Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation

Last updated
Occaneechi Band
of the Saponi Nation
Named after Occaneechi and Saponi people, Eno River [1]
Formation1984, [1] 1996 (nonprofit) [2]
Type state-recognized tribe, [3] nonprofit organization [2]
EIN 56-1906889 [2]
Legal statusArts, culture, and humanities nonprofit, charity [2]
PurposeA23: Cultural, Ethnic Awareness [2]
Location
Membership (2018)
2,000+ [4]
Official language
English
President
Vickie Jeffries [4]
Website obsn.org

The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation is a state-recognized tribe in North Carolina. [3]

Contents

They first formed as the Eno Occaneechi Indian Association in 1984 [1] but changed their name in 1994. [5] [6] They claim descent from the historic Occaneechi, Saponi, and other Eastern Siouan language-speaking Indians who occupied the Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia.

The tribe maintains an office in Mebane, [2] where it carries out programs to benefit more than 2,000 members. [4] John "Blackfeather" Jeffries (d. 2023) of Hillsborough, North Carolina, served as chairperson for many years. [7]

Historical tribes

Limited documentation exists linking members of the tribe to the historical Occaneechi and Saponi tribes. After warfare in the Southeast in the 18th century, most of the remaining Saponi tribe members went north. In 1740, Saponi migrated to Shamokin in Pennsylvania for protection with the Haudenosaunee. [8] [9] In 1711 the majority of Saponi migrated with the Cayuga to near Ithaca, New York, while some remained in Pennsylvania until 1778. [10] After the American Revolution, they relocated with the Iroquois in Canada, as they had been allies of the British.

After the war and migration, the Saponi disappeared from the historical record in the Southeast, in part because of racial discrimination that often included them in records only as free people of color, when the states and federal government had no category in censuses for American Indian.[ citation needed ] This was especially true in the late 19th and early 20th century, after white Democrats regained control of state legislatures across the South and imposed a binary system of racial segregation.[ citation needed ]

Remnant Saponi who stayed in North Carolina were mostly acculturated. The community was located at the old "Little Texas" community of Pleasant Grove Township, where the tribe owns 25 acres (100,000 m2) of land.[ citation needed ] In the 20th century, the tribe worked to revive its cultural traditions.

Nonprofit organization

In 1996, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation formed a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, [2] and Vickie Jeffries serves as the organization's principal officer. [11] Its mission is "to bring awareness and recognition of the Occaneechi Indians." [11]

State-recognition

The state of North Carolina formalized its recognition process for Native American tribes and created the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs (NCCIA) in 1971. [12] In January 1990, as the Eno Occaneechi Indian Association, the Occaneechi Band petitioned the NCCIA for state recognition but in 1995, the NCCIA's recognition committee denied recognition to the organization on lack of evidence of its connection to the historical tribes it claimed. [13] [5] The committee's denial was based on the "petitioner's failure to meet the required five of eight criteria necessary for such recognition and their failure to establish heritage to an Indian tribe indigenous to North Carolina for at least the last 200 years." [5]

In 1996, Occaneechi Band "filed a petition for contested case hearing with the Office of Administrative Hearings" which precipitated a year and a half of mediation. [5] An administrative law judge recommended the NCCIA committee grant recognition to the Occaneechi Band. [5] The NCCIA recognition committee made its Final Agency Decision against state recognition in June 1999. [5] In August 1999, the Occaneechi Band petitioned the Orange County Superior Court, which ruled in favor of the NCCIA. [5]

In August 2001, Judge Loretta Copeland Biggs ruled in Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation v. North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs that the commission had not rendered its Final Agency Decision within the allotted time frame, so the administrative law judge's recommendation held, and the Occaneechi Band was state recognized. [5] [6]

Federal recognition

The Occaneechi Band of Saponi Nation, represented by Lawrence Dunmore III, sent a letter of intent to petition for U.S. federal recognition as a Native American tribe in 1995, and the Eno-Occaneechi Tribe of Indians sent a letter in 1997; [14] however, neither submitted complete petitions to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. [15]

Activities

The band purchased 24-acres of farmland, where its Homeland Preservation Project constructed a replica of Occaneechi Town, an 1880s-style farm, a 1930-style farm, a dance ground, and pavilion. [16] They rededicated the land in April 2022. [7] There they host their annual powwow on the second weekend in June on Dailey Store Road, ten miles (16 km) north of Mebane.

