Centuries after Native Americans dominated Southern Maryland, there's now more concrete evidence of their presence at St. Clements Island on the Potomac River.
ST. CLEMENT’S ISLAND, Md. — The small pieces of oyster shells and ceramic shards in the palm of archaeologist Julia King don’t look like much.
St. Clement’s Island — an uninhabited 40-acre plot of land only accessible by boat — sits where the Potomac and Wicomico rivers meet, about half-mile off the shoreline of St. Mary’s County. There are roughly 4,500 Native Americans who are part of two state-recognized tribes — the Piscataway Conoy Tribe and the Piscataway Indian Nation — who trace their roots to the area. Piscataway means “the people who live where the waters meet” in the Algonquian language.To many, St.
“History was not written for us — or about us,” said Francis Gray, chairman of the Piscataway Conoy Tribe. “There’s a history of exclusion and genocide of our written language and other stories that nearly wiped us out. More needs to be done to explain and showcase our rich history that’s a part of what Maryland is today. We’re Maryland’s original peoples.”
“There was no better place to live off the water and the land than there,” Newman said. He recalled how his grandfather used to tell him, “if the heron isn’t fishing, then you weren’t fishing.” It meant there was “something wrong with the fish or the water that day.”Under the Piscataway chiefdom, other tribes — including the Yaocomico, Mattawoman, Pamunkey, Mattaponi and Nanjemoy — were interconnected with their own systems of justice, governing and defending themselves.
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