#lesserknowntribes

[nativeskins]

Chief Stickwan's two daughters holding buckets and carrying burdens on backs with trumplines, Klutina-Copper Center band of Lower Ahtna, 1903

The Ahtna (also Ahtena, Atna, Ahtna-kohtaene, or Copper River) are an Alaska Native Athabaskan people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group. The people's homeland called Atna Nenn', is located in the Copper River area of southern Alaska, and the name Ahtna derives from the local name for the Copper River. 

[nativeskins]

The Apalachee are a Native American people who historically lived in the Florida Panhandle. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River, at the head of Apalachee Bay, an area known to Europeans as the Apalachee Province. They spoke a Muskogean language called Apalachee, which is now extinct.

The Apalachee occupied the site of Velda Mound starting about 1450 CE, but had mostly abandoned it when Spanish started settlements in the 17th century. They first encountered Spanish explorers in the 16th century, when the Hernando de Soto expedition arrived. Traditional tribal enemies, European diseases, and European encroachment severely reduced their population. The survivors dispersed, and over time many Apalachee integrated with other groups, particularly the Creek Confederacy, while others relocated to other Spanish territories, and some remained in what is now Louisiana. About 300 descendants in Rapides and Natchitoches parishes assert an Apalachee identity today.

Villages and towns were often situated by lakes, as the natives hunted fish and used the water for domestic needs and transport. The largest Apalachee community was at Lake Jackson, just north of present-day Tallahassee. This regional center had several mounds and 200 or more houses. Some of the surviving mounds are protected in Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park,

The Apalachee grew numerous varieties of corn, pumpkins and sunflowers. They gathered wild strawberries, the roots and shoots of the greenbrier vine, greens such as lambsquarters, the roots of one or more unidentified aquatic plants used to make flour, hickory nuts, acorns, saw palmetto berries and persimmons. They caught fish and turtles in the lakes and rivers, and oysters and fish on the Gulf Coast. They hunted deer, black bears, rabbits, and ducks.

(source)

[nativeskins]

The Alsea were a Native American tribe of Western Oregon.  When Lewis and Clark reached them, the Alsea may have numbered about a thousand. By 1910, as a result of disease and displacement, they were reduced to a 29 or so individuals, who took refuge with the nearby Siletz tribe. They are probably extinct, although a few members may be mixed in with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, many of whom live on the Siletz Reservation, where the remaining members were relocated. 

[nativeskins]

Barbareño is one of the extinct Chumashan languages, which was spoken in the area of Santa Barbara, California. Barbareño became extinct in 1965 with the death of Mary Yee. As of 2013, the Barbareno Chumash Council is engaged in ongoing efforts to revive the language.

[nativeskins]

A man from the T'atsaot'ine or Yellowknives band of the Athapaskan-speaking Dene associated with the region encompassed by the Coppermine and Yellowknife rivers, the northeast shore of Great Slave Lake, and northeast into the Barren Grounds.

[nativeskins]

About the year 1,000 B.C., a tribe of Indians settled in the general Brevard area of Florida. These early inhabitants were named Ais or Ays (Ah-es) by the first Spanish explorers. The Ais Indians were aboriginal and should not be confused with the Seminole Indians. The Ais lived in small nomadic bands and chose various prime locations along the Indian River to make camp. The beach area was the normal winter habitat but with the coming of summer and the ever present mosquito, the Indians would migrate to the higher mainland ridges.

The tribe consisted of a series of small villages each commanded by its own village chief. They lived in wooden frame structures that were completely covered with palmetto leaves. The largest house in each village belonged to the chief and it was usually located in the center of the village. In his house was a seat of honor and other places where his second in command and advisers were stationed. It was here that the village chief enacted village laws and ruled and judged his tribe.

Physically, the Ais were small in stature in comparison with the average contemporary American Indian. Their small stature did not result in timidity, however, for all known accounts indicate that the Ais were very warlike and were great hunters and skilled in the use of the bow and arrow and other weapons. Hunting and fishing were the chief occupational opportunities and since wildlife was in abundance, food was no problem. Their staple food was fish speared from the Indian River which was known to the Ais Tribe as the" Aysta-chatta-hatch-ee". Translated, this means "the river of the Ais Indians". Later the Spaniards were to refer to the Indian River on all of their maps as "The Rio d' Ays". In addition to fish and game, oysters, clams and snails were a mainstay of their diet. (source)

[nativeskins]

The Atakapa-Ishak (uh-TAK-uh-paw – ee-SHAK), are a Southwest Louisiana/Southeast Texas tribe of ancient Indians who lived in the Gulf of Mexico’s northwestern crescent and called themselves Ishak. The name means The People.

In prehistoric times the Ishak divided into two populations known to this day as, “The Sunrise People” and “The Sunset People”.   Some Ishak lived on the south coast of what is now Texas, down to Matagorda Bay. Other Ishak lived on the upper coast of the Gulf’s northwestern crescent at what is now Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana.  In Louisiana, on the coast, we spread all the way to what is now Vermilion Bay.  The former Ishak, those on the lower coast, inhabited the land to perhaps a distance of a week’s walk.  Those on the upper coast inhabited the land to perhaps a distance of several weeks’ walk.

They were called Atakapa by the Choctaw.  The name was used by the Spaniards and French colonizers in Louisiana,  as a slur word to refer to the Ishak people. This gave them a reputation and rumor of being “man eaters”, which continues through today.

After 1762, when Louisiana was transferred to Spain following French defeat in the Seven Years' War, little was written about the Atakapa as a tribe. Due to a high rate of deaths from infectious disease epidemics brought by Europeans, they ceased to function as a tribe. Survivors generally joined the Caddo, Koasati, and other surrounding tribes, although they kept some traditions. Some culturally distinct Atakapan people survived into the 20th century.  

[nativeskins]

In 1641, the Accomac Indians, an Algonquin-speaking tribe located on the Eastern shore and part of the group collectively referred to as Powhatan Indians, became known as the Gingaskins when they accepted a patent from the English government for the remaining 1,500 acres of their ancestral lands on the ocean side of Northampton County. Various legal and boundary struggles with their English neighbors over the years reduced the lands reserved for the Gingaskins to 650 acres, which was patented again in 1680.

Over the years, Indian lands were often leased to outsiders by the state and county governments in order to “help support” Gingaskin members, most of whom chose to maintain a traditional lifestyle and not farm the lands. Great concern was exhibited by white neighbors about the Gingaskins intermarrying with free negroes and charges were made in petitions to the General Assembly in 1784 and 1787 that there were no more “real” Indians left on the reservation and therefore the land should be given to whites who could “better protect it”, by which they meant farm it in the traditional English way.

Beginning in 1792, the General Assembly had required the Northampton County court to appoint trustees to manage the reservation lands and settle any disputes that arose. The trustees of the Gingaskin reservation, never very enthusiastic about their duties, “convinced” (or forced) the remaining members to accept a division of the land among themselves in 1812.  The General Assembly passed a law in 1813 to eliminate the Gingaskin reservation and divide the land between the official members, deeding the divided plots to individuals in the same way as anyone else in Virginia would own land. This was the first instance of termination or legal allotment of reservation lands and detribalization of its owners in United States history. Three-fourths of individual Gingaskin owners retained their lands until 1831 when most were forced out following the Nat Turner insurrection.