Foodways & Spiritual Traditions
Machapunga-Mattamuskeet Foodways and Spiritual Life
The foodways and spiritual traditions of the Machapunga-Mattamuskeet people are part of a cultural history extending from the Carolina Algonquian communities documented during the first English encounters in the 1580s to traditions maintained within Machapunga-Mattamuskeet families today.
Our understanding comes from several forms of knowledge: early historical descriptions, the drawings of John White, archaeological and ethnographic research, tribal oral history, family traditions, and cultural practices that continue within our community.
Colonial observers recorded only portions of Indigenous life, often interpreting what they witnessed through European and Christian perspectives. Their writings are valuable historical records, but they do not represent the entirety of our ancestors' knowledge or traditions.
Traditional Foodways
Corn, Beans & Squash
Agriculture was central to the Carolina Algonquian communities encountered during the first English expeditions.
Corn, beans, and squash were important cultivated foods. Thomas Hariot described several varieties of corn and recorded different methods of preparing it, including parching, boiling, making bread, and grinding corn into meal.
John White's famous image of the town of Secotan shows extensive agricultural fields surrounding the community. Corn appears at different stages of growth, providing remarkable visual evidence of organized agricultural practices among the people of Secotan.
Historical Sources:
Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
John White, The Town of Secotan, c. 1585 — British Museum:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1906-0509-1-7
National Park Service, Carolina Algonquian:
https://www.nps.gov/fora/learn/historyculture/carolina-algonquian.htm
The Three Sisters
Corn, beans, and squash—widely known as the Three Sisters—remain part of Machapunga-Mattamuskeet agricultural and cultural tradition.
These plants complement one another when cultivated together. Corn provides a structure upon which beans can climb, beans contribute nitrogen to the soil, and the broad leaves of squash provide ground cover that helps retain moisture and suppress weeds.
The National Park Service also describes corn, beans, and squash together when discussing the agricultural practices of the Carolina Algonquian people of the Outer Banks and surrounding region.
Within the Machapunga-Mattamuskeet community, however, the Three Sisters are more than a historical subject. Their cultural importance has continued through family and tribal tradition into the present.
Historical Record + Living Tribal Tradition
Historical Context:
National Park Service, Carolina Algonquian:
https://www.nps.gov/fora/learn/historyculture/carolina-algonquian.htm
Fishing & the Waters
Water has always been central to life in the Machapunga-Mattamuskeet homeland.
The sounds, rivers, creeks, marshes, and Lake Mattamuskeet provided fish, shellfish, waterfowl, and other resources. Fishing and life on the water formed essential parts of the coastal Carolina Algonquian economy.
Early historical accounts describe fishing using nets, traps, spears, and other methods.
This relationship with the water continued into later generations of coastal families, for whom fishing, crabbing, oystering, hunting, and working the waterways remained important parts of life.
The importance of water is especially appropriate to the Machapunga-Mattamuskeet story because the historical community was centered around the enormous wetland and lake system of Mattamuskeet and the waterways leading toward Pamlico Sound.
Historical Record + Continuing Coastal Tradition
Historical Sources:
Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report (1588):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
National Park Service, Carolina Algonquian:
https://www.nps.gov/fora/learn/historyculture/carolina-algonquian.htm
NCpedia, Mattamuskeet American Indian Tribe:
https://www.ncpedia.org/mattamuskeet-indians
Hunting
The forests, wetlands, and marshes surrounding the ancestral homeland provided deer, bear, turkey, rabbit, waterfowl, and other game.
Deer were particularly valuable because they provided food as well as hides and other useful materials.
Hunting was therefore part of a much larger relationship between people, animals, seasons, food, and the landscape.
Early observers also recorded ceremonial or spiritual practices associated with hunting and fishing among Carolina Algonquian people.
Historical Record
Historical Source:
Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report (1588):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
Gathering From the Land
Cultivated crops represented only one part of the traditional food system.
