I 
119TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 5144 
To extend Federal recognition to the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe 
of Southampton County, Virginia, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
SEPTEMBER 4, 2025 
Mrs. KIGGANS of Virginia introduced the following bill; which was referred to 
the Committee on Natural Resources 
A BILL 
To 
extend 
Federal 
recognition 
to 
the 
Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Vir-
ginia, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Vir-
ginia, Federal Recognition Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) The Hand Site Excavation (44SN22) in 
Southampton County in 1965, 1966, and 1969, car-
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bon dates the ancestors of the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, 
Virginia, to 1580. The site existed as early as A.D. 
900 as highlighted by a Department of Historical 
Resources-approved State site marker whose nar-
rative reflects the site was ‘‘long claimed’’ by the 
Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe. 
(2) The Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indians made 
first ethnohistorical contact with the Colonials in 
1608 when Nathaniel Powell and Anas Todkill met 
them at a village called Tomihitton in Nottoway 
County while looking for information germane to the 
Roanoke Island’s survivors and the Lost Colony of 
1585. 
(3) In 1607, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) In-
dian Tribe was called Man-goaks or Men-gwe by the 
Powhatan Confederation’s Algonquian speakers as 
listed in the upper left-hand quadrant on Captain 
John Smith’s 1607 map of Virginia. 
(4) In 1650, per the diary entries of James Ed-
ward Bland, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indians 
were called by the Algonquian speakers NA–DA–WA 
meaning ‘‘snake, enemy, stealthy’’ in the Algonquian 
language, 
which 
the 
Colonials 
reverted 
to 
NOTTOWAY. 
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(5) In May 1676, Tribal warriors of the 
Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe joined forces 
with Bacon in what became known as the infamous 
Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion, resulting in the down-
fall of the Occoneechee Indians at Occoneechee Is-
land on the Roanoke River which was a catalyst that 
lead to the Woodland Plantation Treaty of 1677. 
(6) The King of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) 
Indian Tribe, ‘‘Sarahoeque’’, signed the Woodland 
Plantation Treaty in 1677 in Williamsburg, Virginia, 
bearing his signature mark of ‘‘3 rivers’’ rep-
resenting the Nottoway River, and the Blackwater 
River forming a fork where it met the Chowan 
River—hence ‘‘People at the fork of the stream’’. 
(7) The true name of the ‘‘Nottoway’’ Indians, 
as penned from 1728 to 2016, in the papers and 
books authored by historians Lewis Binford, Albert 
Gallatin, James Tresevant (Trezevant), Floyd Paint-
er, Gary Williams, and William Ashley Hinson, and 
the War Papers of 1796, is CHEROENHAKA 
meaning ‘‘People at the fork of the stream’’. 
(8) In 1711, Colonial Lieutenant Governor 
Alexander Spotswood met with the Chief (King) and 
Chief Men of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian 
Tribe offering Treaty Tribute forgiveness of the 
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Treaty of 1677 (20 beaver pelts) if the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Chief Men were to send their 8- 
to 10-year-old sons to the ‘‘Brafferton’’, a school for 
Indians at William & Mary College. On November 
11, 1711, it was noted that 2 of the Chief Men’s 
sons were attending the Brafferton. 
(9) In the 17th century, the Iroquoian-speaking 
Tribes occupied lands east of the inner Coastal 
Plains of southeastern Virginia. These Tribes were 
the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway), the Meherrin, and the 
Tuscarora. 
(10) On April 7, 1728, William Byrd II of 
Westover visited the village of the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe in Southampton County, 
Virginia, recording a description of the Palisade 
Fort and how of all the Indigenous Tribes in Vir-
ginia, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe was 
the only Tribe remaining in Virginia of any promi-
nence. 
(11) Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian surnames 
continued to appear on the enrollment roster of the 
Brafferton throughout the 1750s (e.g., Captain Tom 
Step, Captain Sam, Alexander Scholar, Billy 
John(s), and School Robin a.k.a. Robert Schalor), as 
documented in the 1984 Graduate Thesis, ‘‘So 
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Greater Work’’, by Karen A. Stuart for her M.A. de-
gree at William & Mary College, all of whom sub-
mitted a petition for pay on March 8, 1759, for 
serving in the French and Indian War under George 
Washington. 
(12) In 1816, new trustees were appointed for 
the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian’s Reservation. 
These trustees were empowered to make reasonable 
rules and regulations for the Tribe and for the ex-
penditure of the money held in trust for them, which 
was to continue so long as any number of the Tribe 
was still living. Any funds remaining on hand were 
then to be paid into the public treasury. 
