Manskin

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The Manskin Indians were a tribe of Indians that were a part of the Powhatan Confederacy. They lived in a two mile stretch of the Pamunkey River near where Rt. 360 crosses the Pamunkey River today in King William County in the state of Virginia.

The Manskin Indians are shown in almost all of the early maps of Virginia.

  • Pedro de Zuniga labeled Totopotmoy Creek as Manaskint in 1608, but it was wrongly translated as Menaskunt, so no one made the naming connection.
  • Anthony Langstron called Totopotomov Creek Manskin creek in 1662 and shows Opechancanough as living in the Island Field on Pampatike Farm. This seems to indicates that Opechancanough was a Manskin Indian.
  • Augustine Herman labels the Manskin Indians as living on Guttin Isle (The Island Field) in 1670.
  • John Lederer clearly draws the Island Field as a circle and puts the Manskin name just above it in 1671.
  • Johannes Van Keulen also draws the Manskin as living on "Guttin Isle" in 1680.
  • Robert Morden even named the Pamunkey River as the Manskin River in 1701.
  • Hermon Moll labels the peninsula as "Manskin Indian Land" in 1732.

After 1750, history lost the Manskin Indians as a tribe. They show up in no lists of the tribes in current inventories of the Powhatan Confederacy. Historian in the 1800s confused the label of Manskin on all the maps with the Manakin Indians who were 50 miles upriver and labeled it as erroneous. And so they inadvertently wiped them from mainstream history.

The Manskin actually live on in the maps available today, it is just that nobody recognized their origins until recently. The town of Manquin is located just north of The Island Field on Pampatike Farm which is on Moncuin Creek and both are anglicised versions of Manskin.

[edit] Source

  • Files of the Virginia Historical Society (Richmond, VA)
  • Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico V. 2/4 By Frederick Webb Hodge - Page 931
  • Virginia Department of Historic Resources - Notes on Virginia - Number 50
  • New York Public Library Digital Library
  • David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

[edit] External links

All these links show maps with the Manskin Indians located on the Pamunkey River.