Accawmcakes: Past and Modern Day

Accawmacke's have been known to be First Contact Triple Threats! Many Accawmacke Act, Dance and Sing Very Well! We even become Stars!!!

Tavante Beckett

Tavante Beckett Accawmacke Indian Accomplished his dream of playing for the NFL!! He has future plans of returning to his Accawmacke Agricultural Roots. He inspires the the youth to never stop dreaming and create new goals to obtain!

Tawny Cypress

Tawny Cypress Star of the Yellowjackets is the Daughter of Eastville Virginia Shoreborn Accawmacke Indian the late Eugene Cypress! YellowJackets is an outstanding Edgy Suspenseful Drama!

Fortunately, several Accawmackes adapted well to change

SOME LOST THE CONNECTION TO THEIR TRUE IDENTITY AND REMAIN SOMEWHAT IN DENIAL

In 1950, after fighting in World War II, having fought in all American Wars including the Revolutionary War, the Accawmacke Indians experienced economic and racial oppression in Northampton County. The Accawmacke Indian veterans failed to receive the benefits they were promise. As a result, many families, neighbors, friends of various Accawmacke Indian clans were forced way from their homelands in Virginia to various places all over the world. Most notably the Accawmackes were forced to move to NYC, NJ, PA, DE and MD. Yet many of today’s Accawmackes have both parents from the Accawmackes and all four grandparents, etc.

The Accawmackes have always been a patriotic people, fighting in every American war to this date. They are a people who love their indigenous homeland America. This evidenced by the fact that several Accawmacke Indians fought for America as early as the Revolutionary War.

In addition, the Accawmackes are known as people who have an entrepreneur spirit known as being experts in trade, farming, and fishing. The Accawmackes saw and see the benefit to business negotiations with the English.

Unfortunately, the American Indians underestimated the level of desperate measures the Europeans would take to steal America and profit from its wealth of both human and natural resources. The Accawmake Indians never waged nor participated in war against the Colonist and therefore signed no treaties and make no tribute to the Virginia Company or USA Corporation.

Today, The beaches on bay on which the Accawmacke used to crab, fish and swim were now blocked for years with “PRIVATE and NO TRESPASSING” signs those Beaches while the gigantic Sand Dunes that were previously in Savage Neck on the Bayside Sands were excavated and scraped causing trees to topple over. What happened to the reported stolen Sand Dunes on Barges and Trucks? No one cared about the Destruction of The Environment and Ecosystem.

People in Northampton see Accawmacke Indians and pass them by each day as ordinary African Americans. Some believe the Accawmacke Indians are of mixed-American Indian / Tri Racial ancestry. Yet, genealogy proves that most Accawmacke Indians are nearly or completely full-blooded Indians. There were no AFRICans present on the Eastern Shore. Therefore, the American Indigenous Accawmackes Indians today claim their pre-colonial identity ,jurisdiction, freedom rights and heritage.

Accawmacke Indians obey the laws of America, respect and pledge unity and complete cooperation. Foreign governments such as the United States of America, Inc., cannot assume the right to define, fine, tax, classify or identify indigenous civilized American Indians, such the American Indigenous Accawmacke Indians.

Accawmacke Indians of Today

The Accawmakes not only resided on the Gingaskin reservation; the majority of the Accawmacke Indians was reclassified by Virginia Law as Negro, Colored and Mulatto and lived off the reservation. Many lived and still live to this day in the homeland and heritage land that belonged to their various Accawmacke Sub-Tribe and Clans, reclassified as African American. The Accawmacke Indians numbered more than 5000 when the Europeans arrived. Today there are over 200 enrolled members. Yet, there are an estimated 2000 people who are actually of the Accawmacke Indian bloodline. Today when you meet an African American in Northampton, they may really be an authentic Indigenous American Accawmacke Indian. In fact, Accawmacke Indians are all around the world.

According to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian

According to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that “they were a sovereign nation in Worcester vs. Georgia, (1932). By refusing to consider Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the Supreme Court denied self-government to a Native American tribe. Prior to 1831, the federal government treated tribes as foreign entities in an effort to keep their tribal lands, the Cherokee living within Georgia turned to farming and ranching.

They also wrote a constitution and laws adopted in some aspects of U.S. law. The state of Georgia declared all the Cherokee laws void, prompting that nation to appeal to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the opinion dismissing the case, saying that Indian tribes were "domestic dependent nations" and could not turn to the Supreme Court. The Cherokee Indian had no right to file a legal claim in United States' courts.

President Andrew Jackson ignores the Supreme Court decision, enforced his Indian Removal Act of 1830 and pushed through the Treaty of New Echota. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 has been referred to as “a unitary act of systematic genocide, because it discriminated against an ethnic group in so far as to make certain the death of vast numbers of its population. The 1830 Indian Removal Act required that the Cherokee surrender their land and move west.

The Treaty of New Echota became the legal basis for the forcible removal known as the Trail of Tears. In 1838, the Cherokee people were forcibly taken from their homes, incarcerated in stockades, forced to travel more than a thousand miles and removed to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. More than 4,000 died and many are buried in unmarked graves along “The Trail Where They Cried.”

There are many genealogical and court records of Accawmacke Indian ancestors who fled Virginia during the unrest of the Trail of Tears. Many accounts of Accawmacke Indian ancestors escaped to Florida. Such as a few Cypresses who forcibly left to join the now Seminole of the Big Cypress Reservation in Florida. Several others such as those named Chavis, Jeffers, Stephens, Ammons, Perkins and Jones to name a few, joined the Cheraw Nation in Florida. There were court and census records indicating that the Johnson’s who descend from the wealthiest American Indian Slave in Northampton, Virginia; Anthony Johnson who fled to Maryland and later to Cherokee Territory in Texas. Here are also oral accounts of Accawmacke Indians fleeing to Montana as well.

Later, Post-Civil War Jim Crow Era Oppression, and legalized terrorism, served to secure the stolen lands. Creative laws were instituted in efforts to keep the Accawmackes and other Indigenous American Indians of negroid appearance from being classified as American Indians with rights and claims to American Soil. This was further enforced in with the1924 Racial Integrity Act. A racist eugenic named Dr. Walter Plecker was hired by the Census Bureau and he insisted that all non-Whites especially those claiming Indian identity, be classified as Colored.

This 1924 Racial Integrity Act motivated those Indians with qualifying predominate ratios of European heritage to organize their few families into the various Virginia Indian Tribes that are known today. Only Indian tribes that had a high European blood line were allowed to resist this Act. In fact, it divided Indian against Indians in the same community and families and those who could be classified as Indian against those who could not. Some Virginia Indians refused to enlist in the military due to being classified as Colored. A few Virginia Indians even chose jail rather than joining WWI and WW2 as Colored people.