 General region where the Wicocomico lived, at the headwaters and north of the Little Wicomico River | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Extinct as a tribe | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Northumberland County, Virginia | |
| Languages | |
| Algonquian | |
| Religion | |
| Native religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Pocomoke people |
The Wicocomico /waɪkɛ'kɑːməkɛ/ were an Algonquian-speaking tribe who lived in Northumberland County, Virginia, at the head and slightly north of the Little Wicomico River.
According to John R. Swanton they were a subdivision of the Nanticoke.[1]
They were the first Native people on the mainland to encounter Captain John Smith, before his famous interaction with Pamunkey and Pocahontas of the Powhatan people. Due to constant encroachment and manipulation by settlers, opportunists, and Captain Smith, as well as internal conflict regarding how to respond to these, the tribe splintered. The colonial court of Virginia ordered them to merge with a smaller tribe and renamed the Wicocomico. The English colonists assigned them a flag and a reservation of 4,400 acres (18 km2) near Dividing Creek, south of the Great Wicomico River.
The grandson of Machywap (later called Machywap Taptico, once a friend of John Smith) was forced to sell the last remaining piece of Wicacoan-owned land following the Battle of the Wilderness fought there, because the ground was so littered with bodies. Being a massive "burial" site, the ground could no longer be cultivated. Some of the splintered tribe joined the Powhatan Confederacy, the rest integrated. They were rendered functionally extinct and soon disappeared from the historical record.
- ^ Swanton, John Reed. The Indian Tribes of North America. pp. 59–60.