Piscataway is an extinct Algonquian

Algonquian languages

The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...

 language formerly spoken by the Piscataway

Piscataway (tribe)

The Piscataway are a subtribe of the Conoy Native American tribe of Maryland. At one time, they were one of the most populous and powerful Native polities of the Chesapeake Bay region. They spoke Algonquian Piscataway, a dialect of Nanticoke...

, a dominant chiefdom

Chiefdom

A chiefdom is a political economy that organizes regional populations through a hierarchy of the chief.In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a tribe or a band...

 on the Western Shore of Chesapeake Bay, in present-day Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Piscataway, also known as Conoy (from the Iroquois

Iroquois

The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...

 ethnonym

Ethnonym

An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...

 for the tribe), is considered a dialect of Nanticoke

Nanticoke language

Nanticoke is an extinct Algonquian language formerly spoken in Delaware and Maryland, United States. The same language was spoken by several neighboring tribes, including the Nanticoke, which constituted the paramount chiefdom; the Choptank, the Assateague, and probably also the Piscataway and the...

.

This designation is based on the scant evidence available for the Piscataway language. The Doeg

Doeg (tribe)

The Doeg were a Native American tribe who lived in northern Virginia. They spoke an Algonquian language and may have been a branch of the Nanticoke tribe, historically based on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The Nanticoke considered the Algonquian Lenape as "grandfathers"...

 tribe, then located in present-day Northern Virginia

Northern Virginia

Northern Virginia consists of several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia, in a widespread region generally radiating southerly and westward from Washington, D.C...

, are also thought to have spoken a form of the same language. These dialects were intermediate between the Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 groups of Lenape

Lenape language

The Delaware languages, also known as the Lenape languages, are Munsee and Unami, two closely related languages of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian language family...

 languages formerly spoken to the north of this area (in present-day Delaware

Delaware

Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...

 and New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

) and the Powhatan language

Powhatan language

Powhatan or Virginia Algonquian is an extinct language belonging to the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian languages. It was spoken by the Powhatan people of tidewater Virginia. It became extinct around the 1790s after speakers switched to English. The sole documentary evidence for this...

, formerly spoken to the south, in what is now Tidewater Virginia.