with the two groups now close to one another and in constant contact, the Europeans from Maryland introduced to the area a number of Eurasian infectious diseases to which the Nacotchtank had no immunity, such as measles, cholera, and smallpox.

The Nacotchtank utilized this land, which now houses the Supreme Court and Library of Congress, for agriculture, growing corn, beans, and squash.

The Nacotchtank settled on this specific area as it was flat and much more suitable for agriculture than the uneven land bordering the rivers on which they were initially established.

The smooth terrain allowed the Nacotchtank to grow the large stores of corn that were appealing to European colonists.

Nacotchtank lived in wigwams—which were dome-shaped huts— and longhouses, as was typical of other tribes along the East Coast.

Carolina Dog has been proven to be the only domesticated animal that lived among the Nacotchtank and is an important artifact in the Nacotchtank culture.