Page 176 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

The Piscataway Trail:
Clues to the Migration of an Indian Nation
Perhaps no Native Ameri- can tribal group figures more prominently in the early histor- ical records of Maryland than
the Piscataway or Conoy peoples. This Algonquian-speaking Indian Nation inhabited the western shore of the Po- tomac in modern-day Prince George’s, Charles, and St. Mary’s counties. And it was the Piscataway Tayac, Wannis, whom Governor Leonard Calvert ap- proached in 1634 when seeking permis- sion to settle and a suitable site upon which to establish the new colony of Maryland.1 The migrations of these peo- ples from their homeland on the Tidewa-
ter Potomac northward to the territory of the Six Nations Iroquois is documented not only in the records of the English colonists, but also in the very soil.
The principal village of the Pisca- taway, Moyaons, was recorded by John Smith during his first voyage along the Chesapeake. From mid-June to mid-Ju- ly of 1608, he and his crew traveled up the Potomac River and stopped at the village. Smith noted in his journal that the people of Mayaons, “did their best to content us.”2 Smith also depicts Moya- ons on his 1612 Map of Virginia, just below the mouth of Piscataway Creek.3 Beginning in 1935, Mrs. Alice Ferguson
began excavating a series of overlapping Late Woodland palisaded villages in this area of Piscataway Creek. Excavations at the site, which came to be known as the Accokeek Creek Site (18PR8), revealed nearly 60,000 pottery sherds, thousands of flaked stone objects, numerous faunal remains, storage pits, postmolds, hearths, several ossuaries, and other features. Fer- guson came to believe that she had iden- tified the principal Piscataway village visited by Captain John Smith in 1608, but many archaeologists today disagree with this interpretation based on the lack of Contact-period artifacts encoun- tered at the site.4 At the very least, the
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