Editing Delmarva Peninsula (section)

==History==

=== Pre-colonization ===
Some studies have shown that Native Americans inhabited the peninsula from about 10,000 BC to 8000 BC – since the [[Last Glacial Period|last ice age]].

Recent research indicates that [[Paleo-Indians|Paleoamerican]]s inhabited Maryland during the [[pre-Clovis]] period (before 13,000 [[Before Present|BP]]). Miles Point, Oyster Cove, and Cator's Cove archaeological sites on the coastal plain of the Delmarva Peninsula help to document a pre-Clovis presence in the Middle Atlantic region. Thus, these sites suggest a human presence in the Middle Atlantic region during the [[Last Glacial Maximum]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://prehistoricterritory.org/pre-clovis-in-the-americas-conference-smithsonian-institution-washington-d-c/ |title=Pedologic and Geologic Protocols for Understanding the Archaeology of Exploration: A Middle Atlantic Pre-Clovis Case Study |last1=Lowery |first1=Darrin L. |last2=Wah |first2=John S. |date=<!--No date given.--> |website=Pre-Clovis in the Americas Conference – Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. |publisher=Institute for Archaeological Studies |access-date=March 7, 2022 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220122141014/https://prehistoricterritory.org/pre-clovis-in-the-americas-conference-smithsonian-institution-washington-d-c/ |archive-date=January 22, 2022}}</ref>

In 1970 a stone tool (a [[biface]]) said to resemble [[Solutrean]] stone tools was dredged up by the trawler ''Cinmar'' off the east coast of [[Virginia]] in an area that would have been dry land prior to the rising sea levels of the Pleistocene Epoch. The tool was allegedly found in the same dredge load that contained a [[mastodon]]'s remains. The mastodon tusks were later determined to be 22,000 years old.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.livescience.com/47289-mastodon-found-under-chesapeake-bay.html |title=Fisherman Pulls Up Beastly Evidence of Early Americans |last=Ghose |first=Tia |date=August 11, 2014 |website=Live Science |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220122141003/https://www.livescience.com/47289-mastodon-found-under-chesapeake-bay.html |archive-date=January 22, 2022}}</ref> However, studies conducted on nearby Parsons Island demonstrate that the stratigraphy of the region is disturbed.<ref>Stanford, Dennis & Bradley, Bruce (2014). Reply to O’Brien et al. Antiquity, 88, 614-621.</ref> In addition several archaeological sites on the Delmarva peninsula with suggestive (but not definitive) dating between 16,000 and 18,000 years have been discovered by Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. These factors led Stanford and Bradley to reiterate in 2014 their academic advocacy of pre-Clovis peoples in North America and their possible link to [[Paleolithic]] Europeans.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=O'Brien |first1=Michael J. |last2=Boulanger |first2=Matthew T. |last3=Collard |first3=Mark |last4=Buchanan |first4=Briggs |last5=Tarle |first5=Lia |last6=Straus |first6=Lawrence G. |last7=Eren |first7=Metin I. |date=June 2014 |title=On thin ice: problems with Stanford and Bradley's proposed Solutrean colonisation of North America |url=https://www.academia.edu/5119515 |format=PDF |journal=Antiquity |type=Debate |volume=88 |issue=340 |pages=606–613 |doi=10.1017/S0003598X0010122X |s2cid=131083970 |access-date=January 18, 2016 |via=Academia.edu}}</ref>

====Lifestyles====
Native settlements relocated as natural conditions dictated. They set up villages – scattered groups of thatch houses and cultivated gardens – where conditions favored farming. In the spring they planted crops, which the women and children tended while the men hunted and fished. In the fall they harvested crops, storing food in baskets or underground pits. During the harsh winter, whole communities would move to hunting areas, seeking the deer, rabbit and other game that kept them alive until the spring fishing season. When the farmland around their villages became less productive – the inhabitants did not practice [[crop rotation]] – the native people would abandon the site and move to another location.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.intercom.net/~terrypl/Native_Americans.html |title=Native American people of the Delmarva Peninsula |last=Plowman |first=Terry |date=October 1999 |work=Delmarva Millennium, Volume I |publisher=Thomson-Chesapeake |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131103230721/http://www.intercom.net/~terrypl/Native_Americans.html |archive-date=November 3, 2013 |via=portfolio of work by Terry Plowman}}</ref>

====Populations====
The primary [[Native Americans in the United States|Indigenous peoples]] of the ocean side of the lower peninsula prior to the arrival of Europeans were the [[Assateague people|Assateague]], including the Assateague, Transquakin, [[Choptico]], Moteawaughkin, Quequashkecaquick, Hatsawap, Wachetak, Marauqhquaick, and Manaskson. Their territories and populations ranged from [[Cape Charles, Virginia]], to the [[Indian River (Delaware)|Indian River]] inlet in Delaware.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.assateaguepeople.org/assateague/history.html |title=History Page |website=The Assateague People |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031217122653/http://www.assateaguepeople.org:80/assateague/history.html |archive-date=December 17, 2003 |access-date=May 28, 2019}}</ref>

