DC’s Vsnished Indians?

Case of the Disappeared

Copyright 2024 by Michael Auld

The issue of Native American survival in the USA is fraught with disappearance stories. Murdered and Disappeared Native Women is not covered in the media.  This phenomenon is not unusual, since, because of educational avoidance,  Americans are totally oblivious of its Indigenous people and ignorant of their history. So, it is not rocket science that the District of Columbia’s residents don’t know anything about its Indigenous Dogue (also called Tauxenent), as well as the leading nation in the DMV’s Powhatan Paramountcy, the Pamunkey, who also have America's oldest reservation. 

Most Americans are schooled by fairy tales of a "Princess Pocahontas" without being told that, as a Pamunkey,  her father, "Powhatan's" actual territorial domain included Washington. DC. Some, however, may be aware of the only other historic tribe from Southeast DC neighborhood's *Nacotchtank of Anacostia who Captain John Smith said upon arrival in 1608, were "once a part of the Powhatan Paramountcy." Unfortunately, they were driven out in 1688, of what became the Federal City, by an attack by the Patawomeck of Stafford County, Virginia and their British allies' bombardment of their town. The English invaders in Jamestown envied the Nacotchtank's thriving beaver pelt industry. Incidentally in England, warm beaver hats from Russia were all the rage. It is recorded that their remnant survivors moved to the Tauxenent's Roosevelt Island in the Cohonkaruton or Potomac River, for one year, then they moved on to disappear in Ohio.

The prevailing belief is that DC’s “Indians” became extinct. Sorry to burst the ignorance bubble, but here are some Pamunkey and Dogue/Tauxenent members, who were born in DC, graduated from all grades of the DC Public Schools (and even taught there), as well as from three of its universities. (See a DC teacher-administrator, and mother from a family of 18+ city's siblings, and her daughter below).

THE SURVIVORS

Pamunkeys in DC:  (L-R) late Pamunkey Chief Willian (Bill) "Swift Eagle" Miles (stooping). 
Back row: Bill's late wife, Ann Miles; Bill's late cousin, DC-born Georgia Mills Boston Jessup (Pamunkey) an artist, DCPublic Schools teacher/Administrator; Georgia's daughter, DC-born, resident Rose Powhatan  (Tauxenent/Pamunkey); a woman representative of the Islamic Center of Washington, DC. Bill and Ann were visiting from the Pamunkey Reservation, and stayed with Georgia in her Maryland home while on an official 1980s tribal business with the Islamic Center who had offered medical care for the reservation.

Today, hundreds of descendants of Native Americans who have been Indigenous to the DMV for thousands of years have "disappeared" from public records. Some have direct descent from the leaders of the Powhatan Paramountcy. DC also had Queen Cockacoeske of the city and of Pamunkey (See the Washington Post's article by Rose Powhatan about her ancestral cousin, Cockacoeske). The disappearance of DC's "Indians" is directly the result of the 1924 Racial Integrity Act's racist attempt, to destroy all vestiges of Native Americans in Virginia. The Act was imported in DC from Richmond, Virginia. It had great governmental influence over DC’s Indigenous families since most of their origins were centered in Virginia’s Powhatan Paramountcy. One Delaware Indian, Sacagawea Harmon of a store-owing Georgetown family, fell victim to suicide when fired from the Federal Government because she placed "Native American" on her intake form.

The Powhatan Paramountcy stretched from North Carolina, through Eastern and Northern Virginia, Southern Maryland, into Washington, DC. Interestingly. the only Powhatan Paramountcy's member school children know, is one of Wahuncenachaw's minor daughters, Amonute or Matoaka, popularly known by her pet name and Disney's fictitious Pocahontas cartoon and The New World movie. Factually, she was a little girl of 11-years old when 27-year-old Captain John Smith arrived in the Powhatan Paramountcy in 1607.

