Pamlico

The Pamlico, also recorded as Pampticough or Pomouik, were among the southernmost Algonquian peoples of the Atlantic seaboard, living on the Pamlico and Neuse rivers behind the North Carolina sound that bears their name. They farmed, fished and traveled the sounds in distinctive dugout canoes.

English knowledge of them began with Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke expeditions of 1585 and 1586, whose linguist Thomas Harriot studied their language with Roanoke guides. Smallpox swept their towns in 1696, and when John Lawson collected their vocabulary in 1701 the North Carolina Algonquian population had fallen to roughly six hundred.

During the Tuscarora War of 1711 to 1713, the Tuscarora turned on their Algonquian allies, killing or enslaving many Pamlico. Survivors merged into the Machapunga and Tuscarora communities, their Carolina Algonquian speech surviving chiefly in Lawson’s word lists.