Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Virginia, Federal Recognition Act

Bill: 119-hr-5144
Sponsor: full_name: Rep. Kiggans, Jennifer A. [R-VA-2]
Introduced: 2025-09-04
Policy area: Native Americans
Latest action: action_date: 2025-09-04
text: Referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources.

Summaries:

tv_txt: I 119th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 5144 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, Virginia, and for other purposes.

1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Virginia, Federal Recognition Act . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) The Hand Site Excavation (44SN22) in Southampton County in 1965, 1966, and 1969, carbon 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 narrative 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) Indian 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 Edward 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. (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 downfall of the Occoneechee Indians at Occoneechee Island 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 representing 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 Painter, 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 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 Virginia, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe was the only Tribe remaining in Virginia of any prominence. (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 Greater Work , by Karen A. Stuart for her M.A. degree at William & Mary College, all of whom submitted 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 expenditure 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) Indian Tribe’s Queen Edy (Edith) Turner’s last will and testament was probated in the courts of Southampton County, Virginia. On March 27, 2008, the Library of Virginia honored Queen Edy Turner, posthumously, in their special awards ceremony, titled Women In History , by presenting an award on her behalf to the current Chief of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton 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 Virginia, formerly Jerusalem, which is part of its original 41,000 acres of reservation land that was granted 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 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 Counties. The Tribe’s reservation land was sold off between 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 Commonwealth of Virginia mandated a Special Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Census be taken of those Indians, documenting by name (colonial names given) of Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indians still living on the remaining 7,000 acres of the Tribe’s reservation 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 attend 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 Virginia via H.J. Res 171 (Virginia House of Delegates, 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 presented to the Virginia sitting Governor, annually, on Saint George’s Day, April 23. (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 500 Tribes, some 20,000 Natives, in the grand opening 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 conducted 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 Southampton 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 installation, aircraft carriers, colleges and universities, community colleges, elementary and middle schools, the Daughters of the American Revolution and Archeological Society of Virginia, annually , throughout Hampton Roads, Southside Virginia, North Carolina, Northern Virginia, and on the Hill in Washington, DC, including— (A) hosting 35 American Indian Powwows and School Days, celebrating 444 years of Tribal 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, documenting the history of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Virginia. 3. Definitions In this Act: (1) Secretary The term Secretary means the Secretary of the Interior. (2) Tribal citizen The term Tribal citizen means an individual who is an enrolled member 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 Southampton County, Virginia. 4. Federal recognition (a) Federal recognition (1) In general Federal recognition is extended to the Tribe. (2) Applicability of laws All laws (including regulations) of the United States of general applicability 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 inconsistent with this Act shall be applicable to the Tribe and Tribal citizens. (b) Federal services and benefits (1) In general The Tribe and Tribal citizens shall be eligible for all services and benefits provided by the Federal Government to federally recognized 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 citizens shall be determined in coordination and consultation with the Secretary not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act. 5. Membership; governing documents The membership roll and governing documents of the Tribe shall be the most recent membership roll and governing documents, respectively, submitted by the Tribe to the Secretary before the date of the enactment of this Act. 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. 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 Secretary shall— (1) make a final written determination not later than 3 years after the date on which the Tribe submits a request for land to be taken into trust under subsection (a); and (2) immediately make that determination available to the Tribe. (c) Reservation status Any land taken into trust for the benefit of the Tribe pursuant to this section shall, upon request of the Tribe, be considered part of the reservation of the Tribe. 8. Gaming The Tribe may not conduct gaming activities as a matter of claimed inherent authority or under the authority of any Federal law, including the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act ( 25 U.S.C. 2701 et seq. ) or under any regulations thereunder promulgated by the Secretary or the National Indian Gaming Commission. 9. Hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering, and water rights Nothing in this Act expands, reduces, or affects in any manner any hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering, or water rights of the Tribe and Tribal citizens.