The Virginian-Pilot
                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Friday, September 1, 1995              TAG: 9508300240
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS      PAGE: 03   EDITION: FINAL 
COLUMN: Olde Towne Journal 
SOURCE: Alan Flanders 
                                             LENGTH: Long  :  119 lines

NANSEMOND TRIBE IS STRONG IN CUSTOMS, HERITAGE

THEIR TRIBAL NAMES are Running Deer, Big Buck, Fish Hawk, Loves Turquoise, Swamp Fox, Red Hawk, War Chief, White Dawn and Shining Star.

Their English names are Earl L. Bass, Barry Bass, Oliver Perry, James Weaver, Carpathia Sococo, Alvin L. Bond, Gary F. Bond, Earl L. Bass II, Sandra McCready and Sandra Garner.

They live in Suffolk, Chesapeake, Norfolk, Isle of Wight County, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach. But each would admit that part of their souls belongs to another time.

Each year they startle their neighbors by donning eagle-covered headdresses, buckskin coats and jackets, hand-stitched moccasins and head off to their annual Pow Wow at Suffolk's Lone Star Lodge on the Nansemond River.

There they sit in council, eat together, dance and visit once again, like the Nansemond Indians have done for at least four centuries.

Sitting in a place of great honor around the sacred dance circle is the chief. But Earl L. ``Running Deer'' Bass is no ordinary leader, even when you consider how old Indian history is in North America.

A direct descendant of 1619 Colonial settler and plantation owner Nathaniel Bass, Earl Bass' forefathers have been tribal leaders since the marriage of Nathaniel Bass' son, John, to a Nansemond Indian.

According to Norfolk County Colonial court records, ``John Bass(e) married a daughter of the King of the Nansemond Nation by name of Elizabeth ``Keziah'' in Holy Baptism and in Holy Matrimony on the 14th Day of August in the Year of Our Lord 1638.''

Their descendants have been eligible at birth for membership in the Nansemond tribe ever since. And for generations, Bass family members have kept tribal customs alive.

But the story of the Nansemond origins goes back centuries before Jamestown.

Artifacts found on tribal farmlands, especially those uncovered during the Phelps excavation around White Marsh Road in Suffolk, date habitation and cultivation of their lands back several thousand years. The earliest contact with the Nansemonds as an identifiable tribe came with the expedition of 16th century English explorer Ralph Lane, who located the Nansemond Indian nation in the general area of its present Pow Wow.

In 1607, Jamestown settlers also placed the center of the Nansemond tribe in the general area of Reeds Ferry, near Chuckatuck.

According to the writings of Captain John Smith, their ``King'' lived near Dumpling Island, where he kept lodges and treasure houses protected by some 300 bowman.

The Nansemond population of approximately 1,200 was kept well-fed by large granaries, also at Dumpling Island. In 1608, Jamestown experienced a severe shortage of food known as the starving period. Hearing the Nansemonds had considerable stores, Smith led an expedition down the James and into the Nansemond River as far as Dumpling Island.

At first, Smith was successful and a shipment or two of grain was sent to the colonials. However, when negotiations broke off, Smith seized hostages and demanded more supplies. Finally, he raided the island, took what he needed, and leveled the Indian structures.

The hostages were returned, and some minor compensation was paid. An original peace treaty between the Nansemonds and England's Prince Charles II was discovered recently and placed in the library of the College of William and Mary.

During the next two centuries, the vast land holdings of the Nansemonds were either sold off, farm by farm or village by village.

``My father would never talk about it,'' said Chief Earl Bass, who celebrated his 81st birthday last Sunday, ``but it was passed down in the family that the English did what they liked.

``We had simple weapons to defend ourselves,'' he said picking up an ancestral tomahawk, ``but look at this piece of stone and compare it to a rifle. In the long run, you couldn't fight their armies.''

By the middle of the 19th century, the Nansemonds had lost the majority of their land, which included what is today Suffolk, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Chesapeake. Surrounded by the encroachment of large landholders, they built their final enclave at Bowers Hill. There they operated their own school and church.

Today, the Indiana Methodist Church is built on the site of an earlier one built in 1850, but subsequently burned during the Civil War. On the church grounds, a brick marker and bronze plaque mark the location of the original building.

Despite centuries of cultural bias and discrimination, the Nansemonds, now numbering more than 300, are still unbowed and proud of their heritage.

``There was a time when I was growing up,'' said Chief Bass as he surveyed the vast fields of soybeans growing around the Bass family farm, ``when they said there were no Nansemonds left. Well, we knew better, and we had to keep reminding our family and the others to hold on, and pray for a new day.

``I took a job in the shipyard's Shop 31 and only the master knew who I really was. But that didn't matter. I still farmed and hunted over our land and that was all I needed.''

As thousands of Indians and non-Indians gathered around the Pow Wow last weekend, it appeared that Bass' prayer for a new day of recognition had arrived.

``There is now talk of building a Nansemond Cultural Center,'' said Francis Phelps Woodward of Portsmouth, also a member of the Bass family.

``This land is special to us, our ancestors lived on it and (were) buried in it,'' she said. ``We have a rich culture to preserve and a lot to offer those interested in understanding the beginnings of Indian and Colonial settlement here. Now that we have been recognized officially by both the state and federal government as the Nansemond Indian Tribal Association, a new era has begun.''

Walking near his family's ancestral burial ground, Chief Bass is still an imposing figure as the breeze opens his eagle-feather headdress. He still stands ramrod straight dressed in his buckskins, deer antler breastplate and moccasins.

Just as the sun was setting over his land, the land of his father and centuries of ancestors, he said: ``My people are still here. Those that pass away a long time ago, those that have gone only yesterday, those here now and those yet to come. We are one people, we are the Nansemonds.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo JOHN H. SHEALLY II

Earl L. ``Running Deer'' Bass, chief of the Nansemond tribe, was

honored at the recent powwow in Suffolk. A descendant of 1619

Colonial plantation owner Nathaniel Bass, Earl Bass' forefathers

have been tribal leaders since Nathaniel Bass' son, John, married a

Nansemond Indian.

by CNB