In recent years there has been an increased interest in identifying and interpreting the rich American Indian culture that thrived along the Nanticoke River watershed centuries before the first European contact.

"All of the villages Captain John Smith mapped (Nause, Nantaquack, and Kuskarawaok) and the two he recorded but didn't map (Sarapinagh and Arseek) were all part of the larger Chiefdom (a modern anthropological term) that Smith called the Kuskarawaok, the people Maryland came to call the Nanticoke who lived along the Kus Flu, now the Nanticoke River.

There were settlements all along the Nanticoke River watershed (including areas into Delaware) that we know of from archaeology and from post-Smith historical information."

Dr. Virginia Busby - 2007

... four native fishermen ... asked us to stay, and before long they returned with some twenty others, and after a short conference, two or three hundred men, women and children came clustering about us, everyone presenting us with something, which a little bead would so well requite, and we became such friends they would contend over who should fetch us water, stay with us for hostage, conduct our men elsewhere, and give us the best content.

Here does inhabit the people of Sarapinagh, Nause, Arseek, and Nantaquak - the best merchants of all other natives.

The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & the Summer Isles - 1624

"Today the Nause-Waiwash comprise 250 persons, who are descendent's of the original Nanticokes. Their name is a reference to two Nanticoke ancestral villages, Guinea and Chance Islands, in Fishing Bay. The tribe makes annual visits to these villages.

Nanticoke lore has it that, by the early 1600's, the tribe had been in the area for 13 generations, with a Chief of Chiefs for each generation. Tribal lore also states that the Nanticokes were descended from the "grandfather" peoples whom settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The Nanticokes were a matriarchal society. Children lived with their mother's clan. These clans, while organized into a tribe, might live as much as a mile apart. In later times, as the Native American population shrank, the clans began to move closer together. The Chief of Chiefs headed the tribe. He was assisted by lesser chiefs. Women had a great deal of influence. The Clan Mothers always made the decision as to whether or not to go to war. The male members of the tribe had no vote in this matter.

The Native Americans in the area believe that the area which is now the Town of Vienna was the feast grounds, which was some distance from the village itself. Feast grounds were traditionally located on high spots of land."

Chief Sewell "Winterhawk" Fitzhugh - 300th Anniversary History of Vienna - 2006