Secotan

The Secotan were a Native American tribe, was the tribal area on the east coast of present-day State of North Carolina in the United States. Linguistically, they belong to the small group of North Carolina Algonquian. The Secotan were among the first tribes of North American Indians, who had 1584/85 contact with English colonists. About them there is a wealth of information from this period, including numerous watercolors by the artist John White. The surveyor John Lawson was the next but last author vividly details of the life of the Indians on the coast of North Carolina. In its report of 1709, the name Secotan but no longer appears.

Residential area and the environment

At the time of first contact with Europeans to 1584 Secotan lived in villages on the peninsula formed by the Albemarle and Pamlico Sound. Also, the mutual banks in the lower reaches of the Pamlico River, estuary, part of their settlement area. There, their main village Secoton lay on a bay on the southern shore, from which a John White watercolor exist. The peninsula has a nearly flat surface with many lakes, marshes and vast sand dunes. The coastline consists of deep sounds and estuaries. The mostly sandy soil is covered with hard grass, marsh vegetation and evergreen forests. The climate is humid and subtropical, and allows annual growth period of about 250 days. Freshwater and saltwater fish, oysters and edible clams there are in abundance in this coastal region, which is also densely populated by waterfowl. In mammals live here deer, foxes, squirrels, opossums, rabbits, and in earlier times also bears and cougars.

Life and culture

Anthropologists suggest that the tribe has separated in prehistoric times by the Virginia Algonquian and moved to the south. This is one of the most recent Algonquian walks, the southward along the Atlantic coast moving ..

History

During the first Raleigh expedition in the summer of 1584 and after the establishment of the Roanoke Colony on August 17, 1585 English colonists explored the other islands and the mainland on the east coast of present-day North Carolina. They visited the villages of Secotan, including Secoton, Seco and Secotaoc on the Pamlico River and Aquascogoc. Two members of the Secotan, Manteo and Wanchese, were taken to England, to instruct the English in the language and culture of the Indians. The Secotan were among the first Indians who for a long time had contact with whites. In a short period of 1584-1586 a large amount of information collected by the British. Arthur Barlowes report and John White's watercolors from this period are the earliest documents describing the North Carolina Algonquian in some details. Three hand -drawn maps that were created 1585-1586, form the earliest sources of the residential areas of the tribes, and local position of their villages.

The initially good relations between the English and Secotan indicators deteriorated, as the stocks brought the colonists were consumed. The generosity of the Indians ended understandably, as they had no more food. In addition, among the aborigines of hitherto unknown diseases broke out and many of them died. In 1590 the Roanoke colony was finally abandoned, and it has since been known as Lost Colony (German Lost Colony ). Another epidemic, caused by European diseases, examined the Secotan and her neighbors home in 1596 and killed more than 25 % of the indigenous inhabitants. About 70 years passed before the coastal regions of North Carolina were settled by white settlers. John Lawson delivered at the beginning of the 18th century more information on the North Carolina Algonquian who had by this time shrunk considerably in their population. Of the estimated 7,000 people lived at the time of first contact 1709 only also estimated 620 tribesmen. In the residential area of Secotan Lawson different tribal names had noted, as in Example Machapunga, Hatteras and Bear River. Today, it is not always unambiguously possible to determine these names as synonyms for formerly used names.