The DC Newcomer Phenomenon

There is a scramble by outside tribes to claim Washington, DC. This Metropolitan Area has the distinction of being a portion of the Nation's Capital within the historic Powhatan Paramountcy. And is also very attractive to Native Americans from other parts of the country who come here for jobs. According to the Maryland Government, their Piscatawy tribe which was created in 1706, was forced out of the state by arriving English Catholics. "In 1701 they signed a treaty with William Penn and moved to Pennsylvania under the protection of the Iroquois".  After the Washington Redskins football team out of shame, changed their names, a group of Southern Marylanders whom sociologist called "Tri-racial Isolates" (meaning, a remnant of its citizens mixed with White, Black, and Indian survivors in the state), have had their sites on becoming "DC's Indians." This is a disrespect for DC's true Indigenous family's and their history and is the most egregious attack on the city's Native American story.

Some of these new arrivals attempt to lay claim on DC since they are ignorant of the actual local indigenous families of American Indian descent who are mainly those from the original Powhatan Paramountcy. This DMV conflict is as old as before the formation of the Powhatan Paramountcy itself. Its creator was Wahunsenacawh’s father, the first Powhatan (meaning “Principal Dreamer”). Wahunsenacawh’s dad had organized the eight original Algonquian nations to join him in Virginia's Chesapeake area, to defend themselves from tribal outliers. The need was for his son's expansion to over 32 Algonquian nations (from North Carolina to Washington, DC) ended before 1607, and began again in 1609 with the First Anglo-Powhatan War of Homeland Security against the British, formally under Captain John Smith. However, the need for its protection continued for 68 years, after three Anglo-Powhatan Wars which began in 1609, and ended with Queen Cockacoeske signing of the Treaty of Middle Plantation (Williamsburg, Virginia) in 1677. These wars had begun just two years after the English first set foot on Powhatan territory. However, the battle over DC continues with newly arriving Native Americans, both from next-door Southern Maryland's Piscataway and other tribal newcomers from distant states.

For the past centuries, moving in and out of the city proper by DC's Indigenous families, to live, work, or for schooling on all levels, was the norm. Local and Federal Government jobs were later obtained, starting with the hard work in local DC stone quarries (one in the National Zoo off Quarry Road, NW) whose stones were used in building DC structures like the interior of the Washington Monument, Smithsonian buildings, the eves of the Capitol Rotunda, canals, and even Georgetown's "Exorcist steps". After the 1924 Racial Integrity Act, these Indigenous families, because of racial discrimination, learned to keep their heads down, but still passed on their indigenous pride to the next generation through family stories, poetry, the visual arts, movies, and area powwows.

PART 1: (Below)
A DC Indigenous family's Native traditions continued.

PART 2: (Below) THE MOVIES

The New World movie set with Colin Farrell as Capt. John Smith & Rose Powhatan as a Native American (Pamunkey) clan mother.

Rose Powhatan with actor, Colin Farrell to the right, a New World movie producer at a Chickahominy powwow near the movie set located next to the Chickahominy River, Virginia. They are next to her Powhatan Totem poles.  

PART 3: (Below)

Some Accomplished Family Artists

 Photos (Top) Georgia Mills Boston Jessup (Pamunkey) with her painting, "Rainy Night Downtown", Permanent Collection of National Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.

(Middle) Bernie Boston (Tauxenent Councilman), White House photographer for the LA Times, with his Pulitzer nominated Vietnam Era photo "Flower Power".

(Bottom) Back & front book cover of a novel by Rose Powhatan's son, a Lawyer for the Arts,  podcaster & author, of 13 novels, Alexei Auld (Pamunkey/Tauxenent/Taino), born and educated in Washington, DC, a Columbia School of Law graduate. He is also a Howard University graduate like his grandmother, Georgia Mills Boston Jessup, mother Rose Powhatan, aunt Marsha Jessup, father, Michael Auld, and his two brothers, Ian and Kiros.

