Sappony

Pre-Revolutionary history

Early 20th-century anthropologist John R. Swanton agreed with James Mooney, Hale, Bushnell and other scholars that the Sappony were probably the same as the Monasuccapanough, a Virginia people mentioned in 1608 by John Smith as tributary to the Monacan. Their main village as described then is believed to have been in the vicinity of present-day Charlottesville, Virginia.

The first known contact between a European explorer and the Sappony was in 1670, when John Lederer found their village on the Staunton River at Otter Creek, southwest of present-day Lynchburg, Virginia. In 1671 Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam led an expedition that passed through the same village, as well as a second in Long Island in the Stauton River between present-day Campbell County, Virginia. Here settlers during Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 attacked the friendly Sappony, as well as the closely related Occaneechi, without justification. The colonists were retaliating for raids conducted by the unrelated Doeg tribe.

Nearly decimated, the Sappony relocated to three islands at the confluence of the Dan and Staunton rivers in Clarksville with their allies, the Occaneechi, Tutelo, and Nahyssans.

By 1701, the Sappony and allied tribes, often collectively referred to as "Saponi" or "Tutelo," had begun moving to the location of present-day Salisbury, North Carolina to gain distance from the colonial frontier. By 1711 they were just east of the Roanoke River and west of modern Windsor, North Carolina. In 1714, Governor Spotswood resettled them around Fort Christanna in Virginia. The tribes agreed to this for protection from hostile tribes. Although in 1718 the House of Burgesses voted to abandon the fort and school, the Siouan tribes continued to stay in that area for some time. They gradually moved away in small groups over the years 1730–1750. One record from 1728 indicated that Colonel William Byrd II made a survey of the border between Virginia and North Carolina, guided by Ned Bearskin, a Sappony hunter. Byrd noted several abandoned fields of corn, indicating serious disturbance among the local tribes.

In 1740, the majority of the Saponi and Tutelo moved to Shamokin, Pennsylvania. They surrendered to the Iroquois and joined the latter in New York. They were formally adopted by the Cayuga Nation in 1753.

Smaller bands were noted in Pennsylvania as late as 1778. Some were still in North Carolina much later. Since most of the Iroquois sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War, after the victory by the United States, the Sappony and Tutelo who had joined the Iroquois were forced with them into exile in Canada. After that point, recorded history was silent about the tribe.

Language

According to William Byrd II, the Sappony spoke the same language as the Siouan Occaneechi and the Steganaki (also known as Stuckenock). It was probably the same as that spoken by the Meipontsky, a minor tribe "...mentioned only in the report of the Albany conference of 1722...." By the time linguistic data was recorded, these related eastern Siouan tribes had settled together at Fort Christanna in Brunswick County, Virginia, where the colonists sometimes referred to them as the Christanna Indians. Horatio Hale recorded the Tutelo language in considerable detail. In the 21st century, his work is being used by the Occaneechi as the basis for the revival of the Tutelo-Occaneechi language, also called Yésah.

The Sappony dialect is known from only two sources. One is a word list of 46 terms and phrases recorded by John Fontaine at Fort Christanna in 1716. contains a number of items showing it to be virtually the same language as recorded by Hale. The other source is William Byrd II's History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina (1728), in which he recorded the names of some local creeks. Byrd's scant list has been found to have included several names from unrelated Indian tribes.

After the American Revolution

Like other Native Americans in interaction with other peoples, the Sappony intermarried. In some of the early Spanish and Portuguese colonies, mulatto meant mixed-race African and Native American, but under the English tradition, it came to mean persons of European and African ancestry. Because of slavery society, some whites in slave state areas tended to classify anyone of visible African ancestry as African, even mixed-race people who identified and lived culturally as Native American. But in other parts of the South, race was considered a more fluid concept, with mixed-race people being classified as "white", "Indian", "negro", "mulatto", or sometimes even "Mexican", as the situation suited them.

In Maryland, the Catholic Church kept records that recognized its Indian parishioners identifying as Native American; these have helped some descendants prove continuity of communities.

Because South Carolina taxed American Indian slaves at a lesser rate than African slaves as early as 1719, that colony had legislated that "all such slaves as are not entirely Indian shall be accounted as negro." After the legal decision in Hudgins v. Wright in 1808, Virginia tended to classify persons of mixed Native American and African ancestry as 'Negroes', a decision that favored slaveholders after Indian slavery was ended.

Colonial and early United States governments generally failed to recognize how people identified culturally. The problem grew more severe at the turn of the 19th century, resulting in records that are biased toward classifying all free people of color as African American, when some identified culturally and by descent as members of specific Native American tribes. There have been many academic disagreements about the cultural identity of numerous people recorded simply as free blacks or free people of color.

