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Occaneechi
The
Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation
The
Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation - OBSN for short
- is a small Indian community located primarily in
the old settlement of Little Texas, Pleasant Grove
Township, Alamance County, North Carolina.
The
OBSN community is a lineal descendant of the Saponi
and related Indians who occupied the Piedmont of North
Carolina and Virginia in pre-contact times, and specifically
of those Saponi and related Indians who formally became
tributary to Virginia under the Treaties of Middle
Plantation in 1677 and 1680, and, who under the subsequent
treaty of 1713 with the Colony of Virginia agreed
to join together as a single community. This confederation
formed a settlement at Fort Christianna along the
Virginia/North Carolina border in what is now Brunswick
County, Virginia. The confederation included the Saponi
proper, the Occaneechi, the Eno, the Tutelo, and elements
of other related communities such as the Cheraw. All
of these communities were remnants of much larger
Siouan communities that had lived in North Carolina
and Virginia in prehistoric times.
The
Saponi confederation was closely allied with the Catawba
confederation, and occupied several forts and settlements
located in what are now Greensville County and Brunswick
Counties, Virginia from about 1680 until the mid-18th
century, when the last Virginia fort, Christianna,
fell into disuse. They also continued to occupy fortified
villages and other settlements in North Carolina into
the mid-1700s during this period.
While
maintaining distinctions among themselves (sometimes
exaggerated by non-Indian contemporaries and by later
historians), the various elements within the Saponi
confederation had a common origin and were closely
related, linguistically and culturally. Their final
treaty with Virginia included an agreement among the
four signatory groups to formally incorporate as one
tribe under the name "Sapony". In January, 1715, Virginia’s
Governor Spotswood wrote a letter to the Bishop of
London describing how he had "engaged the Saponie,
Oconeechee, Stuckanox [Eno] and Tottero Indians (being
a people speaking much the same language, and therefore
confederated together, tho’ preserving their different
Rules) immediately to remove to y’t place, which I
have named Christ-Anna." In June of that year, Spotswood
wrote to the Commisioners of Trade in London that
he had ". . . been for a good part of last Spring,
employ’d in finishing the fortifications of Christanna,
and in settling there a Body of our Tributary Indians
to ye number of 300 men, women and children, who go
under the general name of Saponies . . .".
Acculturated
members of the confederation and their descendants
gradually formed a settled community that, over time,
became geographically and culturally distinct from
the traditional community. Formal marriages and common-law
relationships between Indians of the community and
their European neighbors contributed to divisions
between the settled community and more conservative
community members. Documentary evidence of the existence
of the acculturated community begins to appear in
local records as early as the 1720s. As these records
involve adults, it is likely the acculturated community
dates back into the 17th century. A great majority
of the tribe’s members can trace their ancestry back
to the individual Indians identified in such records.
The
acculturated community occupied a small tri-border
area in what are now Greensville County, Virginia,
Brunswick County, Virginia, and Northampton County,
North Carolina. Their settlement was also midway between
two forts built for the Indians by Virginia, and about
10 miles south of a third fort, near modern-day Purdy,
Virginia, that was apparently built by the Indians
themselves, probably for defense against Iroquois
raiders from the north. More precisely, the community’s
land was located south of modern Emporia, Virginia
(Greensville County), west into Brunswick County,
and extending across the State line into the northwestern
corner of Northampton County, North Carolina and to
the Roanoke River. Researchers for the OBSN have documented
the development of this community from the late 17th
through the early 19th centuries, by which time emigration
to the Midwest and other parts of the South had reduced
it to a handful of families.
Beginning
just prior to the Revolutionary War, and accelerating
rapidly thereafter, individuals and bands of families
began migrating from the acculturated settlement to
Orange County, North Carolina. These migrants formed
the community that was historically called "Little
Texas" and that today calls itself the Occaneechi
Band of the Saponi Nation. Some families also migrated
from Virginia to South Carolina (Sumter County), and
beginning in the 1820s, most of the families remaining
in Virginia or nearby areas of North Carolina emigrated
to Ohio and other Midwestern states. Some Indians
also migrated from Little Texas to join relatives
in Ohio.
While
there appear to be few if any descendants today in
either Brunswick or Greensville County, Virginia there
is a small remnant community still in existence across
the State line in Northampton County near the town
of Gaston on the Roanoke River. Even this community,
called the "Portuguese Settlement" throughout much
of the 19th and 20th centuries, has largely dispersed.
Up into the 1950's, however, at least one of the community’s
schools, called the "Portuguese" school, was still
located in Greensville County.
The
Revolutionary War was as key event among the Occaneechi
community as it was in the rest of the colonies. Existing
records count a sizeable number of men as having served
in militia and Continental Line units during the War,
service that took them much farther afield than any
of the younger men had probably ever been. Pension
records indicate that at least a few of them marched
as far south as the Catawbas via the old trading routes
that traversed Hillsboro and ran just to the south
of Pleasant Grove, North Carolina; at least one (William
Stewart) was a veteran of Valley Forge; and several
served at Yorktown and other eastern Virginia areas.
Veterans
of the War and their families were among the founders
of Little Texas, including those of Charles Whitmore,
John Jeffries, Jr., John Jeffries, Sr., Jacob Jeffries,
Simon Jeffries, Holiday Heathcock, and others had
moved their families to Little Texas by 1800. The
community was also joined by the children of William
Guy, a War veteran who was born in the Virginia community
and who moved to North Carolina after the War.
Another
important early family in Little Texas was that of
Robert Brooks Corn, the son of Robert Corn, an Indian
who was a veteran of both the French and Indian War
and of the Revolutionary War. Robert Brooks Corn was
married in 1795 in Greensville County to Jane Jeffries,
moving about 1800 to Wake County, North Carolina with
his father and their extended family. After his father’s
death in 1816, Robert Brooks Corn moved his family
to Little Texas, where three of his wife’s siblings,
John, Drury and Littleton Jeffries, along with numerous
cousins, were already established.
By
1830, census records indicate the population of Little
Texas was between 250-300 by that time, at least 80%
of it being traceable to the acculturated community
in Greensville and Northampton Counties. Those not
traceable to the parent community, however, appear
to have been of a similar background, i.e., of Indian
or partial Indian descent. Virtually all of the members
of the Occaneechi Band descend from these original
settlers of Little Texas.
In
1984, some of the Indians from Little Texas, and from
an offshoot community called "Oaks", communities formally
reorganized as the Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association
with the goal of preserving the Indian heritage of
the community and teaching the young about their own
history. The group began a concerted effort to conduct
research into their history, and to seek to correct
the racial mis-classifications on their birth certificates
and other official documents that resulted from Jim
Crow and other racist laws that had at one time been
on North Carolina’s books. In addition, the Indian
Association organized an annual Pow-wow, which has
been held in August for the past six years, with Indians
from many different tribes visiting with the community.
In 1995, the Tribal Council amended the name to "The
Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation" to reflect the
historical record more accurately.
text
and graphic from the Occaneechi
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