The surrounding environment supplied nuts, berries, roots, and other edible plants. Seasonal resources supplemented agriculture, hunting, and fishing.
Knowledge concerning where and when foods appeared required an intimate understanding of the coastal environment.
Foodways therefore followed a yearly cycle of planting, harvesting, fishing, hunting, gathering, preparation, and preservation.
Historical Sources:
Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report (1588):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
National Park Service, Carolina Algonquian:
https://www.nps.gov/fora/learn/historyculture/carolina-algonquian.htm
Green Corn Tradition
The Green Corn tradition remains part of the living cultural heritage of Machapunga-Mattamuskeet families.
For our people, Green Corn represents thanksgiving, renewal, gathering, food, family, and community at the time of the corn harvest.
Members of Machapunga-Mattamuskeet families continue to observe and celebrate this tradition today.
The importance of corn itself reaches deep into the documented Carolina Algonquian past. John White depicted the cornfields of Secotan in the 1580s, including corn planted at different stages of growth. Thomas Hariot likewise devoted considerable attention to Indigenous corn cultivation, harvesting, and preparation.
The continuation of Green Corn within our families belongs to our living tribal tradition and oral history. We do not depend upon an English observer having recorded every element of that tradition for it to form part of our cultural inheritance.
Instead, the historical record establishes the deep importance of corn among the Carolina Algonquian people, while our tribal and family traditions preserve cultural knowledge carried by their descendants.
Living Tribal Tradition + Historical Context
Historical Context:
John White, The Town of Secotan, c. 1585 — British Museum:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1906-0509-1-7
Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report (1588):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
Spiritual Life
A Sacred Relationship With the Natural World
For the Carolina Algonquian people, the physical and spiritual worlds were closely connected.
Water, animals, plants, seasons, celestial bodies, ancestors, and other aspects of existence existed within a spiritual worldview considerably more complex than the surviving English descriptions can completely explain.
Most of the earliest written descriptions were produced by English Christians. Their accounts preserve important observations but also reflect the religious assumptions, vocabulary, and prejudices of the people recording them.
Historical accounts should therefore be read alongside tribal tradition rather than treated as complete descriptions of Indigenous spirituality.
Historical Context:
Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report (1588):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
National Park Service, Carolina Algonquian:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/carolinaalgonquian.htm
Kewas • Kewasowok
Thomas Hariot recorded important information concerning Carolina Algonquian spiritual beliefs during his time in the region.
Hariot described belief in a principal creator and other spiritual beings involved in the ordering of the world.
He recorded representations of spiritual beings using the word Kewasowok, with Kewas as the singular form.
Hariot also described religious structures in which people worshiped, prayed, sang, and made offerings.
These descriptions provide an extraordinary early record of Carolina Algonquian spiritual life.
At the same time, Hariot was a Christian English observer attempting to explain another people's religion using European concepts. Words historically translated as “god,” “idol,” “priest,” or “temple” should therefore not automatically be assumed to represent exact translations of Indigenous concepts.
Historical Record
Primary Source:
Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
Additional Historical Interpretation:
National Park Service, Carolina Algonquian:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/carolinaalgonquian.htm
Ceremony at Secotan
One of the most extraordinary surviving records of early Carolina Algonquian ceremonial life comes directly from Secotan.
John White's c. 1585 watercolor of the town depicts people participating in ceremonial activity around carved posts.
The same image shows houses, extensive agricultural fields, people eating, gathering areas, and spaces associated with solemn prayer.
The importance of the image goes beyond documenting a single ceremony. It shows agriculture, food, homes, community gathering, remembrance of the dead, and spiritual activity occupying the same cultural landscape.
For the Machapunga-Mattamuskeet historical story, the image is particularly significant because it provides a direct visual window into the Secotan population documented during the first-contact period.
Primary Historical Record
View the Original:
John White, The Town of Secotan, c. 1585 — British Museum:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1906-0509-1-7
Prayer, Song & Offerings
Thomas Hariot described prayer, singing, offerings, sacred spaces, and beliefs concerning the continuation of the soul after death among the Carolina Algonquian people he encountered.
