Hontas Farmer, a graduate student at DePaul University, has briefly set aside her interest in quantum physics in order to take issue with our entry on Princess Nicketti, written by Helen C. Rountree.
First, a bit of background: Princess Nicketti is the name given to a Virginia Indian woman believed by some to have been the daughter of Opechancanough, a leader of the Powhatan Indians and the brother of the paramount chief Powhatan. While the name has been referenced almost exclusively on twenty-first-century genealogy websites by people claiming family relationship, no scholarly evidence exists that Princess Nicketti ever lived. A careful search of seventeenth-century records in Virginia yields no one by that name, male or female. And no name of a child of Opechancanough was ever recorded in that century.
Ms. Farmer writes (emphasis added):
While I have much respect for Dr. Rountree’s work on this I don’t think she’s correct in dismissing oral histories surrounding her [Princess Nicketti] so cavalierly. I go into more detail about this at the following link.
The long and the short of it is this.
Part of the oral history of the Nicketti story is that of her supposed husband “Trader” John Rice Hughes/John Richard Hewing. Those two very very similar oral histories were passed down in seemingly unrelated families for hundreds of years. The Nicketti story was also passed on in the same manner by yet another seemingly unrelated group. Their overlapping details [include] Nicketti [being] married to a trader, [and] Hughes/Hewing [being] married to a prominent Indian woman. The general areas and times also match.
It is incredible to think that all those people would conspire to lie for centuries. So there should be a kernel of truth to them, a historical person.
Rountree thinks that [this] person [i.e., Nicketti] is [actually] Nec[o]towance. Nec[o]towance was a man. Oral history is rarely that wrong. More likely the real person is the one known to history as “Queen betty” who is mentioned even in your own encyclopedia.
Betty was a prominent Indian woman. She would have been related to Powhatan, Pocahontas, etc. etc. She makes way more sense than Nec[o]towance.
Please acknowledge the possibility that identifying Ann with Betty and Nicketti with Nec[o]towance is not gospel truth but simply a scholarly opinion at best.
Just for the record, there is very little in the encyclopedia we would claim as gospel truth (c.f. “History is not what’s true, but what we argue is true”).
Now, Helen Rountree responds (emphasis added):
It seems to me that Hontas Farmer is very disappointed that I can’t back up the 20th century claims for Nicketti. That’s all I say in the article (I just checked over it): that there are no 17th century documents about such a person, so that only oral history is left. I don’t pooh-pooh oral history. I don’t accuse anyone of lying—that’s Farmer’s perception, with heightened sensitivity showing through. And my wording on the identity with Necotowance (“may be”) ought readily to show that I’m not even expressing an opinion, there: I’m only making a suggestion. My comment on the Indianness of “Nicketti” is based on 40 years’ familiarity with Virginia Algonquian names, personal names and place names alike. And like Vine Deloria (who puts it better), I’ve dealt with dozens of people who insisted that they were descended from an Indian princess.
I’d be more at ease [acknowledging] Farmer’s argument about the tradition in two unrelated families if I could see her genealogical evidence for the non-relationship.
So we’ll leave it there, except to say thank you to Hontas Farmer for her feedback and to Helen Rountree for her response.
PS: My own theory: Nicketti = Kenickie.
IMAGE: The wife of an Indian weroance, or chief, carries a gourd while her eight- to ten-year-old daughter waves a European rattle and holds a well-dressed doll in this colored engraving by Theodor de Bry based on a watercolor painting by John White (The Mariners’ Museum).
12 responses so far ↓
1 Hontas Farmer // Feb 7, 2012 at 2:14 pm
Thankyou for your thoughtful replies both of you.
To: Dr. Rountree,
What you wrote here is along the lines of the qualification that the Encyclopedia should have on Nicketti.
Historical research based on written records cannot back up her existence. That at best stories like those are folk history, closer to myth or legend than pure facts but not lies either.
That statement is very different than implying that therefore the person did not exist at all. That’s all I’m trying to say.
That needs to be clearer because based on this encyclopedia Virginia article some people are accusing our family of lying. Not just being wrong but outright fabrication.
You wrote
“I’d be more at ease [acknowledging] Farmer’s argument about the tradition in two unrelated families if I could see her genealogical evidence for the non-relationship.”
The other families which have passed on this story are the Davis family (Trader Hughes), the “Cabells and their kin” (Nicketti) , and my own family Farmer .
My own research, at the link provided, shows only 10 people with the surname Davis. Not all of whom are related to one another. (Such as my Nephews wife who is black and from the Caribbean.)
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hfarmer2/srn/f/9/8f2d58e32d065296e0ddcff5f6509a9f.html
The last white Davis in my family died in 1830 and she was born in wales in 1743. So she also had nothing to do with this.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hfarmer2/ppl/e/6/c083273588864216b460153496e.html
There are NO Cabels in my family tree.
