Matapeake

The Matapeake were an Algonquian people of Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay. They called the island Monoponson, a name also used for their community. Its shores face the waters that separate the eastern peninsula from the western side of the bay, placing it within a network of Indigenous communities around the great tidal estuary of the Chesapeake.

In 1631 English colonists led by William Claiborne established Kent Fort as a trading post. They exchanged beads imported from Italy for Matapeake furs, but the growing colonial population changed life on the island. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the Matapeake were driven from the island and joined neighbouring Algonquian peoples. Their name remained associated with the island long after their departure.