Accawmacke

The Accawmacke were an Indigenous chiefdom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, with its main settlement near present-day Cheriton. Across Chesapeake Bay lay the Powhatan Confederacy.

When English colonists arrived in 1608, the Accawmacke retained considerable autonomy under their chief Debedeavon, who supplied the colonists with food. He left his rule to his daughter in 1657. By the mid-seventeenth century the English had taken most of their land, although communal lands survived until 1812.