Accawmacke

The Accawmacke, or Accomac, were an Algonquian-speaking people of the Eastern Shore of Virginia, whose name means the place on the other side of the water, for they lay across Chesapeake Bay from the Powhatan homeland. Their main village, also called Accomac, stood near Cherrystone Inlet, and they were loosely linked to the Powhatan Confederacy.

English contact began in 1608, when colonists met Debedeavon, called the Laughing King; he led about eighty warriors and became their ally. Epidemics from as early as the 1585 Roanoke venture had already thinned them.

Disease and colonial pressure cut their population by roughly ninety percent by 1700, and the English applied the name Accomac to every native group east of the bay. The remnant held communal lands in Accomack County until 1812, and the related Gingaskin band was driven out after Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831.