Cuscarawaoc Indians (place of making white beads – Tooker) . A division of the Nanticoke; mentioned by Capt. John Smith as a tribe or people living at the head of Nanticoke River, in Maryland and Delaware, and numbering perhaps 800 in 1608. Their language was different from that of the Powhatan, Conestoga, and Atquanachuke. Heckewelder […]
The first black slaves were introduced into the New World (1501-03) ostensibly to labor in the place of the Indians, who showed themselves ill-suited to enforced tasks and moreover were being exterminated in the Spanish colonies. The Indian-black inter-mixture has proceeded on a larger scale in South America, but not a little has also taken
Nanticoke Indians (from Nentego, var. of Delaware Unechtgo, Unalachtgo, ‘tidewater people’). An important Algonquian tribe living on Nanticoke River of Maryland, on the east shore, where Smith in 1608 located their principal village, called Nanticoke. They were connected linguistically and ethnically with the Delaware and the Conoy, notwithstanding the idiomatic variance in the language of
Black Indians. Mentioned by Bontemantel and Van Baerlein 1656 (Bontemantel and Van Baerlein, N. Y. Doc. Col. Hist., I, 588, 1856). They and “the Southern Indians, called Minquas,” are spoken of as bringing furs to trade with the Dutch on Schuylkill River. Possibly the Nanticoke, who were said to be darker than their neighbors.
