UPCOMING EVENT: Earth Mother Day at Handsell on April 21, 2013.  All are welcome!  NO Admission Charge to Main Events

After visiting Spocott on Saturday-come to Handsell on Sunday!  (who says there is nothing to do in Dorchester County, Maryland)?

Join us for an exciting and educational afternoon from Noon to 4 p.m. for the whole family!  Daniel Firehawk Abbott will demonstrate native cooking by starting a fire from “scratch” (no matches here), roasting a venison and preparing other foods unique to the native people.   The team of volunteers will show you in detail how the longhouse at Handsell is being constructed.  For months, the crew has been gathering phragmyties and sapplings to construct this very detailed replica of the type of dwelling lodge one might have seen in a 17th century native village, such as the one that was located at this Chicone Village site around Handsell.  Let your children learn these hands-on skills, many of which are lost to modern society.

Foods Tent:   For a small fee, you and your family can sample delicious and unusual foods inspired by Native American cooking.

A new native American recipe booklet is being prepared by the NHPA. It is our gift to you for a $10. donation to the Longhouse Building Fund.

Handsell House Tour:  Come see Handsell house before restoration begins this spring!

Archaeology:  Learn about the digs at Handsell and experience shifting through recently excavated soil samples.

Artifact Display:  See the native artifact collection of Terry Crannell

Raffle Fundraiser for the Longhouse:  1st prize is a decorated replica of a Native clay pot made by Daniel Firehawk Abbott!  1 ticket $5 or 6 for $20.  All proceeds go to Native American Fund at Handsell.

 

 

Exciting Opportunity to own a replica native POT, hand formed and fired by Daniel Fierhawk Abbott!!  Enter the NHPA Raffle on April 21 to win this:

The Longhouse will be well on it’s way to completion for the Earth Mother Day Event on April 21, 2013.  We would like to thank the Maryland Heritage Areas for a sponsoring grant and the following for In Kind Donations toward this event:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visit the Indiantown to see the construction of the FIRST authentic native lodge to be built in over 200 years  in Dorchester County!  Information on donating to the project or volunteering to help can be found in the paragraph below.

The Chicone Native Village Project As a former Trading Post set up by Thomas Taylor in the 1600′s, the location of the original Handsell Land Grant on the site of the native village, known as Chicone (or Chicacone , Chicawan) gives NHPA the unique opportunity to create an authentic interpretation of those early days of European settlements upon the native people’s lands.  With Daniel Firehawk Abbott, well-known interpreter of the Eastern Woodland Indians, as one of our Trustees and a resident of Dorchester County, we have created the “Chicone Native Village Project”.  This effort includes the building of an authentic native lodge (often called a roundhouse, or longhouse) on the grounds of Handsell so that interpretations and re-enactments can be held here, enriched by this visual and tactic experience of a real native dwelling.  Daniel Firehawk Abbott can use this as a “home base” for his acclaimed “Origins” program, as seen each year at the Annual Nanticoke River Jamboree at Handsell. Harvesting of the natural material is well underway and the building of the lodge has begun!   More funding for this is still needed, so if you or other organizations are interested in helping, please contact us at restorehandsell@aol.com  or call NHPA President David Lewis at 410-228-8981

Brief Nanticoke History Pre-History
The Eastern Woodland Indians inhabited a wide area in the eastern part of the United States  including the vastly wooded area of the Delmarva Pennisula.  These included the Algonquian speaking “Nentego” (Nanticokes), the largest tribe on the Eastern Shore, who were part of a matrilineal culture.  They lived off the land, using wood, stone, bone and clay products as the basic raw materials in their lives. This region is noted for ample rainfall, numerous ponds, streams, and rivers and the Woodland Indians tended to establish permanent settlements near water in the forested areas.Traditionally, Eastern Woodland Indians lived in longhouses built of bent saplings covered with mats and/or bark.  Some of these would be single family size while others were quite extensive, housing larger family units.