Another Chief's Family of Indigenous DMV Descendants

All were proudly aware of their descent from the Dogue/Tauxenent, Wampanoag, and Pamunkey, the leading nation in the Powhatan Paramountcy with America's oldest reservation in King William County, Virginia, three counties in Southern Maryland (the current township of Pomonkey, MD). The Pamunkey counted Wahunsenacawh, his brother, Opichancanough, the War Chief, his niece Cockacoeske (the Queen of Pamunkey & DC), and Pocahontas as tribal members. Their Paramountcy fought thee Anglo-Powhatan Wars of Homeland Security, signing pivotal treaties with the spreading British Empire.

 Like many surviving Amerindians one must know the names common to certain tribes, like Begay of the Navajo. or Mills/Miles and Cook of the Pamunkey, or Custalow of the Mattaponi Reservation, and more. And Washington, DC is no different. Arriving in DC for university in 1962, I met many Indigenous descendants and became a part of one of these extensive families with over 18 siblings with over 29 practitioners in the visual and performing arts. So taken by the arts accomplishments of these related families, I wrote a manuscript titled "29 and Counting", documenting many members who had accomplished great national, international, and local heights in music, opera, drama, podcaster, author, arts education, the visual arts, biomedical communication, arts law, and art therapy.

Above: A photo of the late Tauxenent’s Chief Keziah Boston, also a musician, who had 91 living descendants, and was elected to that position along with two Assistants to the Chief, Billy Payne and Rose Powhatan. She, her assistants, and the tribe's council were the first installed since her ancestor, the recorded weroansqua, Keziah Powhatan and her Fairfax County warriors burned down the county’s courthouse around 1744. Chief Keziah Boston was of Dogue, Pamunkey, and Wampanoag descent, marking the revival of Northern Virginia’s tribal nation, the northernmost national member of the historic 32-34 members of the historic Powhatan Paramountcy. These nations continued to intermarry over the centuries, creating multiple kinships.

Above: Son of the Chief, an Assistant to the Chief, Billy Payne (Tauxenent/Pamunkey).

Assistant to the Chief, Rose Powhatan (Tauxenent/Pamunkey)

The Tauxenent/Dogue Weroansqua, Keziah Powhatan was memorialized by her descendant, Rose Powhatan. She stands next to her totem and the National Gallery of Art's Washington, DC's exhibition banner, in a 2023-2024 Native American art exhibition, her hometown and ancestral territory, the northernmost segment of the historic Powhatan Paramountcy.

Here are just some from this family's over 30+ other arts practitioners.

(Above) DC's lyric soprano Madam Lillian Evanti (Lillian Evans 1890-1967) was an  international opera singer.

David Mills (Pamunkey) was a journalist for both the Washington Times, and NewYork Times, He was also a writer for HBO miniseries "NYPD Blue", 'The Corner", "Kingpin", and "Treme".

 

Top: Juaquin Jessup (Pamunkey) was the lead guitarist for the Mandrill band's  Mohamed Ali album, (He is in the photo with the band at the bottom left.
Bottom: (L) Kiros Auld (Tauxenent/Pamunkey/Taino) a writer, with his uncle, (R) musician Juaquin Jessup (Pamunkey).

Washington, DC residents (Middle and Right): Michon Boston (Tauxenent) and older sister Tequena Boston (Tauxenent) drama graduates of Howard University and Oberlin University, podcasters of the "Boston Sisters" show.

Painter, James Whitley III (Pamunkey) with his artworks which include a large painting on the right, of his Aunt Georgia Mills Boston Jessup (Pamunkey).

Dr, Phoebe Mills Farris (Pamunkey) art therapist, Native American journalist, and photographer in front of the Pamunkey Reservation's Tribal Office, King William County, Virginia.

==============================================
NOTES:

(1) "Surviving Document Genocide" an article by Rose Powhatan) to read a blog on an Indigenous DC resident on her experiences with trying to make her a disappeared DC Native American. 