(13) On March 4, 1820, John Wood, a former 
William & Mary College professor of mathematics, 
met with the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian 
Tribe’s Queen, according to Thomas Jefferson, by 
the name of Edy Turner, a.k.a. ‘‘Wane Rounseraw’’, 
(1754–1834), on the Tribe’s land in Southampton 
County, and recorded the language of the Tribe. 
(14) In 1838, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) In-
dian Tribe’s Queen Edy (Edith) Turner’s last will 
and testament was probated in the courts of South-
ampton County, Virginia. On March 27, 2008, the 
Library of Virginia honored Queen Edy Turner, 
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posthumously, in their special awards ceremony, ti-
tled ‘‘Women In History’’, by presenting an award 
on her behalf to the current Chief of the 
Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of South-
ampton County, Virginia. 
(15) The Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe 
of Southampton County, Virginia, has more than 
325 Tribal citizens on its rolls, all of whom, via a 
paper trail, can document their genealogical line to 
an ethnohistoric surname of the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, 
Virginia. 
(16) The Tribe currently owns 263 acres of 
Tribal land in Southampton County, Courtland Vir-
ginia, formerly Jerusalem, which is part of its origi-
nal 41,000 acres of reservation land that was grant-
ed to the Tribe by the House of Burgesses in 1705. 
(17) The Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924 
under the direction of the Virginia Bureau of Vital 
Statistics, per Walter Plecker, its first director, via 
‘‘paper genocide’’ negated out Virginia Indians by 
reclassifying the Indians as ‘‘colored or mulatto’’. 
This reclassification has created genealogical gaps, 
making it nearly impossible for Virginia Tribes to 
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gain Federal recognition via the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs (BIA) process. 
(18) In 1705, the House of Burgesses granted 
2 tracts of reservation land to the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe—the Circle Tract (18,000 
acres) and the Square Tract (23,000 acres), totaling 
some 41,000 acres of reservation land. The 2 tracts 
fell within the confines of what was then Isle of 
Wight County, now Southampton and Sussex Coun-
ties. The Tribe’s reservation land was sold off be-
tween 1735 and 1875, with the last acres belonging 
to the Sykes family being sold in 1953 for back 
taxes. 
(19) As a result of reservation land sales, in the 
early 1830s, many members of the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, 
Virginia, the Turners, Rogers, Woodson, Artis, 
Brown, Sykes, Cutler, and Bailey, left the Tribe’s 
reservation and relocated to now Highway No. 686, 
2 miles back in the woods, and settled off the banks 
of Jenkins and Bean Creeks, to a place that became 
known as Artis Town. 
(20) In July 1808, the Governor of the Com-
monwealth of Virginia mandated a ‘‘Special’’ 
Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Census be taken of 
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those Indians, documenting by name (colonial names 
given) of Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indians still liv-
ing on the remaining 7,000 acres of the Tribe’s res-
ervation land in Courtland, Virginia. 
(21) 
From 
1918 
to 
1957, 
Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian children living in ‘‘Artis Town’’, 
and their descendants living on Artis Town Road in 
accordance with the 1920, 1930, and 1940 census, 
attended Diamond Grove school, a Rosenwald School 
built in 1918, and their descendants continued to at-
tend the school until the school closed in 1957. 
(22) The Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe 
of Southampton County, Virginia, is an officially 
State-recognized Tribe by the Commonwealth of Vir-
ginia via H.J. Res 171 (Virginia House of Dele-
gates, 2010) and S.J. Res. 127 (Virginia Senate, 
2010). 
(23) The Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian 
Tribe’s King, ‘‘Ouracoorass Teerheer’’ a.k.a. William 
Edmund, signed a stand alone treaty with Virginia’s 
provisional 
Lieutenant 
Governor 
Alexander 
Spotswood on February 27, 1713, that required a 
‘‘Peace Tribute’’ of 3 arrows to be delivered and pre-
sented to the Virginia sitting Governor, annually, on 
Saint George’s Day, April 23. 
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(24) The Tribe has presented the Spotswood 
treaty tribute to the sitting Virginia Governor on the 
299th, 300th, 301st, 302d, 303d, 304th, 305th, 
306th, 307th, 308th, 309th, 310th, 311th, and the 
312th anniversaries of the treaty. 
(25) On February 2, 2002, the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, 
Virginia, reorganized the ethnohistoric Tribe by 
bringing together family clusters of Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indians still living in Southampton 
County, Virginia. In March 2002, the Tribe 
launched its constitution and bylaws and elected its 
first modern-day Chief—Chief Walt Red Hawk 
Brown. 
(26) On December 7, 2002, the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe submitted a letter of intent 
to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Office of 
Federal Acknowledgment (OFA) stating that it 
would be filing for Federal recognition via the BIA. 