As to my own descent from a “indian princess” and such. I am named after my father, and his father, and he was named by his grandmother who was a Virginia indian. I didn’t just decide to adopt the name after reading some website.
The story that lead me to Nicketti was one told to me by my father and several other elders in the same way when I was a little boy back in the 80′s.
The short version is…
Our first black ancestor in america was one of the first to be brought to Jamestown. He was not a slave but not free either. He gained his freedom and lived with an indian woman. He was some sort of a wood worker and so was called Hewing and by the first and middle name John Richard. One of my uncles is named after him.
In case you are wondering how I got my name.
I am named after my father and grandfather who was named by his grandmother who was an Indian from Virginia. (Or at least she thought she was…but you know that that was at that time with them better than I.)
I did not just adopt this name thinking it was cute. Not unlike our cousins in Virginia we have tended to go by nicknames as surprisingly many find “hontas” but not pocahontas to be unpronounceable.
All of that said, the more significant and recent Amerindian contribution to my family comes from the Potawatomi. My father has almost enough blood quantum to be a member.
Thankyou for respecting my two-spirit gender identity.
Sincerely
Hontas Farmer
2 Brendan Wolfe // Feb 7, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Thanks again for your comment, Ms. Farmer, and with all respect to you and your “two-spirit gender identity,” neither Helen Rountree nor Encyclopedia Virginia is accusing anyone of lying. As the entry makes clear, there is evidence of Nicketti in the oral histories but nowhere else. Readers can make their own judgment about what that means.
3 Hontas Farmer // Feb 7, 2012 at 3:40 pm
I never said you guys were making such an accusation. I have seen blogs on this issue, which take the way this was addressed as ‘not documented’ = ‘not true’. Citing your work as a source they are saying the story is just a lie. I know you all aren’t responsible for that.. But you probably don’t want to be misrepresented either.
Let us not forget history is written by the victors, and the powerful. A bunch of mixed tri-race people from the swamps and mountains of Virginia (marginal farmlands were the best they had) were neither.
Thanks for your swift reply, and your humor about grease. As the name Nicketti appeared in a book from the late 19th century perhaps that’s where Grease’s writers got it.lol
PS I hope Dr Rountree could glance at the documentation I cited above sometime.
Thanks for all your work.
4 Hontas Farmer // Feb 7, 2012 at 4:50 pm
One more thing sorry about the repetition in my second reply. I was writing on a tablet. Those things are a real chore to type on and don’t handle content creation very well.
5 Brendan Wolfe // Feb 7, 2012 at 4:53 pm
No sweat. And many thanks.
6 Crandall Shifflett // Feb 17, 2012 at 8:50 am
This debate raises interesting and profound issues on oral history, the role of legend, public and professional history, and the authorial voice in the practice of history. I identify with Hontas Farmer on many accounts, not the least of which is our common origins as tri-racials. As a professional historian, I have often witnessed the dismissal of oral history and legend as something not to be taken seriously. I am not accusing anyone of doing that is this case, but simply want to say that there are much larger and more significant issues here, to complex to treat in a brief blog, than just historical positivism.
7 Hontas Farmer // Mar 17, 2012 at 10:13 am
Hello all.
While I realize that Dr. Schifflett is not saying that these stories are “true” I appreciate what he said. I also appreciate what Dr. Rountree has said and written here and in her books. Their works are the antidote to ignorance…which a recent modeling TV show demonstrated is still alive and well.
What Shifflett said about the way the history of tri-racial people is treated in VA and elsewhere is quite true.
I have a census record from the Catholic mission school at St. Marys. It was where Prairie Band Potawatomi children were sent. One census taker wrote everyone down as either Mulatto or White…then latter at the bottom wrote in that all of them were Indians. I wonder which one of those was officially recorded in other statistics compiled from such a record? This was in 1870. The same ancestor was written down as 3/4 and his daughter written down (incorrectly) as 7/8 Potawatomi in 1920. Only with the oral history in my family of those more recent ancestors made some sense of it.
PS. I copied all of this discussion as a note on my online family trees for the benefit of others. I really am thankful you raised this issue.
8 Bill Vincent // Mar 31, 2012 at 11:07 am
It should be stated here that some early tradition for the ancestral name “Nicketti” was indicated by Virginia Governor John Floyd in the 1819 birth of his daughter Nicketti Buchanan Floyd, who eventually married US Senator John Warfield Johnston. Miss Nicketti Floyd was the great-granddaughter of Abigail (or Abadiah) Davis, who was the granddaughter of Nathaniel Davis, c1645-c1710, and Mary Elizabeth Hughes. Mary Elizabeth Hughes is the person generally purported to be the daughter of Nicketti and a trader named Hughes. This appears to indicate of an oral tradition of Nicketti that existed during the late 18th century and probably before. Likewise, any corruption giving rise to the name “Nicketti” must have occurred before 1819. Note that approximately one century passed between the marriage of Mary Elizabeth Hughes and the birth of Gov. John Floyd. Another 100 years passed before “The Cabells and Their Kin” was published.
