Description
The Tomahittan were Native Americans whom Virginians James Needham and Gabriel Arthur tried to contact to bypass the taxes of the Occaneechi "middlemen" natives. What tribe the Tomahittan belongs to is in dispute. For many years, scholars accepted that the Tomahittans were either Yuchi or Cherokee and that the town visited by Needham and Arthur was somewhere west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. One investigation places the Tomahittans around the vicinity of present-day Rome, Georgia. Other sources record that Tomahitan was the name of the main town of the Nottoway people in Southside Virginia.
Language
Hitichiti
Culture
Southeastern Woodlands peoples social traits included having a matrilineal kinship system, exogamous marriage between clans, and organizing into settled villages and towns. Southeastern Woodlands societies were usually divided into clans, also traditionally shared similar religious beliefs, based on animism. They used fish poison, and practiced purification ceremonies among their religious rituals, as well as the Green Corn Ceremony. Medicine people are important spiritual healers. The main agricultural crops of the region were the Three Sisters : winter squash, maize (corn), and climbing beans (usually tepary beans or common beans).