Jack Forbes has noted that the terms "mustees" and "mulattoes" at one time referred to persons of part American [Indian] ancestry. A mustee may have been primarily part-African and American [Indian], and a mulatto was usually part-European and American [Indian], but the latter term particularly was used more generally to refer to mixed-race people of African American and European ancestry. At the time, the federal censuses had no classification for American Indian, and did not ask people with which culture they identified.

Paul Heinegg and Virginia DeMarce have found that a high percentage of people identified as "free blacks" or "free people of color" in federal censuses from 1790–1810 (when there was no designation for Indian) in the Upper South were descended from families classified as free African Americans in colonial Virginia. Most were free because they were descended from unions between white women (who were free) and African or African-American men. Their children and descendants maintained this free status. At the time, most working-class people shared living and working quarters. These families were documented through extensive research in colonial records of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay Colony, including court records, land deeds, wills and manumissions. Some free African Americans were descended from enslaved Africans freed by owners as early as the mid-17th century. By the early decades of the 19th century, such free families had many descendants; they often moved to frontier areas where racial strictures were reduced. In some areas, the lighter-skinned descendants formed close communities in which they called themselves or were known as Indian, Portuguese or one of a variety of terms, such as Melungeon. In some cases, descendants married more into one or another of their ancestral communities, becoming increasingly white, black or Indian.

Issues about identity became more confusing under Jim Crow in the late 19th century as white Democrats imposed racial segregation to enforce white supremacy. In in the 20th century, as both North Carolina and Virginia adopted one-drop rules as part of their racial segregation laws, requiring all individuals to be classified as either white or black (essentially, all other or all people of color). They classified as black any person with any black ancestry, regardless of how small. Walter Ashby Plecker, the Registrar of Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics, issued orders to field offices to change birth records of individuals whose families he had decided were trying to pass as Indian to avoid being classified as black. Due to his application of the Racial Integrity Act, records of many Native American-identified people were changed without their consent, and often without their knowledge. In later years, their descendants have had difficulty in proving their communities' continuity of identity.

North Carolina

Three groups, each recognized by the state of North Carolina, claim descent from the historical Sappony. The people known as the 'Indians of Person County' were recognized by North Carolina in 1911 as an American Indian tribe. They are also known as the Cherokee-Powhattan Indian Association, which the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma classifies as a fake Cherokee group. In 2003 they formally changed their name to Sappony.

The Haliwa-Saponi, a group based chiefly in Halifax and Warren counties, is another Native American band formally recognized by North Carolina in 1965. They organized that year under the name Haliwanash Indian Club. They changed their name in 1979 to include a reference to the historic Sappony.

"Their official name is Haliwa - a contraction created by putting together the names of the counties of Halifax and Warren and creating the term Haliwa. Many of the Indians in this group refer to themselves as Cherokee. They do not accept the term Haliwa and refer to themselves as Cherokee although the term Haliwa is gaining more acceptance as time goes on. This tribe appears from the research I have done, to be the remnants of the North Carolina Tuscaroras. In any case, it appears that the Haliwa are remnants of the neutral Tuscarora." - Robert K Thomas in 1978, professor of Cherokee history

This group attracted media attention for claiming its tribal council had reviewed and approved a loan for $700,000 and a $600,000 HUD grant for matching funds. The North Carolina Auditors became involved at that time.

The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation was recognized by the state of North Carolina in 2002, after being organized in 1984 as the Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association. In 1995 it added Saponi to its name.

Both the Indians of Person County/Sappony and the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe of North Carolina were at one time classified by some anthropologists as among groups known as tri-racial isolates. Members were observed to have (or claimed) European, African and Native American ancestry, to varying degree. Some such groups settled and created communities in frontier and border areas of the southern states, where there was initially a lower level of development of plantations.

These two communities each stressed cultural identification with historic American Indians. Their applications for recognition as American Indian tribes were approved by the state of North Carolina in 1911 and 1965, respectively.

Ohio

Ohio does not have a state recognition process; the Ohio Sappony people claim descent from the historic tribe. Individuals of the Collins family have long claimed Sappony descent. "There is fairly good evidence that Collins is a Sappony family name," writes Cherokee Professor Robert K. Thomas. The Midwest Saponi Nation organized in Ohio following a split of some members from the Saponi Nation of Ohio.

Other states

Other groups claiming Sappony ancestry include the Mahenips Band of the Saponi Nation in the Ozark Hills, with headquarters in West Plains, Missouri; the Saponi Descendants Association based in Texas; and the Manahoac Sappony Mattamuskeet Nation based in Georgia.

In addition, the Carmel Indians of Carmel, Ohio; and a group in Magoffin County, Kentucky claim to be Native American descendants of the Sappony. They also identify as Melungeon, a historic mixed-race group.