(27) On December 2, 2005, the Tribe received 
a letter from the Department of the Interior, OFA, 
listing the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe as 
‘‘Petitioner #264’’. 
(28) On September 21, 2004, the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe participated as 1 of the 
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500 Tribes, some 20,000 Natives, in the grand open-
ing of the National Museum of American Indian 
(NMAI) in Washington, DC. In honor of the Tribe’s 
participation, 
the 
name 
of 
the 
Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe is engraved on the NMAI 
Honor Wall (panel 4.22, line 20 of the wall). 
(29) On November 26, 2006, the Tribe con-
ducted a ‘‘Public’’ Peake (Peace) Belt and Pipe 
Ceremony by the bank of the Nottoway River, on the 
grounds of the Southampton County Court House; 
wherein, elected officials from the Counties of 
Nottoway, Sussex, Surry, Isle of Wight, and South-
ampton passed the peace pipe and presented the 
Tribe with proclamations of Tribal recognition under 
their counties’ official seal. 
(30) From 2002 to 2024, the Cheroenhaka 
(Nottoway) Indian Tribe has given Native American 
ethnohistoric presentations to every military installa-
tion, aircraft carriers, colleges and universities, com-
munity colleges, elementary and middle schools, the 
Daughters of the American Revolution and Archeo-
logical Society of Virginia, ‘‘annually’’, throughout 
Hampton Roads, Southside Virginia, North Caro-
lina, Northern Virginia, and on the Hill in Wash-
ington, DC, including— 
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(A) hosting 35 American Indian Powwows 
and School Days, celebrating 444 years of Trib-
al history; and 
(B) two television documentaries, sharing 
the Tribe’s Native history with some 1,500,000 
individuals. 
(31) The Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe 
has published 6 Tribal journals, issue I–VI, titled 
the ‘‘WaSKEHEE’’ (‘‘to see’’ in the Tribe’s 
Iroquoian language), all of which have been accepted 
in the collections of the Library of Virginia, docu-
menting the history of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) 
Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Virginia. 
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS. 
In this Act: 
(1) SECRETARY.—The term ‘‘Secretary’’ means 
the Secretary of the Interior. 
(2) TRIBAL
CITIZEN.—The term ‘‘Tribal cit-
izen’’ means an individual who is an enrolled mem-
ber of the Tribe as of the date of the enactment of 
this Act. 
(3) TRIBE.—The term ‘‘Tribe’’ means the 
Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of South-
ampton County, Virginia. 
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SEC. 4. FEDERAL RECOGNITION. 
(a) FEDERAL RECOGNITION.— 
(1) IN
GENERAL.—Federal recognition is ex-
tended to the Tribe. 
(2) APPLICABILITY OF LAWS.—All laws (includ-
ing regulations) of the United States of general ap-
plicability to Indians of nations, Indian Tribes, or 
bands of Indians (including the Act of June 18, 
1934 (25 U.S.C. 461 et seq.)) that are not incon-
sistent with this Act shall be applicable to the Tribe 
and Tribal citizens. 
(b) FEDERAL SERVICES AND BENEFITS.— 
(1) IN GENERAL.—The Tribe and Tribal citi-
zens shall be eligible for all services and benefits 
provided by the Federal Government to federally rec-
ognized Indian Tribes without regard to existence of 
a reservation for the Tribe. 
(2) SERVICE AREA.—The service area for the 
purpose of delivery of Federal services to Tribal citi-
zens shall be determined in coordination and con-
sultation with the Secretary not later than 120 days 
after the date of the enactment of this Act. 
SEC. 5. MEMBERSHIP; GOVERNING DOCUMENTS. 
The membership roll and governing documents of the 
Tribe shall be the most recent membership roll and gov-
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erning documents, respectively, submitted by the Tribe to 
the Secretary before the date of the enactment of this Act. 
SEC. 6. GOVERNING BODY. 
The governing body of the Tribe shall be— 
(1) the governing body in place as of the date 
of enactment of this Act; or 
(2) any subsequent governing body elected in 
accordance with the election procedure specified in 
the governing document of the Tribe. 
SEC. 7. RESERVATION OF THE TRIBE. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—Upon the request of the Tribe, the 
Secretary of the Interior shall take into trust any land 
held in fee by the Tribe that was acquired on or before 
January 1, 2007, if such lands are located within the 
boundaries of Southampton County, Virginia. 
(b) DEADLINE
FOR DETERMINATION.—The Sec-
retary shall— 
(1) make a final written determination not later 
than 3 years after the date on which the Tribe sub-
mits a request for land to be taken into trust under 
subsection (a); and 
(2) immediately make that determination avail-
able to the Tribe. 
(c) RESERVATION STATUS.—Any land taken into 
trust for the benefit of the Tribe pursuant to this section 
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