Piscataway

The Piscataway were the dominant Algonquian people of the lower Potomac, holding the north bank in southern Maryland and Patuxent River tributaries. Their villages paid tribute to a paramount chief titled the Tayac, whose capital at Moyaone drew together farming communities of palisaded longhouses.

In 1634 the Tayac Kittamaquund granted Maryland colonists the site of St. Mary’s City as a buffer against the Susquehannock; he and his wife were converted by the Jesuit Andrew White in 1640.

By 1668 the western-shore Algonquians were confined to reservations; epidemics reduced their numbers and raids drove the Piscataway from their lands. After sheltering in Zekiah Swamp in 1680 and on Conoy Island after 1699, survivors called Conoy moved into Pennsylvania in the 1720s under Haudenosaunee protection. Most later joined the Six Nations of the Grand River in Upper Canada.