Occaneechi
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The Occaneechi or Occoneechee were Native Americans related to the Saponi or Sappony, Tutelo or Totaro, Eno and other eastern Siouan peoples living in the Piedmont region of present-day North Carolina and Virginia. Siouan-language peoples included those elements who migrated west to the Plains hundreds of years before European contact.

The Eastern Siouan territory or nation encompassed the majority of the current-day states of Virginia and North Carolina, approximately half of South Carolina and parts of Georgia, West Virginia, and Ohio.

The Occoneechee lived on a large four-mile long Island surrounded by the Dan and Roanoke rivers near current day Clarksville, Virginia. In 1676 the tribe was attacked by European settlers and decimated. Also under demographic pressure from European settlement and new infectious diseases, their cousins the Saponi and Tutelo came to live near them on adjacent islands. By 1714 the Occoneechee were grouped with the Totaro, and Saponi, and other Siouan people living on a 36-square mile reservation in current-day Brunswick County, Virginia. It included a fort called Christanna. The Siouan people had been decimated to approximately 600 people. Fort Christanna was closed in 1717, after which there are very few written references to the Occaneechi. But the references that do survive suggest that the Occaneechi retained their language during the 18th century and perhaps into the 19th century.

The self-named Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation today consists of about 700 multiracial tribal members living primarily in Alamance County, North Carolina. In 2002 it was the last and smallest tribe recognized by the state of North Carolina. The Haliwa-Saponi, of similar ancestry, consist of approximately 3,000 members. No documentation exists linking members of either tribe to the historical Saponi tribe. Most of the remaining Saponi tribe members went north in 1740 for protection with the Iroquois, and went with them to Canada after the American Revolution. They disappeared from the historical record in the Southeast.

History

The Occaneechi were mentioned in 17th-century colonial English records as living on the Trading Path that connected Virginia with the interior of North America. Their position on the Trading Path gave the Occaneechi the power to act as trading "middlemen" between Virginia and various tribes to the west. In 1673, Abraham Wood, a Virginian fur trader, sent James Needham and Gabriel Arthur into the southern Appalachian Mountains in an attempt to make direct contact with the Cherokee, thus bypassing the Occaneechi. The party did make contact with the Cherokee. It was not until colonial South Carolina established a strong relationship with the Cherokee and other interior tribes in the last decades of the 17th century that the Occaneechi's role as trading middleman was undermined.

In 1701 John Lawson visited Occaneechi Town on the Eno River. His written report plus modern archaeology at the site paint a picture of a society undergoing rapid change while trying to maintain their traditional way of life. The Occaneechi, along with the "Stuckanok, Tottero, and Saponi", signed a "Treaty of Peace" with the colony of Virginia in 1713. They then moved to Fort Christanna in southeast Virginia. Occaneechi Town appears to have been almost entirely abandoned by 1713.

Fort Christanna was operated by the Virginia Company from 1714 to 1717. Its closure was apparently due to a lack of profits via its use as an Indian trading center. Although several distinct groups of Siouan Indians lived at Fort Christanna, the English Virginians tended to refer to them simply as "Saponi" or "Fort Christanna Indians".

After the closing of Fort Christanna in 1717, there are very few references to the Occaneechi in colonial records. Those references that do exist indicate a continued trade between Virginia and the Saponi and Occaneechi.

In 1727, a settler living near the Meherrin Indians, in a region where some violence had broken out, wrote to the governor of Virginia, saying that the Meherrin denied attacking the Nottoway, and that "they lay the whole blame upon the Occaneechy King and the Saponi Indians". This seems to indicate a continued distinction between the Occaneechi and Saponi, recognized even by English settlers.

There is a mention in Virginia's House of Burgesses records in 1730 of an "Interpreter to the Saponi and Occaneechi Indians", implying the existence of monoglot Occaneechi people.

In 1730, many Saponi moved to live among the Catawba, but returned to Virginia in 1733, along with some Cheraw Indians. After 1733 the Saponi appear to have fragmented into small groups and dispersed. Some apparently remained in the vicinity of Fort Christanna, which continued to be mentioned in Virginian records by its Saponi name, "Junkatapurse". After 1742 the settlement is no longer mentioned, but only a road called Junkatapurse.

In the 1740s, the Saponi once again went to live with the Catawba, but returned to Virginia in a few years. Governor Gooch of Virginia reported that the "Saponies and other petty nations associated with them ... are retired out of Virginia to the Cattawbas" during the years 1743-1747.

