Chesapeake people
Extinct Native American tribe
The Chesepian (Chesapeake) were a Native American tribe who lived near present-day South Hampton Roads in the U.S. state of Virginia. They occupied an area which is now in the independent cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach (formerly Norfolk County and Princess Anne County).
Name
The name Chesapeake is an anglicisation of the Algonquian word, K'che-sepi-ack, which translates as "country on a great river." The name for the Native American tribe is spelled many different ways, "Chesapian" is commonly used. In 1585, Ralph Lane used both "Chesapians" and "Chesapeaks",. John Smith's charts and writings also show variety but most frequently used "Chesapeaks". John White's illustrations used "Ehesepiooc".
Settlements
They occupied an area which is now the Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach areas. The main village of the Chesepian was Skicoak on the peninsula east of the Elizabeth River either on that river or near the Lynnhaven River.
Two other Chesepian towns were Apasus and Chesepioc (Chesepiuc), both on the same peninsula in what is now the city of Virginia Beach. Chesepioc lay on Great Neck Point east of the Lynnhaven River.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Chesapeake people” is extinct Native American tribe. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Chesapeake, people and Extinct, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chesapeake people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.