(2) Cockacoeske: The Queen of DC and Pamunkey

An illustration of the Queen Cockacoeske of Washington, DC and Pamunkey with her signature. Made by Michael Auld (Yamaye Taino) using the likeness of her family descendant Georgia Mills Boston Jessup (Pamunkey).

(3) Fairfax County: The Royal Gift

Above: Land belonging to the Right Honorable Thomas Lord Fairfax Baron Cameron, bounded within the Bay of Chesapeake and between the Rivers Rappahannock and Potowamack [Potomac] in Virginia.

 DAR Plaque about the burning of the Fairfax County Courthouse

D.A.R. Plaque, Tyson's Corner, Vienna, Virginia commemorating the act of Werowansquaw
Keziah Powhatan and her warriors as "Indian hostilities".

(4) Document Genocide: (https://yamaye-mike.blogspot.com/2019/10/surviving-document-genocide_31.html) The systematic governmental erasure of Native American links to contemporary Virginia families. The practice was codified by the 1924 Racial Integrity Law enacted by the Virginia Government under the influence of Dr., Walter Ashby Plecker, Director of the state's Vital Statistics. The law, upon the pain of imprisonment, forbade the documenting of Virginia Indian's racial designation as "Indian". The Eugenics Movement copied by Plecker and Germany's Nazi Party was responsible for the denial of genetic descent from Virginia's Amerindian people. The victims off the reservation were deemed Non-Indian or "colored", a designation which led to "Negro" then "Black". Plecker's influence reached beyond Richmond, Virginia into the surrounding states and the District of Columbia.

(5)  Place of the Caucus

A composite image commemorating Powhatan's love for the Tiber Creek on today's Capitol Hill in the territory of the Tauxenent/Dogue, where he loved to caucus with the surrounding nations. Next to him is one of his totems. a black panther which is reputed by guards to appear in the halls of the Capitol  as a gigantic "black cat" during troubled times.

(6) Maps of the Virginia Territory and the Powhatan Paramountcy:

[a]. Captain John Smith's map of the Powhatan Paramountcy.

John Smith's Map of the Virginia Territory includes Powhatan's domain of 32-34 nations known historically as a Kingdom, Confederacy, or "Chiefdom", along with the "tribes" of the area.

[b] Washington Post's 2007 maps

• 
  

  

  Enlargement of the Washington Post's 2007 map of the Powhatan Confederacy's Dogue or Tauxenent Territory that included parts of today's Northern Virginia and Washington, DC.

1607: Powhatan Land and Water Areas which equals over 18,000 square miles [Note: The Washington Post map was by mapmaker Gene Thorpe dated December 13, 2006, showed that the above land and water areas were between 18,700 to 19,250 square miles.]

 

The Spider-Man’s Son

Ticky-Ticky’s Adventures 

A time to move on.

Above: Anansi the Spider-Man with his Ghanaian children and their names associated with their abilities, None of them came to the Americas.

Q:  What is Anansi’s legacy in Jamaica?

A: There are numerous stories about Kweku Anansi the Spider-Man. They originated in Ghana among the Asanti. He was once a man who disrespected his father, N’yame the Great Sky God. His mother was Assase Ya, the Earth Goddess. For his slight against his father, N’yame turned his son into a small Spider-Man. In the Akan language, ananse means “spider”. Now a small creature suspended in a web between his mom, the Earth, and his dad, the Sky, this event made Anansi have to use his brain to survive larger animals and humans out to get him for his pranks. This is why children and the less fortunate have identified with him.

Arrival in Jamaica 

He came to the Americas during the African Slave Trade and was known by many names. So Anansi spent centuries in the Jamaican psyche as Brer’ Annancy. Although he had a wife named Aso in Ghana, called Cookie in Jamaican lore, they had many children. But, only one child appears with Anansi in the island with him in Jamaican folklore. His son, Intikuma, is called Bra’ Takooma in local stories. 

Intikuma Anansi or Ticky-Ticky, Anansi's youngest Jamaican son, with ancient Amerindian spider images around him.

As a writer and storyteller, I decided to make this son have his own adventures. So, this is my version of the young Spider-Boy’s adventures. It introduces the reader to the Caribbean’s other ancient folkloric stories. This is Part 1 of a trilogy, set in the Taíno’s Bagua of the Caribbean Islands. In Parts 2 & 3 he travels by a time and reality transporting Bat-Canoe, with Opiyel, the Search-Dog of the Afterlife, loaned to him by Guyaba Maketaurie, God of Those Absent on Coabey, the Taíno Island of the Dead. 

The Book 

Above: Part one of the only novel on one of Anansi's sons, Toicky-Ticky.

A Reader’s Comment 

on Ticky-Ticky's QUEST

Spiderman’s Son

by Hugh Stringer

(For more on Anansi, go to anansistories.com)

"Ticky-Ticky’s Quest tells the story of a boy’s search for his father. The father, Anansi, was West African [the son of N’yame the Great Sky God of the Asanti]. The son, [Anansi] disrespected [N'yame] and was turned into a Spider-Man. Ticky-Ticky’s mother was a full-blooded woman, but she became progressively more spiderlike after the birth of each of her children. This is the first of a trilogy by Michael Auld.

It begins a year after Anansi leaves home and Ticky-Ticky embarks on a search to find him. His search takes him from Jamaica to Haiti to Florida. On his way, he learns Caribbean geography, history, linguistics, and folklore, and by dealing with the adversities of his quest he becomes a man. As a young man, Ticky-Ticky decides who he can and cannot trust and learns to distinguish right from wrong. His education is more consequential because he sees the world, for the first time from his own perspective: As a one-quarter spider, he must deal with the questions of identity that most full-blooded people never need to ask themselves. Before he sets out on his journey, he feels he must hide the fact that he is a “quarter spider.” He’s embarrassed by four legs. This is a story of how during his journey “living in a world of full-blooded humans,” he learns to forget he is a one-quarter spider.

His quest takes him to meet the characters that figure in Caribbean folklore. He sees and hears them in his mind’s eye and ear. Their images and voices pop into his head. In one episode, Ticky-Ticky hears the voice of the goddess of wind [Guabancex] and learns how hurricanes clean house: The Herald god [GuatuaBA!] announces the coming storm, and the Wind and Rain [Coatrisque the Deluge] gods clean up the “planetary trash” humans have left behind.

In another episode, on an island inhabited only by women [Matinino], Ticky-Ticky, “for the first time in his life, was accepted without judgment or questions.” He becomes so enamored of one of the women [Anacaona, future queen of Ayti's Haragua province] that for a time he forgets he is on a journey to find his father. Ticky-Ticky’s Quest is a compelling story from many perspectives: It is the story of what it means to be a boy, a man, and a human being capable of accepting people “without judgment or questions.

The Plot

Ticky-Ticky is a twelve-year-old with a secret: The youngest son of the infamous trickster Anansi the Spider-man. Hiding in the human world, Ticky-Ticky fears his father’s enemies will recognize and punish him for being the butt of Anansi’s embarrassing pranks. Now, the joke’s on Ticky-Ticky.  A school incident forces him to follow his missing father’s footsteps on a dangerous quest across time and reality. Riding a magical ghost-bat canoe with a dog of the dead as his guide, Ticky-Ticky encounters Anansi’s folkloric foes out for revenge. After a lifetime of avoiding his father’s legacy, can Ticky-Ticky find his father before he loses his life or even worse: becomes just like him? 

THE YOUNG QUARTER SPIDER-BOY’S DILEMMA 

  

Ticky-Ticky sits in his Coromanti High School daydreaming about his life in his classroom. The teacher confronts him, ruler in hand, ready to smack the desk… or him!

