Turkey Tayac (1895 – 1978) was a Piscataway A person who claimed to be an Indian leader and herbal doctor, born in Charles County, Maryland with the Christian name Philip Sheridan Proctor. Turkey Tayac claimed to be the last person to have knowledge of Piscataway (one of numerous Eastern Algonquian languages that form a subgroup of a larger Algonquian family of languages) through oral transmission, and also to be a highly regarded oral history bearer. Two leading Algonquian linguists, Ives Goddard from the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, and Julian Granberry both referred to and consulted with Turkey Tayac in their field work, according to his followers, but scientific proof remains elusive. Insert non-formatted text hereThe Piscataway Indian Nation is a non-state, non-federally recognized Native American tribal nation, which, at one time, was one of the most populous and powerful Native polities of the Chesapeake region. ... Charles County is a county in the south central portion of the U.S. state of Maryland. ... The Eastern Algonquian languages are a subgroup of the larger Algonquian family, itself a member of the Algic family; prior to European contact, the family consisted of around 17 languages, which streched from Newfoundland south into North Carolina. ... Pre-contact distribution of Algonquian languages The Algonquian (also Algonkian) languages are a subfamily of Native American languages that includes most of the languages in the Algic language family (the two Algic languages that are not Algonquian are Wiyot and Yurok of northwestern California). ... R. H. Ives Goddard, III is curator and senior linguist in the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. ... The Smithsonian Institution Building or Castle on the National Mall serves as the Institutions headquarters. ...

Early life

Due to a strong, outspoken character that became pronounced early in life, Turkey Tayac's family gave him the name by which he was to effect his leadership, both within his nation and throughout Indian Country. Once grown to adulthood, the chief of the Piscataway Indian Nation began using the surname, "Tayac," both as a title of his practiced leadership, and because the name itself was part of his family's oral history. Turkey Tayac's family traced their descent from a long line of Piscataway chiefs, traditionally called "tayacs." But, by the time Turkey Tayac was born, only a few Piscataway families remained to remember and transmit knowledge of their own vibrant Native American heritage. Indian Territory in 1836 Indian Territory in 1891 Indian Territory, also known as Indian Country, Indian territory or the Indian territories, was the land set aside within the United States for the use of Native Americans (Indians). The general borders were set by the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834. ... Insert non-formatted text hereThe Piscataway Indian Nation is a non-state, non-federally recognized Native American tribal nation, which, at one time, was one of the most populous and powerful Native polities of the Chesapeake region. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ...

Although a few families identified themselves as Piscataway Indians into the early 1900s, prevailing racialist attitudes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Jim Crow policies in the twentieth century determined ethnic and cultural identification in the Upper South. With the enforcement of the "one-drop rule," anyone with a discernable amount of African ancestry would be classified as "negro," "mulatto," or "black," thereby discounting any other ancestry. Moreover, with the nullification of Native American identity through census enumeration and state legislation, any standing Native American treaty rights were that much easier to abrogate. Thus, when Native American reservations were dissolved by the colonial government of Maryland in the eighteenth century, and when the Piscataway were reclassified as "free negro" or "mulatto" on state and federal census records in the nineteenth century, a process of detribalization was set into motion the implications of which were carried well into the twentieth century. Contradictorily, while the Piscataway were enumerated as "mulattos" in state and federal census records, Catholic parish records and ethnographic reports continued to identify the Piscataway as Indians. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States and in force between 1876 and 1964 that required racial segregation, especially of black, in all public facilities. ... The one-drop theory (or one-drop rule) is the colloquial term for the standard, found throughout the USA, that holds that a person with even one drop of non-white ancestry should be classified as colored, especially for the purposes of laws forbidding inter-racial marriage. ... World map showing location of Africa A satellite composite image of Africa Africa is the worlds second_largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. ... Negro means black in the Spanish, Portuguese and ancient Italian languages, being derived from the Latin word niger of the same meaning. ... Dame Kelly Holmes is half Black (Jamaican) and half White (English). ... Look up black in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Dame Kelly Holmes is half Black (Jamaican) and half White (English). ... Dame Kelly Holmes is half Black (Jamaican) and half White (English). ...

