The Nottoway are an Iroquoian American Indian tribe with roots in Virginia. Their traditional homelands extended along the Nottoway River, and included parts of what are now Dinwiddie, Isle of Wight, Nottaway, Sussex, and Southampton counties.

Their name is believed to have derived from Nadawa or Nadowessioux, which translated to "poisonous snake." In Algonquian languages beyond the viper's range, the term primarily means "seeker" or "trader." The Nottoway people often referred to themselves as Cheroenhaka, which means "people at the fork of the stream."

The Nottoway language was in the Iroquoian family of languages but was extinct before 1900. Even at the time of the tribe's first European contact in 1650, there were thought to be only a few hundred native speakers of the language. By 1820, only three elderly people spoke Nottoway.

The English explorer Edward Bland is believed to have been the first European to contact the Nottoway in 1650, visiting two of their three towns, on Stony Creek and the Rowantee Branch of the Nottaway River.

In 1677, a Nottoway representative signed the Treaty of Middle Plantation, which established the tribe as a tributary to the Virginia Colony, after which the English didn't hesitate to encroach upon their territory.

Due to hostilities with other tribes, the Nottoway moved south to Assamoosick Swamp in what is now Surry County in 1681. In 1694, they moved again, this time to the mouth of a swamp in Southampton County. There, they absorbed what remained of the Eno, a tribe that had previously been part of the Powhatan Confederacy.

Like other American Indian tribes, European contacts brought epidemics, including measles and smallpox, which reduced their populations.

In the early 18th century, remnants of the Nansemond and Weyanock tribes joined the Nottoway. In the early 1700s, their population was about four hundred. Two young Nottoway men attended the College of William and Mary in 1711.

Following the Tuscarora War, large numbers of Tuscarora people migrated north, where they became the sixth nation in the Iroquois Confederacy, and some Nottoway left with the Tuscarora.

Most of the Nottoway remained in Virginia, signing a treaty with the British in 1713 that gave them two small tracts of land within their historical territory, but they sold the smaller of the two tracts in 1734, followed by additional sales in 1744, 1748, and 1756. By 1772, there were only 35 Nottoway living on what remained of their land, half of which was leased to white settlers. Toward the end of the 19th century, the Weyanock merged into the Nottoway.

In the early 19th century, the remaining Nottoway had no organized government, and European-American trustees were overseeing tribal issues, and tribal members married European-Americans and African-Americans.

In 1808, only 17 people identified as Nottoway. They owned 3,900 acres of land. In 1818, tribal members requested permission from the Virginia General Assembly to sell half of their reservation lands, and, in 1823, the Nottoway requested termination as a tribe, allowing the remaining members to request individual allotment of land, and the last tribally held land was allotted in 1878. With their termination as a tribe, Virginia law considered their descendants to be "persons of mixed blood, not being negroes or mulattos," while white Virginians considered them "free negroes," due to intermarriages with African-Americans.

The Commonwealth of Virginia recognized the Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia and the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe in 2010, although neither is recognized by the federal government.

This portion of our web guide deals with the Nottoway people. Websites or other online resources focusing on the Nottoway people, tribes, organizations, businesses, or events, including those owned and operated by Nottoway individuals, are appropriate for this category.

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