Starting the in middle 18th century there are records of Saponi living in North Carolina, where today many Occaneechi and Saponi descendants live. Some Saponi moved from Virginia to various places in North Carolina, and there is some evidence that some Indians never left these areas of North Carolina and became consolidated with Saponi from Virginia. Colonial records and those of the United States provide only a vague historical record. As the Piedmont Indians ceased living in a way that the local non-Indians thought of as "Indian", words like "mulatto" and "free colored" began to be used to describe these people. There may be connections between the Occaneechi and Saponi descendants and the Lumbee and Melungeons.

In 1756, the Moravian settlers living near present-day Winston-Salem reported the existence of an Indian palisaded "fort" settlement near the Haw River. The Moravians called the Indians "Cherokees", but it is more likely they were Sissipahau ("Saxapahaw") or another group related to the Occaneechi. This, along with various oral traditions, indicates the continued existence of Indians living in a more or less traditional manner in North Carolina's Piedmont long after such settlements supposedly vanished.

In 1763, Lt. Governor Francis Fauquier of Virginia wrote a letter in which he described the Indians of Virginia: "There are some of the Nottoways, Meherrins, Tuscaroras, and Saponys, who tho' they live in peace in the midst of us, lead in great measure the lives of wild Indians." He contrasted these Indians these the Eastern Shore and Pamunkey Indians, who he described as much more assimilated to English ways. This is another indication that at least some of the Saponi continued to live in the Piedmont in at least a somewhat traditional way, and with a distinct Saponi ethnicity, as late as the 1760s.

Traditional English American histories typically describe the Saponi group of Indians as leaving Virginia and North Carolina in the 1700s, either joining the Catawbas or the Iroquois. For years lay people and researchers have discovered thousands of artifacts from "Occoneechee Town", "Saponi Town" and "Tutelo Town" on islands near Clarksville. Prior to the flooding of these islands in 1952, this was one of the richest archeology sites on the East Coast. Since 1983 the Research Laboratories of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been uncovering another "Occaneechi Town", a 16th and 17th century Occaneechi village on the Eno River near present-day Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Controversy

The contemporary tribes are groups of multiracial descent who settled on the frontier of Virginia and North Carolina as early as the mid-to late 18th century, often arriving and acquiring land next to European or English neighbors from the Tidewater areas. 20th century researchers such as Paul Heinegg and Dr. Virginia Easley De Marce have used colonial records to trace back members of families in this area who were listed in the 1790 census. They have found 80 percent of those listed as free people of color, a category that then included Indians, could be traced back to African Americans free in Virginia during the colonial period. Most of the free people of color were descended from relationships between white women and African men, often both indentured servants, during the 17th and 18th century when racial boundaries between groups were not as hardened as they became later.^[1]

In frontier areas, such peoples of mixed race sometimes identified themselves (or others did) as Indian, or Portuguese, or Spanish, to explain physical features not typical of northern Europeans. In some areas they may also have intermarried with American Indians. People in these groups went in different directions, some marrying into the white community, some marrying other multiracial people and identifying as Indian, and others marrying into the black community.^[2]

The loss of freedoms in 1835 after the Nat Turner Rebellion affected all free people of color in North Carolina, who lost their ability to vote and other civil rights. The aftermath of the Civil War put more pressure on multiracial communities. While public schools were established under Reconstruction, whites insisted they be segregated. Free people of color were expected to send their children to black schools. Some, such as the current Lumbee, sought another route and gained official recognition as Indians and established an Indian school.

Many people who claimed Indian descent were described, either by themselves or others, as "Cherokee", a respected Indian tribe of the 19th century. Only in the middle-to-late 20th century have the North Carolina and Virginia Piedmont Indian descendants officially reclaimed historic names such as Saponi and Occaneechi.

The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation are the eighth and smallest tribe officially recognized by the state of North Carolina, receiving official status in 2002. The tribe presently owns 25 acres of land in NE Alamance County, NC, where it is developing as a tribal center.

Citations

References

• Occaneechi-Saponi Descendants in the North Carolina Piedmont
• Forest Hazel. "Occaneechi-Saponi Descendants in the North Carolina Piedmont: The Texas Community"., published in Southern Indian Studies. Mathis, Mark A., ed. Vol. 40 (October, 1991). The North Carolina Archaeological Society, Inc., Raleigh.

External links

• The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation