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Retrieved from https://www.rla.unc.edu/publications/ncarch.html North Carolina Archaeology Journal' V. 63, October 2014. Looking for Indian Town: The Dispersal of the Chowan Indian Tribe in Eastern North Carolina, 1780 1915, by Forest Hazel, pp. 34-64:
The Chowanoke, or Chowan, were an Algonkian tribe that lived along the Chowan River in northeastern North Carolina when first encountered by the
English in the late 1500s. Over the next two centuries, the tribe maintained its distinct social identity and by the early 1700s the Chowan were settled on
reserved land in what is now Gates County. With the sale of its last communal land in 1821, the tribe ceased to exist as a social unit, though tribal
members and their descendants continued to live in the area. In this paper I trace Chowan settlement history, land ownership, and genealogy from the latter years of the reservation into the twentieth century, focusing on their now-forgotten community just southeast of Gatesville that was known as
Indian Town.....(p. 34)
The last tract of reservation land was sold on April 12, 1790 to William Lewis and Samuel Harrell by James Robins, Benjamin Robins, George Bennett, and Joseph Bennett, “Chief men and representatives of the Chowan Indians Nation of the county of Gates and state of North Carolina.” For $100, paid in Spanish-milled dollars, the two purchasers got 400 acres of what is basically swamp and marsh lying directly on the Chowan River between the mouths of Bennett’s Creek to the west and Catherine’s Creek to the east. (p.36)
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Hazel's document (attached) does not attempt to give a comprehensive history of the tribe, but does give later information and land data and family census rolls from the later yers of the reservation that are important for documenting the group and provide a map for further study and additional profiles.
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'Some famous Chowanoke descendants:
Thomas Hoyle, King of the Choanoac
Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator Senator Warren whose Reed Family hails to the Chowan Reed family who petitioned for their land back in 1790 after being taxed on their skin color for generations. Her Reid/Reed group ended up in OK. Her ex-spouse's Warrens were of Old Cheraw transfer community out of the Nottoway into Indian Territory of what was at the time claimed by Spain in West Spanish Florida taken from the Western Choctaw.
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Sources for research: