Eric Richardson asks, "is there then not the possibility of persistence of 
Native communities across
the southeast?  Applying Helen Rountree's argument about Native circular
community formation to the broader region."

This was probably directed at me, so I will reply.

So-called persistent Native communities in the Southeast were an invention 
after the Civil War to allow for three castes in the Jim Crow system. In 
"Pocahontas's People" Roundtree highlights the Bass family of Norfolk County 
that descends from John Bass who married a baptized Nansemond Indian woman 
in 1638. Rountree does not explain that they and their grandchildren lived 
in the English community like any other colonist: bought and sold land, were 
sued in court for debt, indicted for selling liquor without a license, paid 
taxes, worked on the county roads, etc. And their grandchild William Bass, 
of one-fourth Indian ancestry, married Sarah Lovina the "Mulatto" daughter 
of Major John Nicholls and his "Negro" slave Jean Lovina. Nickols gave her 
200 acres by his 1696 Norfolk County will but left her mother as a slave 
[Will Book 6:95a-96]. When William and Sarah Bass sold 48 acres of this land 
on the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River in 1737, they described it as 
land "that Major Nichols gave unto the said Sarah Bass before her marriage 
to the sd. Wm. Bass" [Deed Book 12:188]. This William's brothers John and 
Edward went to North Carolina where most of their children married free 
African Americans.

So, their descendants were more African than they were Indian. None ever 
married another Indian. This was true of nearly all familes with Indian 
ancestry. They blended into the free African American community during the 
colonial period. Joseph Douglas Deal did not find a single nuclear Indian 
family on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. There was no such thing as an 
Indian-White community in the Southeast during the colonial period.

The other supposed Nansemond Indian families were the Weaver family 
(descendants of East Indians who mixed with African Americans in Lancaster 
County), the Newton family (descendants of a "free Mulatto" woman of Norfolk 
County who left a will in 1743 by which she freed her "Mulatto" slave 
husband Abraham Newton. This was one of the few manumissions approved by the 
colonial Legislature [Executive Journals of the Council V:196, 215]), the 
Price, Perkins and Hall families (descendants of white women by African 
American men.

Although the concept of Indians being the ones with the lighter skin started 
during Jim Crow in most places in the Southeast, Norfolk County started this 
practice much earlier in 1833 after the "not Negro" law was passed by 
issuing certificates of Indian descent to light-skinned free people of 
color. Descendants of an Indian slave named Molly Cook (who had obviously 
mixed with African slaves) won their freedom in 1819, and the clerk recorded 
the fact that they were free because of descent from an Indian woman on 
their certificates of freedom in 1819. But their children were too dark to 
be included among those who received certificates of  "Indian Descent" after 
1833. Asa Price, with no proof of Indian ancestry, received a certificate of 
"Indian Descent" when a white man testrified that Asa's father had married a 
white woman [Register of Free Negroes & Mulattoes, 1809-1852, nos. 201-2, 
342-4, 904, 1041-3, 1054; Court Minutes 23:180].  Lucy Bass ("a coloured 
woman") married William Trumbell ("a coloured man") 8 February 1822 Norfolk 
County bond, Willis Bass bondsman. Lucy received a certificate of "Indian 
Descent" in 1833, but her husband did not. John Bass, "free man of colour," 
married Sally Price, "free woman of colour," 18 August 1812 Norfolk County 
bond. He was called a "Molatto man, a free man of colour," in 1822 when he 
was murdered by a white man.

The so-called Native communites that emerged after the Civil War in places 
like Amherst County, Virginia, Robeson County, North Carolina, Kent and 
Sussex counties, Delaware, Charles County, Maryland, etc., were identical to 
the light-skinned "free Mulatto" and "free colored" communities that lived 
there during the colonial and early national periods. It all started in 
Robeson County, North Carolina, in 1885 when the Democrats invented the 
Croatan Indian tribe in order to win the votes of the former free persons of 
color in a county and state that were almost equally divided between 
Republican and Democrat. As part of the agreement to call them Indians they 
were forbidden to marry "Negroes." (I wonder why that was necessary?) They 
had three sets of water fountains, seating areas, rest rooms, etc, during 
Jim Crow. When the former free persons of color of adjoining Sampson County 
applied to be called Indians in 1916, they gave as evidence the marriages of 
many of their children to Robeson County families, their marriages to white 
women, and the fact that they had forced off the tax list of 1912 those 
Indians who "were known to contain negro blood."

Even distinguished Professor Malinda Lowery of UNC, a Lumbee, admits that it 
is a tribe that was created to shield the community from Jim Crow but argues 
that ethnic identity is a social fiction and therefore assent to becoming an 
Indian is as valid as descent from known historic tribes [Lowery, Lumbee 
Indians in the Jim Crow South (UNC Press, 2010)].
Paul
I traced the family history of nearly every family of African descent that 
was free during the colonial period in the Southeast, and you can find among 
them nearly every family that claims to be Indian. Most descend from over 
1,000 mixed-race children born to white servant women by slaves. 
http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/
Some photos of Indian families:
http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/photos_Indians.htm

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