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It’s a matter of record
that there were Saponi adopted by the Cayuga, some of whom migrated
to the Sandusky in Ohio, taking their Saponi adoptees along.
This community was referred to as “The Seneca of the Sandusky”
though there are reports from visitors to the area that there
was ‘nary a Seneca amongst them.’ My understanding is that this
was another tributary amalgamation supervised by the Seneca.
When the League
of the Iroquois lost their holdings in Pennsylvania and Ohio,
they took many of their tributary tribes in with them to what
would become their reserves. It's doubtful there were enough resources
to take in all that many. Many of these groups simply held on
where they were until squeezed out by settlers. Some are documented
as moving further into the midwest. What's less documented is
the obvious recourse of fleeing deeper into the Appalachians.
When we consider that the Native language still being spoken in
West Virginia in the 1950's was a dialect of Seneca, it's obvious
that the former tributary tribes of the League are the likeliest
source. It's unlikely that so large a group of Seneca would have
slipped into the mountains and been forgotten about by them. But
an amalgam of tribes already marginalized politically, with only
the Seneca language in common, would be likely candidates
to slip away into these hollows and be forgotten by history.
The documentation
of a band known as the "Blackfoot of the Seneca" in
WV, and the close associations of the Saponi/Tutelo people with
the Seneca in the 18th century, combined with the other associations
of the term Blackfoot with the Saponi/Tutelo is still another
shred of tantalizing evidence.
Adding to the evidence
of Appalachian migrations is the very high incidence of the Blackfoot
ID in families from Clay and Knox Counties in KY. Some of these
families have surnames, and lineages, leading back to the Piedmont
Siouan.
The first information
I encountered linking the word Blackfoot to the Saponi was in
Richard and Vicky Haithcock’s book, “Occaneechi Saponi and Tutelo
of the Saponi Nation: aka Monacan and Piedmont Catawba.”
The Haithcocks are part of the Ohio Saponi community, where the
association of the word “Blackfoot” with Saponi has been held
traditionally. I’ve presented the word “Sissipaha” as a
link to the word “Blackfoot,” simply because it fits so cleanly
with the recorded Tutelo words. I may also be motivated
by a desire to trace the word to a single, tangible source.
It’s my understanding, however, that The Ohio Saponi feel that
the word “Blackfoot” refers to the entire confederation of Saponi
- that the word “Saponi” itself is a corruption of words for “Blackfoot.”
Lawrence Dunmore III, Esq., and former chairperson of the
Occaneechi Saponi Band of the Saponi Nation in Hillsborough, NC, has
studied the Tutelo language extensively and explained to me that there
is confusion surrounding the English corruption of Saponi tribal names.
The country farmers of North Carolina used badly mangled,
abbreviated corruptions, while across the border, the plantation owners
of Virginia used longer, more accurate corruptions, all pointing to the
same villages or tribes. Richard Haithcock, in his book, lists the
words Mansickapanaough, Monasiccapano, Monasukapanough, Saxapawha,
Sissipahaw, Siccaponi, Siccasaponi, Sikaponi, Shaponi, Saponi and states
that they are all
thought to be corruptions related to this meaning.
In researching these tribes, Lawrence
Dunmore points out some definitions of words that will be useful to keep
in mind. "The term Stuckenock was used by the
Virginians to describe the Eno, Shakori and Sissipahau peoples
while individual terms were used for each group by the North Carolinians.
All three were one people, recognized by Virginia as Stuckenock and
were part of a larger group of people, Yésah." [the Saponi]. Also,
"the term Adshusheer was the name of a Eno
village and the term Keyuawee was a Shakori village. They were not
separate tribes."
I found another, interesting
instance of an historic knowledge of a Blackfoot/Saponi link.
It was from a man whose family has lived historically on the NC/SC
border in Catawba territory. This coincides with the historic
record, which reports the Sissipaha/Shakori/Eno fleeing to the
Catawba. Some are reported to have left the Catawba after
a time, but some remained.
The question
of whether the word Blackfoot refers to a segment of the Eastern
Siouan or can speak for the whole Saponi population is a subject
for further inquiry. Perhaps as more descendants surface,
the answers will become more clear. On this website, we
invite any visitors to post their family lore to the
forum. Reported migration paths of Blackfoot identified
people tracing back to the NC/VA Piedmont so far include Tennessee,
Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Idaho, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma
and Texas. What's remarkable is that, whenever any of these families
can be traced back far enough, the lead back to VA or NC.