“Mr. Ansnsi! Wake up!” She says in a stern voice. Mrs. Jellywoman is not having her students wander off into La-La Land in her class. Ticky-Ticky’s daydreaming was becoming a habit. So, having warned him before, she sends him to the headmaster for discipline with a cane beating on the bent-over buttock.

The British headmaster disciplines Ticky-Ticky and says.

“Don’t come back to school without your father!”

Holey crap! Ticky-Tivky’s dad, as Anansi had been off on an adventure for a year now!

Seeking Help 

Ticky-Ticky confiding with his best buddy, shape-shifting, Iggi Iguana under a Duppy Balloon tree whose air-filled fruits, pop like a balloon, expelling its floating seeds.

Ticky-Ticky seeks advice from his best friend, Iggy the shapeshifter iguana.

“Man, you must try anything to find your dad!”

Iggy advises.

Osebo coming after Ticky-Ticky

To make things worse, on his way to get help, Ticky-Ticky runs into Osebo the Terrible Leopard who is doing the same thing. Searching for Anansi for payback! He escapes Osebo’s claws!

Cuffy the Obeah-man, just caught puffer fish.

                             

Ticky-Ticky sought out Cuffy the Obeah-man who used the puffer fish’s toxic flesh to turn victims into zombies. He could also give a cohoba potion to visit the spirit world.

Guayaba Maketaurie, God of the Afterlife. The sweet guava fruit behind him is his symbol and namesake.

The young Spider-Boy is sent to Coabey to visit Guayaba, Lord of the Afterlife via a Cuffy the Obeah-man's induced cohoba trance, and as the son of a god, is Guyaba's relative. 

Opias, or the Spirits of the Absent hang on the cave's ceiling like bats that represent them.

                        

Visiting the Afterlife, he didn’t see his dad among the opias, the spirits.

Ticky-Ticky comes from under seagrape leave with Opiyel the Afterlife's Search Dog. An albino bat materializes out of Coabey, the Caribbean Island of the Afterlife.

 Guayaba loans Ticky-Ticky his search dog, Opiyel, and a Bat-Canoe that can travel across time and realities. But Haitian canoe-jackets attempt to hijack the canoe to Florida.

The hurricane is called Guabanxex, not any other imported names. Here she is as the Angry Woman Goddess, Rider of the Winds with her two accomplices, the roaring Herald and the devastating Deluge. 

Guabancex and her twin accomplices, GratauBa! the Herald thunder and lightning, and his brother, Coatrisque the Deluge,  blow the Bat-Canoe off course.

Young Anacaona also falls for Ticky-Ticky after his Bat-Canoe was blown off-course on his way to North America where he was told that his dad went. Historically, she became the Queen of Jaragua in Ayti Bohio (Haiti).

They crash land on the twin Island of Woman, called Matinino or No Fathers where he meets and falls for Anacaona the Golden Flower.

Anansi is not there! But, could he have gone to America to find his rich Spider-Relatives there?

This storybook can be inexpensively bought at Amazon and Barnes & Noble at  Amazon.com and 

Barnes&Noble on how to purchase the digital or printed version.

A SNEEK PEEK AT THE NEXT NOVEL

Cover of Part 2 of the trilogy.

Here the Bat-Canoe escapes Florida's alligator attack!

Ticky-Ticky's visit to an American relative, the Cherokee's Grandmother Spider.

Oh boy! Ticky-Ticky finds out about his cross-dressing spider-woman"Aunt Nancy" of the Sea Island people of South Carolina. Here she's caught by a tar-man trap.

Brer' Rabbit's daughter. Bunny,  is skeptical about Ticky-Ticky's authenticity as a folkloric descendant.

Michabo the Great Hare's daughter Oginiminogawon questions Ticky-Ticky on his travels. 
But, there's lots more to come!