Refugees, Resettlement, Revealed History and Commemoration of the Tutelo Diaspora

Sherene Baugher

Refugees, Resettlement, Revealed History and Commemoration of the Tutelo Diaspora

Year: 2020

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Monuments, Memory, and Commemoration" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The history of displaced people is rarely commemorated and often part of a “silenced” history. In the late 1600s, the Tutelo Indians were driven out of their homelands in Virginia by Europeans. Their diaspora involved moving to North Carolina, then to another part of Virginia, and to refugee settlements in Pennsylvania. In 1753, the Tutelos were offered sanctuary with the Cayugas Indians in New York. For 26 years, the Tutelos maintained their cultural identity, continued their own language, customs, and governed their internal affairs in their village of Coreorgonel, near present-day Ithaca. During the infamous Sullivan Campaign of 1779, the neutral village of Coreorgonel was burned to the ground. The Tutelos were refugees again, ultimately resettling on the Six Nations Reserve in Canada. In Ithaca archaeological work with Native Americans and town planners resulted in the creation of Tutelo Park, a commemorative park with signage to reveal the Tutelos’ history.