The Nanticoke and the Bay

Long before Methodist preachers or Washington vacationers, this coast belonged to the Nanticoke people. The Nanticoke, whose name is sometimes translated as the tidewater people, lived across what is now southwestern Delaware and the eastern shore, speaking an Algonquian language and living by fishing, hunting, and farming the coastal lowlands. They made first contact with Europeans in sixteen oh eight, when the English colonist John Smith crossed their path and described them as friendly and skilled at trading.

Just inland from Rehoboth Beach lies Rehoboth Bay, and out in its waters sits Thompson Island, an archaeological site where people camped for thousands of years. In nineteen ninety Delaware acquired that island to protect it. The Nanticoke did not vanish.

Nanticoke people remained in the area around Millsboro in Sussex County, and their descendants are still here. Delaware today formally recognizes two tribal communities, the Nanticoke Indian Association in Sussex County and the Lenape Tribe of Delaware, and the Nanticoke run a museum and hold an annual powwow near Millsboro. When you look across Rehoboth Bay, you are looking at a landscape that carried Nanticoke names and Nanticoke lives for thousands of years before the resort was born.