As to the title “Princess,” I have always believed it to be bestowed by later generations rather than one actually employed. The term was likely used to convey relationship to a parent of high stature or rank, such as a chief. The use of the title is probably unjustified from a strictly historical basis, but significant as the source of an oral family tradition.
9 Michael O'Hearn // Nov 2, 2012 at 10:44 pm
I only recently discovered that my mother’s paternal great-grandfather Robert Clark of Ireland was actually Robert Bullock Clark of Kentucky through autosomal DNA matches at ancestry. He was apparently Quaker and settled in a town of County Wexford having a Quaker community before our Civil War, married an Irish lass, and resettled with family in Chicago circa 1880. Three of my Clark cousins played basketball with the Chicago Maroons.
I happened to trace Robert Bullock Clark’s matrilineal origins, probably to guess what his mtDNA might be, and going back eight generations came up with Nicketti Powhatan at Ancestry. You mention the weroansqa and the matrilineal succession of Powhatan tribal chiefs. How strange.
10 John House // Feb 24, 2013 at 1:39 pm
My Grandmother states the tradition of being from the Powhatan Nation and also being a part of the Bear Clan Cherokee mixed. They come from the Burkes/Burks side of the family that married into the Peytons /Paytons that all ended up in Kentucky. The fact that she alsways ststed that the old folks said that they fled to Kentucky and that having real and consequencial effects of them being seperated from the Indian side of the family forever. They married whites and in part I feel to not be sent away especoally the Cherokee side and that being said they were of the Bear Clan of the Chreokee. She lived in constant fear of being found to have mixed blood and that seems to be what happened to Nicketti or Betty because of that inhumane fear of being somneone you are not is why they sought to be not found in writen records until much later. This was a God Fearing woman who in my lifetime never spoke ill of anyone and as far as I have ever known never lied. The Burkes/Burks show up on Barren County,Kentucky and so leading to my grandmother who was born in Edmonson it seems that they moved suddenly from Madison, to Henry, to Edmonson, and Grayson Counties in Kentucky I am a descendant of Nicketti or even Betty either way this seems to be a perverted way of describing and Indian name by the English….Oral history either counts or it don’t but in most unlearned cultures of the past Oral Tradition seems to hold up. We as a people know that our early english hiostory was set down long after our ancient grandparents passed away leaving what oral tradition. We in English named our fammilies earky such as Coopers of Barells,Living Underhill,or Stewarts chamberlains of their King and so too Chamberlain. Whne in the early bringing of slaves to the United States they often called their names after the owner if that being so then oral tradition still applies as how did they know to name their English name after. It is apparent to me that people fleeing persecution like the Jewish People fleeing Nazi’s in Germany named their Jewish names otherwise so they could flee that horror. So then these who have mixed now not having anyything byut this nicketti or Betty as the whites probably named her but having her real name remain secret to the whites and not showing up like Pocahantus oif whom I am also related should be allowed thgat commin courtesy to finaly talk about their fleeing persecution and hiding from people who would have cxertainly taken them captive and placed them into lands that they did not know was not a wrong thing to do her descendants dot Kentucky still and by the way we are here and we are proud even though as usual she had to be called by Nicketti or even Betty to have some form of life and geneology.
11 Shere Minton Johnson // May 4, 2013 at 3:28 pm
Here I am watching the History channel and hear something that leads me on a breadcrumb trail to this site. I have recently been looking at my family tree and have come to learn that I too, am related to Nicketti and Trader John. But you know the first I learned of this story was through oral history! When I was very young, maybe 4/5 my mom would tell me to hold up my little finger and then she would tell me I was about that much Indian. As the story went an Englishman sailed to this country and married an Indian princess and that I was descended from them…..a long long time ago. In all my years I have never known my mom to lie to me. She just wouldn’t even entertain the idea of lying. Fast forward to last year when I traced my ancestors back to the very people she told me about so mant years ago. Nicketti and Trader John are my 12th great grandparents. Regardless of what anyone might say, I think I’ll hold strong to the thought that mom was right.
12 JoAnne Evans // May 9, 2013 at 2:51 pm
I too, have been told for many years, that my family was related to Nicketti. Her daughter, Mary Elizabeth Hughes, was my 8th great-grandmother. She married Nathaniel Davis in 1680. Mary Hughes, who, according to my records, had twelve or thirteen children and their daughter, Mary Elizabeth Davis, became my 7th great-grandmother. Ultimately it came down to Lucinda and Daniel Owen, who had my great-great grandfather, Thomas Ashley Owen.
It seems very unlikely that all this history is a fabrication, someone’s overactive imagination.
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