Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/329

 278 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [s. s., 1. 1899

or " hundreds " of Clear spring and Indian river. They have sent out numerous colonies and keep in touch with most of these, so that one may see in their albums prosperous faces from Maine and California. One member of the tribe, lately deceased, at- tained a considerable measure of wealth in Philadelphia. A whole carload migrated to Michigan a short time before the Re- bellion, when circumstances and white neighbors bore over-heavily upon them. Another party, including Levin Sockume, their strongest man, moved to Gloucester, New Jersey. Nearer home, though hardly more accessible, are isolated families on the Poco- moke, near Snow Hill, and across Delaware on the river which bears their own name. These offshoots have for the greater part kept up their rules of life in the matter of racial segregation, ex- cept that wherever a single household settled where there were no Indian neighbors, the sons and daughters have generally married with the whites ; but where wives and husbands of Nanticoke blood were obtainable, the latter seem to have had the preference.

In the Indian River country, the rule is imperative. There must have been intermarriage with the whites at one time, for they admit that none of them is wholly Indian, while nothing so stirs their indignation as to be suspected of having negro blood ; but at present they marry exclusively among themselves. A Nanticoke of either sex who marries among the negroes is re- ferred to as having " gone astray," and although not ill-treated is no longer welcome in church or home or any social gathering. They have their own (Methodist Protestant) church, usually ministered to by a white man, and a school supported wholly by them for their own children only, though they pay taxes abun- dantly for the public schools besides.

In person they seem to be mainly of medium height and of strong though not very bulky frame. The form of head differs not less than with ourselves, I think, judging solely by the eye. Neither from the individuals before me, nor from the much more

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