Rise to leadership

Turkey Tayac fought in World War I in France as a part of the Rainbow Division and was nearly killed by mustard gas. Later in life, Turkey Tayac reported that when Army doctors determined that he would not be able to survive his exposure to the lethal gas, he was able to heal himself with traditional Native American medicine. Combatants Allied Powers: France Italy Russia Serbia United Kingdom United States Central Powers: Austria-Hungary Bulgaria Germany Ottoman Empire Commanders Ferdinand Foch Georges Clemenceau Victor Emmanuel III Luigi Cadorna Nicholas II Aleksei Brusilov Herbert Henry Asquith Douglas Haig John Jellicoe Woodrow Wilson John Pershing Wilhelm II Paul von Hindenburg Reinhard... The 42nd Infantry Division was a unit of the United States Army in World War I and World War II. World War I Activated: August 1917 (National Guard Divisions, the personnel of which were drawn from 26 States and the District of Columbia). ... Airborne exposure limit 0. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ...

Cultural revitalization

Turkey Tayac was a critically important figure in the early and mid-twentieth century cultural revitalization movements among remnant Southeastern Native American communities, including the Lumbee, Nanticoke, and Powhatan Indians of the Atlantic coastal plain. Their efforts were curtailed by the Great Depression and World War II. In an era when Native Americans were increasingly regulated by blood quantum outlined in the Indian Reorganization Act, Turkey Tayac organized a movement for Native American peoples that privileged self-ascriptive forms of identification. Tayac's innovative, self-deterministic leadership led to the issuance of Native American identification cards by the Piscataway themselves rather than having tribes apply to and rely on state and federal bureacracies to issue them on their behalf. An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ... The Lumbee are a Native American tribe of North Carolina, though their origins are disputed. ... Nanticoke is the name of several places in North America: Nanticoke in New York, United States Nanticoke in Pennsylvania, United States Nanticoke in Ontario, Canada Nanticoke could also refer to: Nanticoke, an Algonquian language. ... Chief Powhatan in a longhouse at Werowocomoco (detail of John Smith map, 1612) The Powhatan (also spelled Powatan and Powhaten), or Powhatan Renape (literally, the Powhatan Human Beings), is the name of a Native American tribe, and also the name of a powerful confederacy of tribes that they dominated. ... The Great Depression was an economic downturn which started in 1929 (although its effects were not fully felt until late 1930) and lasted through most of the 1930s. ... Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Nazi Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ... Blood Quantum Laws is an umbrella term that describes legislation enacted to define membership in Native American groups. ... The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act or informally, the Indian New Deal, was U.S. federal legislation which secured new rights for Native Americans, including Alaskan natives. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ...

Along with his tribal responsibilities, Turkey Tayac was also an active participant in the Bonus Army, understanding that his participation was part of a larger, life-long dedication to seeking social justice. Turkey Tayac was also a devout Roman Catholic throughout his life, and was active in the Catholic Veterans of America. Shacks, put up by the Bonus Army on the Anacostia flats, Washington, D.C., burning after the battle with the military, 1932. ... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ...

Cultural reclamation

Turkey Tayac worked extensively with ethnographers and archaeologists, including T. Dale Stewart, John Harrington, Frank G. Speck, William H. Gilbert, and Lucille St. Hoyme -- scholars, all of whom were interested in finding evidence of Native American survival in regions where it was thought that Native Americans had long since vanished. Turkey Tayac himself maintained a deep interest in learning more about the Piscataway beyond his family's oral knowledge, and spent a great deal of time with archaeologists who excavated Piscataway sites. The name John Harrington refers to several people: John Harrington, American Olympic hockey player who was involved in the 1980 Winter Olympics famed Miracle on Ice. John Harrington, CEO and head of the trust that owns the Boston Red Sox. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ...

Turkey Tayac was particularly concerned with Moyaone, a site that eventually was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the location of the pre-contact Piscataway capital town. Turkey Tayac had gone to that site as a child to collect traditional medicines and ceremonially burn tobacco in honor of the dead. Tayac was also a proponent of the 1960s creation of Piscataway National Park, which he believed would protect the Moyaone site from corporate development. Although the Moyaone site was within the boundaries of the colonial-era Piscataway Indian reservation -- land he always considered to be unceded land -- Turkey Tayac agreed that it should be placed under the trust of the Department of the Interior. In exchange for his cooperation, Turkey Tayac requested that he should be buried there within the ancient ossuary, or mass burial, of his ancestors, and moreover, that his Piscataway people would always be able to go there. The National Register of Historic Places is the USAs official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects worthy of preservation. ... The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is a Cabinet department of the United States government that manages and conserves most federally-owned land. ... An ossuary is a chest, building, well or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. ...

