The Doeg (also spelled Doages, Dogues, Taux,…

The Doeg (also spelled Doages, Dogues, Taux, Dogi, Tacci, etc.), a native tribe who live in northern Virginia, speak an Algonquian language, thought to be Piscataway or some other dialect similar to Nanticoke.

They may have been a branch of the Nanticoke tribe, who in turn look to the Lenape as "grandfather".

According to Colonial Caroline: A History of Caroline County, Virginia, the Doeg had once lived in modern King George County, Virginia, but about fifty years before Jamestown (around 1557) had split into three sections, with one part moving to Caroline, one part moving to Prince William County, Virginia, and a third part remaining in King George.

Captain John Smith had visited the upper Potomac River in 1608, and indicated that the Taux lived on that river, above Aquia creek, with their capital, Tauxenent, located on "Doggs Island" (also known as Miompse or May-Umps, now Mason Neck, Virginia), where they lived on fishing and grew corn.

Other hamlets were at Pamacocack (later anglicized to "Quantico"), along Quantico Creek, Yosococomico (now Powell's Creek) and Niopsco (Neabsco Creek).

Associated with them were their neighboring Algonquian relatives, the Moyauns (Piscataway) on the Maryland side, and the Nacotchtanks (Anacostans) in what is now the DC area.

Smith's map also shows another settlement similarly called Tauxsnitania, thought to be near Waterloo in Fauquier County, in the territory of the Siouan Manahoac tribe.

John Lederer, who visited the Piedmont region of Virginia in 1670, wrote that the entire area had been "formerly possessed by the Tacci, alias Dogi, but... the Indians now seated here, are distinguished into the several [Siouan] nations of Mahoc, Nuntaneuck alias Nuntaly, Nahyssan, Sapon, Managog, Mangoack, Akernatatzy and Monakin etc."

He further says: "The Indians now seated in these parts [the Siouans] are none of those whom the English removed from Virginia [the Doeg], but a people driven by the enemy [Erie?] from the northwest, and invited to sit down here by an oracle above four hundred years since, as they pretend for the ancient inhabitants of Virginia were far more rude and barbarous, feeding only upon raw flesh and fish, until they taught them to plant corn..."

In the 1650s, as English colonists had begun to settle the Northern Neck frontier, then known as Chicacoan (Secocowon), some Doeg, Patawomeck and Rappahannock Indians began moving into the region as well, joining other tribes there in disputing the settlers' claims.

The colonists had declared war on them in July 1666, patented the land on the west of the Potomac as far north as My Lord's Island in 1669, and by 1670 have driven the Doegs completely out of Virginia, apart from those living beside the Nanzattico/Portobago in Caroline County.