The upper peninsula and the Chesapeake shore was the home of [[Nanticoke language|Nanticoke]]-speaking people such as the [[Nanticoke people|Nentigo]] and [[Choptank people|Choptank]]. The Assateague and Nentigo made a number of [[Treaty|treaties]] with the colony of Maryland, but the land was gradually taken and those treaties dissolved for the use of the colonists, and the native peoples of the peninsula assimilated into other [[Algonquian peoples|Algonquian]] tribes as far north as [[Ontario]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Tagle |first=Christopher |date=March 20, 2003 |title=The True Ocean City Locals |url=http://www.assateaguepeople.org/assateague/history.html |magazine=The Oceana Magazine |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031217122653/http://www.assateaguepeople.org/assateague/history.html |archive-date=December 17, 2003}}</ref>

Currently, the peninsula is within the traditional territory of the [[Piscataway people|Piscataway]], Nentego, and [[Lenape]] peoples.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://native-land.ca/maps/territories/nentego-nanticoke/|title=Nentego (Nanticoke)|date=June 5, 2018|website=Native Land|access-date=May 28, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://native-land.ca/maps/territories/piscataway/|title=Piscataway|date=June 5, 2018|website=Native Land|access-date=May 28, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://native-land.ca/maps/territories/lenape/|title=Lenape Haki-nk|date=June 5, 2018|website=Native Land|access-date=May 28, 2019}}</ref>

===Colonization===
[[Image:feralpony.jpg|thumb|A feral pony of [[Assateague Island]]]]

In 1566, an expedition sent from [[Spanish Florida]] by [[Pedro Menéndez de Avilés]] reached the Delmarva Peninsula. The expedition consisted of two [[Dominican Order|Dominican]] friars, thirty soldiers and an indigenous Virginia boy, [[Don Luis]], in an effort to set up a Spanish colony in the Chesapeake. At the time, the Spanish believed the Chesapeake to be an opening to the fabled [[Northwest Passage]]. However, a storm thwarted their attempts at establishing a colony.<ref name="Milanich1999">{{cite book |last=Milanich |first=Jerald T. |author-link=Jerald T. Milanich |year=1999 |title=Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians |url=https://archive.org/details/laboringinfields00mila |url-access=registration |location=Washington, D.C. & London |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press |page=92 |isbn=9781560989400 |access-date=March 7, 2022 |via=the Internet Archive}}</ref> The land that is currently Delaware was first colonized by the [[Dutch West India Company]] in 1631 as [[Zwaanendael Colony|Zwaanendael]]. That colony lasted one year before a dispute with local Indians led to its destruction. In 1638, [[New Sweden]] was established which colonized the northern part of the state, together with the [[Delaware Valley]]. Eventually, the Dutch, who had maintained that their claim to Delaware arose from the colony of 1631, recaptured Delaware and incorporated the colony into the Colony of [[New Netherland]].

However, shortly thereafter Delaware came under British control in 1664. [[James I of England]] had granted Virginia 400 miles of Atlantic coast centered on [[Cape Comfort]], extending west to the Pacific Ocean to a company of colonists in a series of charters from 1606 to 1611. This included a piece of the peninsula. The land was transferred from the [[James II of England|Duke of York]] to [[William Penn]] in 1682 and was governed with [[Pennsylvania]]. The exact border was determined by the Chancery Court in 1735. In 1776, the counties of [[Kent County, Delaware|Kent]], [[New Castle County, Delaware|New Castle]], and [[Sussex County, Delaware|Sussex]] declared their independence from Pennsylvania and entered the United States as the state of [[Delaware]].

In the 1632 Charter of Maryland, King [[Charles I of England]] granted "all that Part of the Peninsula, or Chersonese, lying in the Parts of America, between the Ocean on the East and the Bay of Chesapeake on the West, divided from the Residue thereof by a Right Line drawn from the Promontory, or Head-Land, called Watkin's Point, situate upon the Bay aforesaid, near the river Wigloo, on the West, unto the main Ocean on the East; and between that Boundary on the South, unto that Part of the Bay of Delaware on the North, which lieth under the Fortieth Degree of North Latitude from the Equinoctial, where New England is terminated" to [[Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore]], as the colony of Maryland. This would have included all of present-day [[Delaware]]; however, a clause in the charter granted only that part of the peninsula that had not already been colonized by Europeans by 1632. Over a century later, it was decided in the case of ''[[Penn v Lord Baltimore]]'' that, because the Dutch had colonized Zwaanendael in 1631, the portion of Maryland's charter granting Delaware to Maryland was void.