With the spread of the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, Turkey Tayac found renewed interest in his efforts to organize the Piscataway people. Along with his son, William Redwing Tayac, and a Pima supporter, Avery Lewis, Turkey Tayac incorporated a non-profit organization, the "Piscataway-Conoy Indians," in 1974. Eventually, the Piscataway-Conoy Indians, Inc. opened the Piscataway Indian Center for the purpose of revitalizing American Indian identity not only for people of Piscataway heritage, but also for other Native Americans living in the region. The American Indian Movement (AIM), is a Native American activist organization in the United States that burst on the international scene with its seizure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972 and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ...

In 1978, Turkey Tayac was diagnosed with leukemia. Prior to his death, he sought to insure that the promise that had been made to him to have his remains interred at Moyaone be carried out. Initially however, the Department of the Interior rebuffed his request for assurances. U.S. Representative Gladys Noon Spellman unsuccessfully introduced a bill for his burial. When Turkey Tayac died in 1978, other arrangements had not been made for his burial. The Tayac family refused to bury him until they received assurances that the promise that had been made to Turkey Tayac would be kept. To this end, his body was kept in a mausoleum. A year later, U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes sponsored yet another bill to bury Chief Turkey Tayac. Sarbanes' bill successfully passed into law with the support of the Maryland General Assembly and the National Congress of American Indians, and in 1979, Turkey Tayac was finally laid to rest in the ossuary site at Moyaone. Today, a red cedar tree, planted by Turkey Tayac in 1976 to mark the location where he wanted be buried, marks Turkey Tayac's final resting place. Leukemia (or leukaemia; see spelling differences) is a cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal proliferation of blood cells, usually white blood cells (leukocytes). ... The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is a Cabinet department of the United States government that manages and conserves most federally-owned land. ... Gladys Spellman Gladys Noon Spellman (March 1, 1918—June 19, 1988), a democrat, was a U.S. Congresswoman who represented the 5th congressional district of Maryland from January 3, 1975 to January 3, 1981. ... Paul Spyros Sarbanes (born February 3, 1933), a Democrat, is the senior United States Senator representing the state of Maryland. ... The Maryland General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Maryland. ... The National Congress of American Indians is the oldest, largest and most representative Indian organization in the United States. ... An ossuary is a chest, building, well or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. ... Redcedar is an alternative name for two North American species in the cypress family Cupressaceae: Eastern Redcedar or Eastern Juniper (Juniperus virginiana) Western Redcedar (Thuja plicata) It is also the name of an Australian species in the mahogany family Meliaceae: Australian Redcedar (Toona australis) Neither is a true Cedar (Cedrus...

References

• Feest, Christian. "Nanticokes and Neighboring Tribes" in Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 15, 1978.
• Maynor, Malinda. "Native American Identity in the Segregated South: The Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina, 1872-1956." Doctoral Dissertation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2005.
• Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas's People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia through Four Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
• Rountree, Helen C., and Thomas E. Davidson. Eastern Shore Indians of Virginia and Maryland. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997.
• Tayac, Gabrielle. "Stolen Spirits," in Contemporary Issues in American Indian Studies, edited by Dane Morrison. Lang Publishers, 1997.
• ______. "To Speak with One Voice: Supra-Tribal American Indian Collective Identity Incorporation among the Piscataway, 1500-1998." Doctoral Dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1999.
• ______. "Keeping the Original Instructions," in Native Universe, edited by Clifford Trafzer and Gerald McMaster. Washington, DC: National Geographic and the National Museum of the American Indian, 2004.
• ______. "We Rise, We Fall, We Rise," in Smithsonian Magazine, September 2004.
• ______. "From the Deep," in New Tribe, New York, edited by Gerald McMaster. Washington, DC: National Museum of the American Indian, 2005.

External links

• Piscataway Indian Nation home page