Yaocomico

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The Yaocomico were a Native American tribe who lived along the north bank of the Potomac River near its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay in the 17th century. According to historical tradition, the first settlers of the Maryland colony purchased the land for their settlement at St. Mary's City from the Yaocomico, who had a settlement there. European settler accounts claim that the Yaocomico were content to sell the land to the Maryland colonists because they were being threatened by tribes further to the north, specifically the Susquehanna and Seneca. The Maryland settlers continued to maintain good relations with the Yaocomico, going so far as to write language protecting them into treaties with other neighboring tribes. However, the Yaocomico disappeared by the 1670s or 1680s, possibly as a result of the European diseases that had begun wreaking havoc on native populations.

[edit] References

• Browne, William Hand (1890). George Calvert and Cecilius Calvert: Barons Baltimore of Baltimore. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company.