Nottoway people

The Nottoway (also Nottaway) are an Iroquoian Native American tribe in Virginia. The Nottoway spoke a Nottoway language in the Iroquoian language family.

The term Nottoway may derive from Nadawa or Nadowessioux (widely translated as "poisonous snake"), an Algonquian-language term.

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. The extension of the meaning as "Iroquoian speakers" is secondary.^{[citation needed]} In Algonquian languages beyond the geographical range of the viper (i.e. Cree–Innu–Naskapi and Eastern Algonquian), the term's primary reference continues to focus on *na:t- 'close upon, mover towards, go after, seek out, fetch' and *-awe: 'condition of heat, state of warmth,' but no longer refers to the viper.^{[citation needed]}

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

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. This term, Mengwe or Mingwe, was used by the Dutch and applied to the Iroquoian Susquehannock ("White Minquas") and Erie people ("Black Minquas").^{[citation needed]}

The name Cheroenhaka is an autonym for Nottoway people. The meaning of the name Cheroenhaka (in Tuscarora: Čiruʼęhá·ka·ʼ) is uncertain. (It has been spelled in various ways: Cherohakah, Cheroohoka or Tcherohaka.) The linguist Blair A. Rudes analyzed the second element as -hakaʼ meaning "one or people who is/are characterized in a certain way." 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). The term has also been interpreted as "People at the Fork of the Stream".

The Nottoway language is an Iroquoian language. It became extinct well before 1900. At the time of European contact in 1650, speakers numbered only in the hundreds. From then until 1735, a number of colonists learned the language and acted as official interpreters for the Colony of Virginia, including Thomas Blunt, Henry Briggs, and Thomas Wynn. These interpreters also served the adjacent Meherrin, as well as the Nansemond, who spoke Nottoway in addition to their own Algonquian dialect of Powhatan. The last two interpreters were dismissed in 1735 since the Nottoway by then were using English.

By 1820, three elderly people still spoke Nottoway. In that year John Wood collected over 250-word samples from one of these, Chief Edith Turner (Nottoway, ca. 1754–1838). He sent them to Thomas Jefferson, who shared them with Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. In their correspondence, these two men quickly confirmed that the Nottoway language was of the Iroquoian family. Several additional words, for a total of about 275, were collected by James Trezvant after 1831 and published by Albert Gallatin in 1836.^{[citation needed]}