The Nanticokes were a hunter forager culture.  Their primary animal foods were deer, turkey, turtle, fish and shellfish. As experienced farmers they grew beans, corn, and squash. While the males hunted, the females worked in the gardens raising crops and foraged for nuts, berries and roots like tuckahoe and cattail.  Available plant material was used both for food and medicinal purposes.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, there were numerous tribes living on the Delmarva peninsula.   John Smith’s 1608 voyage around the rim of the Chesapeake Bay described one of the largest villages, that of “the Emperor” which was in this area of Chicone Creek and Vienna.

While many tribes had moved freely up and down the peninsula for centuries, by the mid 1600′s, Europeans seeking land forced the tribes to abandon their traditional homes and lifestyles.  Nanticoke Indians who originally lived along the Nanticoke River found themselves slowly being pushed north away from their ancestral lands, some eventually  joining the Iroquois Confederacy.

The story of Eastern Woodland Indian culture reaches thousands of years into the distant past of what is now the state of Maryland.  Their heritage is intimately woven into the fabric of our nation, yet it is often misinterpreted and remains largely obscure.  Disease, conflict and assimilation wiped out much of this heritage within one or two generations.  As a result, an awareness of native culture is limited to place names of many of our towns and rivers whose meanings have long since been forgotten.

 Timeline of the Chicone Village

1678 – The Maryland Proprietary formally acknowledged a number of Eastern Shore town sites or informal reservations including the Nanticoke “Emperors” village of Chicone located nearby.  If existing land patents already included these village sites they were honored.  (English traders sometimes obtained land patents to
protect their economic interests and the Indians from further encroachment.)  Thomas Taylor, a licensed trader and military officer obtained such a patent for 700 acres at this site which he called Handsell in 1665, upon which he built a local and no doubt prosperous trading post (the old English word, Handsell, translates to “earnest money handed at market.” )

1698 - The Nanticokes experienced ever increasing English encroachment (social
hostilities; hunting, fishing and foraging pressures; and English livestock rooting up Indian gardens) and had lodged numerous complaints with the Maryland Colony.  English settlers were building houses nearby on the banks of the Nanticoke River.  Christopher Nutter purchased Handsell from Taylor and assumed Taylor’s role as trader-interpreter, however, Nutter was less sympathetic to the Nanticoke plight.  Tensions continued to mount.   The Maryland Assembly passed an Act “for ascertaining the bounds of certain tract of land, to the use of the Nanticoke Indians, so long as they shall occupy and live upon the same…”  Reservation Lands were then established for the Native Americans at Chicone Indian Town.

1723 -  After acquiring Handsell from the heirs of Nutter, Captain John Rider claimed legal possession of the land within the Chicone Reservation after finding it deserted except for one Indian, William Ashquash, son of the late Nanticoke Emperor.  Rider had physically ousted Ashquash, set fire to his cabin and built a clapboard house of his own.  The Indians returned in the Autumn, re-established residence and burned the house erected by Rider.  They testified to the Maryland Assembly that Rider had found their towns uninhabited because they were following their traditional seasonal migration to alternative food sources.  Maryland authorities ruled that Rider was trespassing.

1742 -  Ongoing English violation of Indian Reservation rights cause the Nanticokes to continue to abandon “Chicacone”.

1768 – The Maryland legislature passed a bill authorizing the purchase of all remaining rights to Chicone Indian lands from the Nanticoke Indians.  In 1769 all Indiantown land including Handsell was returned to the ownership of the heirs of John Rider including Henry Steele and his wife Anne and her sisters. 1770′s – Henry Steele purchased from the other “heirs in law” and became the sole owner of the Indian Towne Purchase, which originally extended from the “Chicacone Creek to the junction of the northwest fork of the Nanticoke near Walnut Landing.” Through the years, some of the Nanticokes and Choptanks and their descendants left the Eastern Shore for the north, espcially Canada. However, many remained here on the Shore and simply “disappeared”  into the marshes of Dorchester and Wicomico counties where they intermarried with white and black residents to create individual communities.  Local oral tradition says that such communities were established on and near Deal Island, Wicomico County and the lower parts of Dorchester near villages of Robbins and Abbottstown.  Descendants of the native people still live here in Dorchester County today.