Mythologies of the Washitaw Tribe

June 26, 2024

The Washitaw Nation (Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah) is an African-American group associated with the Moorish Science Temple of America who claim to be a sovereign state of Native Americans within the boundaries of the United States of America. Their name is appropriated from that of the Ouachita tribe, who are also eponymous of the Washita River and of Washita, Oklahoma. The group is part of the sovereign citizen movement, whose members generally believe that they are not subject to any statutes or proceedings at the federal, state, or municipal levels. The Washitaw Nation was headed by Verdiacee Hampton Goston (also known as Verdiacee Turner, and as Empress Verdiacee Tiari Washitaw Turner Goston El-Bey, c. 1927–2014). She was mayor of Richwood, Louisiana in 1975 and 1976, and again from 1980 to 1984, and is the author of the self-published book Return of the Ancient Ones (1993). Goston asserted that the United Nations "registers the Washitaw as indigenous people No. 215". In 1999, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that the group had about 200 hard-core members, noting its popularity among followers of Moorish Science, a nationalist movement. The asserted legal basis for the establishment of the Washitaw Nation is a theory that individuals and groups may declare "sovereignty" and may separate themselves from state and federal governments, a concept earlier used by the Posse Comitatus. The argument is also made that Napoleon only sold "the streets of New Orleans and a military barracks" and that the rest of Louisiana was stolen from the Washitaw. Various United States courts have held that the Washitaw Nation is fictional and that it is not recognized as a sovereign nation.

The Washitaw name comes from the Washita River, a river rising in northwest Texas and flowing about 724 Km (450 Mi) generally east-southeast across Oklahoma to the Red River, where the southern Cheyenne Native American tribe lived. The original name for Washitaw is Washa. The Washa were a tribe that lived with the Chawasha, meaning “Raccoon Place (People)”. The Chawasha were of the Tunican Linguistic Stock, locate on Bayou La Fourche, and Eastward to the Gulf of Mexico, across the Mississippi. The Chawasha and Washa tribes lived at Allemands on the west side of the Mississippi above New Orleans in 1739 A.D. The Chitimacha were also a tribe of the Tunican Linguistic Stock, living in Louisiana amongst the Washa tribe. The name Washita is a derivative of the name Wichita, also spelled Ouachita. The name Wichita originated from the Choctaw term Wia Chitoh, “Big Arbor,” from the Choctaw words Wia, “Arbor” or “Loft-like platform,” and Chitow, meaning “Big”, which is a description of the large grass-thatched arbors, drying platforms, and houses, for which the people now commonly known as the Wichita have been noted. The name Wichita, like some other tribal names, was first carried westward by French explorers and traders from the lower Mississippi, Alabama, and lower Louisiana. The tribe was officially called Wichita or Wichitaw in government records beginning in the Camp Holmes Treaty of 1835 A.D., in which the Choctaw had a prominent part since the Wichita were living at the time within the boundaries of the Choctaw natiion.

Members of the Washitaw Nation claim to be descendants of the "Ancient Ones," the "black ones" who they claim peopled the North American continent tens of thousands of years before white Europeans arrived. The Nation is currently headed by a woman calling herself Empress Verdiacee "Tiari" Washitaw-Turner Goston El-Bey. She and several of her associates in the Nation are under investigation by Federal, Colorado, and Louisiana authorities for possible money laundering, offshore banking fraud, and sale of apparently illegal license plates. The Nation issues, for a fee, its own driver's licenses, birth certificates, passports and other "official" documents. The documents and the theories from which they derive, are classic common law, the notion that one can declare one's "sovereignty" and separate from State and Federal Governments. The Nation is believed to have followers in 20 States, and hangers-on from other separatist groups. The article describes some of the Nation's money-making schemes and several of their most recent troubles with authorities.

Washitaw Nation is a Moorish sovereign group, an African-American offshoot of the broader sovereign citizen movement, which has its roots in the white supremacist movement. The group believes that federal, state, and local governments are corrupt and have no legitimate authority. "What they’ve done is they've taken the legal theories of the white supremacist movement of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and repackaged them with kind of an Egyptian, pan-African set of themes around them," according to J.J. MacNab, a fellow at the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.