The Mysterious Doeg Indians
Early in 2005, the webmaster of the Friends of Huntley Meadows Park approached me to write a history of the park for his site. My interest in the Doeg (Dogue) Indians started when I was doing the research for this project.
At the time of historic contact, around 1608, these Indians lived in Fairfax County, Virginia, where the park is located, as well as in Maryland. Their main town in Virginia, called May-umps, was on Mason Neck. Their main town in Maryland, called Moyaons or Moyumpse, was on Stump Neck almost directly across the Potomac from Mason Neck.
The more I delved into the history of these people, the more I realized that no one really knows much about them. The official Fairfax County version is that they migrated from the Maryland Piedmont around A.D. 1300 when Potomac Creek pottery first appeared in the area. But this theory weakens when it becomes clear that they probably were not Algonquian. The prefixes May- and Moy- are Algonquian and are interchangeable. So these people lived in towns that had Algonquian names, but the word "Doeg" is not Algonquian.
Some people contend that Doeg is not the real name of these people, that, in fact, they called themselves "Moyumpse." There is nothing in the record to support this. "Moyumpse" was usually associated with Moyaons. Doeg is what the English called these people. We cannot know what they called themselves because they had no written language. The word May-umps and all of its derivatives are names of places -- peninsulas (called necks or islands in the seventeenth century), rivers or towns. One cannot assume that because a people lived in a town, they were automatically called the same name as the town.
Stay tuned for more on this mystery.
Meanwhile, click here to see my website on the history of the park, which grew too large to fit on the Friends' site.
Shirley
At the time of historic contact, around 1608, these Indians lived in Fairfax County, Virginia, where the park is located, as well as in Maryland. Their main town in Virginia, called May-umps, was on Mason Neck. Their main town in Maryland, called Moyaons or Moyumpse, was on Stump Neck almost directly across the Potomac from Mason Neck.
The more I delved into the history of these people, the more I realized that no one really knows much about them. The official Fairfax County version is that they migrated from the Maryland Piedmont around A.D. 1300 when Potomac Creek pottery first appeared in the area. But this theory weakens when it becomes clear that they probably were not Algonquian. The prefixes May- and Moy- are Algonquian and are interchangeable. So these people lived in towns that had Algonquian names, but the word "Doeg" is not Algonquian.
Some people contend that Doeg is not the real name of these people, that, in fact, they called themselves "Moyumpse." There is nothing in the record to support this. "Moyumpse" was usually associated with Moyaons. Doeg is what the English called these people. We cannot know what they called themselves because they had no written language. The word May-umps and all of its derivatives are names of places -- peninsulas (called necks or islands in the seventeenth century), rivers or towns. One cannot assume that because a people lived in a town, they were automatically called the same name as the town.
Stay tuned for more on this mystery.
Meanwhile, click here to see my website on the history of the park, which grew too large to fit on the Friends' site.
Shirley
posted by Shirley at
4:06 PM
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