The tradition
in my own family is that we are “related to a Blackfoot chief.”
Since pondering all of this data, I've called a number of my grandmother's
lines into question. Of them, the following names are found in
other families with the Blackfoot ID: Harris, Keasey, Severance.
Our Smiths were near the location of a church founded in the 1820's
in western Indiana. Our Hudsons and Keaseys are corroborated by
other lines in the family as Indian descended. The Hudsons were
from Maryland, about 100 miles from the location of the "Blackfoot
Town" mentioned earlier. My Hudson ancestor was listed on
his death certificate as "American" while everyone else
on the page, in the same handwriting, were listed as "Caucasian."
From family photographs, I can see that an epicanthic fold was
in the Hudson line. The Keaseys in our family had a strong Indian
appearance as well. My cousin, who favors that line, resembles
a friend of mine from the Tuscarora reservation in Lewiston, NY.
Our Thomas Harris, grandfather
of the man pictured on the first page of this article, appears
on the 1810 census in Chambersburg, PA. Chambersburg lies
along the Tuscarora Path, which was also used by Saponi people
migrating north, and is less than 100 miles, on all sides, from
Shamokin and Paxtang, PA, and Elkins, WV. My great-grandfather
reported that the family derived originally from Virginia.
An Indian Trader lived in that valley
ca. 1740 - 1780, named Captain Thomas Harris. He had an Indian
wife named Mary McIntyre. A friend claims to be her descendant
and is from the Ohio Saponi community. He currently lives at Six
Nations reserve in Canada with his wife. A succeeding generation
of Harrises in that locale include a Charles and Thomas, both
names occuring in our family in later generations.
Interestingly,
there is a Chief Harris reported by John Buck, one of the last
Tutelos at Six Nations, who was interviewed by anthropologist
J. Owen Dorsey at Six Nations Reserve in 1882. John Buck
said that this Chief Harris led a loyalist faction of Southern
Saponi north to New York to join Joseph Brandt and the Loyalist
Iroquois at the start of the Revolutionary War. There
is a document to this effect in the National Anthropological Archives
in Washington, D.C. I have also found mention of a Cheraw
chief by the name of Harris.
As mentioned
earlier, the Saponi disappeared from history around Ithaca, NY
in 1770. In adjoining Cayuga, and Onandaga counties in the 1820
census are numerous instances of surnames heavily coincidental
to those cited frequently as established or suspected Piedmont
Siouan families in Virginia and North Carolina. There are numerous
Harrises on those census.
There's
one other odd coincidence. Our family settled in Vernon County,
WI by the 1860's. There is a community there that does have strong
documentation of Indian origins. They migrated there from Granville
and Robeson Counties, NC, about the same time we did. We are related
to them by marriage.
I live
now in Virginia, though I was raised in Chicago. My family has
lived in Illinois or Wisconsin since the 1850’s. My ex-husband
and I met in Los Angeles in 1987. We both knew we had Indian ancestry.
About a year after I'd begun my inquiry into all this, he became
interested as well. His father's family has always lived in Mecklenburg
country, a few miles from Occaneechi Island. His mother's family
has always lived in Brunswick County VA, on land within the boundaries
of the Fort Christanna reservation. By the theory
of “who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” combined with a perusal
of his family photo album and family reports of individual Indian
ancestors, he is mostly likely one-third Piedmont Siouan himself,
from people who never left those homelands.. He has since learned
that some of his Brunswick County cousins refer to themselves
as Blackfoot. Nonetheless, we are no longer connected to the same Native heritage interests or groups at present.
Bibliography
- Hodge,
Frederick Webb. Handbook of
American Indians North of Mexico. Washington:
Government Printing Offices, 2 vols., 1907-10.
- Mooney,
Siouan Tribes of the East. Bull.
Bureau of American Ethnology, 1894
- Right,
Douglas L. The American
Indian in North Carolina, Durham, NC, Duke University press, 1947.
- Swanton,
John R., The Indian Tribes of North America, Washington, Smithsonian
Institution press, 1952.
- Swanton,
John R., The Indians of the Southeastern United States, Washington, U.S.
Govt. Printing Office, 1946.
About
The Author:
Linda Carter lives in Clarksville,
VA with her four children.
Footnotes
- Tutelo words are from: Dictionary
of the Tutelo Language, by Horatio Hale.
- Documentary: Last of the Tutelo,
produced and distributed by Hopkins Planetarium in Roanoke,
VA.
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