>I have heard about the We-sorts which are a tri-racial group in Maryland. >Would this be a similar group? The Lumbees are a "tri-racial" group based in North Carolina. A significant contingent has migrated between there and Baltimore over the years. See articles by Abraham Makofsky for more on this Baltimore population. I've never heard of a Pamunkey group in MD, although there is one in Virginia. See Helen Rountree's "Pocahontas's People". Many of the Wesorts now self-identify as Piscataway Indians. Two factions have applied for state recognition as an Indian tribe in MD. One of these petitions has been passed by the state Indian commission and awaits approval by the governor. This same petition has also been sent to the BIA for federal recognition. I've done extensive genealogical research on these families, and have found no trace whatsoever of Piscataway ancestry. One of the group's peripheral families (QUEEN) may have a single ancestor who was a South American Indian. Other than that, I've found no evidence of any Indian ancestry at all in the entire Wesort population. The Wesorts appear to be a "biracial" population. I've traced all but one of the major families back to white-black unions in the 17th and 18th centuries. They seem to have invented their story of descent from an Indian tribe. These people did not even form an endogamous system until the late 19th century. Mulatto families in the region invented Indian ancestry in order to improve their social standing in relation to darker-skinned people of color, or to improve their odds of winning a freedom petition. I've documented conclusive evidence of this kind of subterfuge happening as early as the 1770s. The Wesort ancestors, however, seem to have begun to invent their Indian heritage stories not much earlier than the 20th century.