Although his description was filtered through his Christian worldview, his observations demonstrate that these communities possessed organized spiritual traditions involving sacred places, spiritual specialists, ceremonies, offerings, understandings of creation, and beliefs concerning existence after death.
These spiritual traditions existed long before sustained European colonization of North Carolina.
Historical Record
Primary Source:
Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report (1588):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
Spiritual Leaders & Healing
Spiritual specialists occupied important positions within Carolina Algonquian society.
Early English observers attempted to describe these individuals using European terms such as “priests” and “conjurors.” Those labels should not automatically be understood as complete descriptions of their actual roles within Indigenous society.
Their responsibilities could involve ceremony, spiritual knowledge, healing, interpretation, and relationships between the community and the spiritual world.
Knowledge concerning plants and healing also existed within a larger relationship between people and their environment.
Historical Sources:
Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report (1588):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
National Park Service, Carolina Algonquian:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/carolinaalgonquian.htm
Honoring Our Ancestors
Machapunga-Mattamuskeet culture cannot be understood solely through documents written by Europeans hundreds of years ago.
Historical sources allow us to see portions of the world our ancestors inhabited.
John White shows us the fields, homes, foodways, and ceremony of Secotan.
Thomas Hariot recorded agriculture, food preparation, fishing, religious concepts, prayer, offerings, sacred spaces, and beliefs that he encountered among Carolina Algonquian people.
But neither man recorded everything our ancestors knew.
Our cultural history also survives through family tradition, tribal oral history, genealogy, community memory, and cultural practices maintained by descendants.
The Three Sisters continue to be part of our tradition.
Green Corn continues to be celebrated within our families.
Our relationship with the waters and lands of coastal North Carolina remains fundamental to understanding who we are.
These traditions are not merely descriptions of people who disappeared centuries ago.
They are parts of a cultural inheritance carried forward by their descendants.
Understanding Our Sources
Throughout this page, we distinguish between different forms of evidence.
Primary Historical Record
Information recorded by a person who directly witnessed the people, places, or events being described.
Historical Record
Information preserved in historical documents, archaeological research, ethnography, government records, or later scholarship.
Tribal Oral Tradition
Knowledge preserved and transmitted within Machapunga-Mattamuskeet families and the tribal community.
Living Tribal Tradition
Cultural practices maintained or practiced within the Machapunga-Mattamuskeet community today.
One form of evidence does not automatically replace another.
Historical documentation helps us reconstruct portions of the past. Tribal oral history preserves knowledge that outside observers may never have recorded. Living tradition demonstrates how cultural knowledge continues within the descendant community.
Together they contribute to a fuller understanding of Machapunga-Mattamuskeet history and culture.
Sources & Further Reading
Thomas Hariot — A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588)
Primary written account describing Carolina Algonquian agriculture, foods, fishing, spiritual beliefs, sacred structures, prayer, offerings, and beliefs concerning the soul.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4247/4247-h/4247-h.htm
John White — The Town of Secotan, c. 1585 — British Museum
Primary visual documentation of Secotan settlement, agriculture, food, ceremonial activity, prayer space, and community organization.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1906-0509-1-7
National Park Service — Carolina Algonquian
Historical interpretation of Carolina Algonquian communities based substantially upon the White and Hariot records.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/carolinaalgonquian.htm
https://www.nps.gov/fora/learn/historyculture/carolina-algonquian.htm
NCpedia — Mattamuskeet American Indian Tribe
Historical overview of the later Mattamuskeet/Machapunga community centered in present-day Hyde County.
https://www.ncpedia.org/mattamuskeet-indians
Machapunga-Mattamuskeet Tribal Oral History & Living Tradition
Family and community knowledge concerning the Three Sisters, Green Corn, foodways, spiritual traditions, and cultural practices preserved among Machapunga-Mattamuskeet descendants.