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Diane Brook Napier and Suzanne Majhanovich, Education, Dominance and Identity, p. 32.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation". Cause IQ. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  3. 1 2 "State Recognized Tribes". National Conference of State Legislatures. Archived from the original on 1 September 2022. Retrieved 6 April 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 Traxler, Victoria (14 November 2018). "Local Native American tribe embraces lineage while looking to the future". Elon News Network. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Occaneechi Band v. Com'n of Indian Affairs, 551 S.E.2d 535 (N.C. Ct. App. 2001)". CourtListener. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  6. 1 2 "Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, Petitioner, V. North Carolina Commission Of Indian Affairs, Respondent". FindLaw. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  7. 1 2 McConnell, Brighton (27 January 2023). "Former Occaneechi Tribal Leader, Hillsborough Resident John Jeffries Dies". Chapelboro.com 97.9 The Hill. Chapel Hill Media Group. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  8. Swanton, The Indian Tribes of North America, 72.
  9. Vest, An Odyssey among the Iroquois, 128.
  10. Swanton, The Indian Tribes of North America, 72–73.
  11. 1 2 "Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation". GuideStar. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  12. "Commission of Indian Affairs". North Carolina Department of Administration. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  13. Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity, page 73.
  14. "List of Petitoners By State" (PDF). www.bia.gov. 12 November 2013. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  15. "Petitions in Process". U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Affairs. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  16. Diane Brook Napier and Suzanne Majhanovich, Education, Dominance and Identity, p. 33.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area</span>

Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area is a North Carolina state park in Orange County, North Carolina in the United States. Located adjacent to the town of Hillsborough, it covers 221 acres (0.89 km2) and includes Occoneechee Mountain, the highest point (867 ft) in Orange County and a settlement of the Occaneechi tribe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catawba people</span> Federally-recognized Indian Nation in South Carolina, United States

The Catawba, also known as Issa, Essa or Iswä but most commonly Iswa, are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans, known as the Catawba Indian Nation. Their current lands are in South Carolina, on the Catawba River, near the city of Rock Hill. Their territory once extended into North Carolina, as well, and they still have legal claim to some parcels of land in that state. They were once considered one of the most powerful Southeastern tribes in the Carolina Piedmont, as well as one of the most powerful tribes in the South as a whole, with other, smaller tribes merging into the Catawba as their post-contact numbers dwindled due to the effects of colonization on the region.

The Lumbee are a Native American people primarily centered in Robeson, Hoke, Cumberland, and Scotland counties in North Carolina.

State-recognized tribes in the United States are organizations that identify as Native American tribes or heritage groups that do not meet the criteria for federally recognized Indian tribes but have been recognized by a process established under assorted state government laws for varying purposes or by governor's executive orders. State recognition does not dictate whether or not they are recognized as Native American tribes by continually existing tribal nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe</span> State-recognized tribe in North Carolina, United States

The Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe, also the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe, is a state-recognized tribe and nonprofit organization in North Carolina. They are not federally recognized as a Native American tribe.

The Monacan Indian Nation is one of eleven Native American tribes recognized since the late 20th century by the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. In January 2018, the United States Congress passed an act to provide federal recognition as tribes to the Monacan and five other tribes in Virginia. They had earlier been so disrupted by land loss, warfare, intermarriage, and discrimination that the main society believed they no longer were "Indians". However, the Monacans reorganized and asserted their culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saponi</span> Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands

The Saponi are a Native American tribe historically based in the Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia. They spoke a Siouan language, related to the languages of the Tutelo, Biloxi, and Ofo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pedee people</span> Indigenous people of the southeast United States

The Pedee people, also Pee Dee and Peedee, were a historic Native American tribe of the Southeastern United States. Historically, their population has been concentrated in the Piedmont of present-day South Carolina. It is believed that in the 17th and 18th centuries, English colonists named the Pee Dee River and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina for the tribe. Today four state-recognized tribes, one state-recognized group, and several unrecognized groups claim descent from the historic Pedee people. Presently none of these organizations are recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, with the Catawba Indian Nation being the only federally recognized tribe within South Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manahoac</span> Siouan-language indigenous people (native Americans) who lived in northern Virginia

The Manahoac, also recorded as Mahock, were a small group of Siouan-language Native Americans in northern Virginia at the time of European contact. They numbered approximately 1,000 and lived primarily along the Rappahannock River west of modern Fredericksburg and the Fall Line, and east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They united with the Monacan, the Occaneechi, the Saponi and the Tutelo. They disappeared from the historical record after 1728.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tutelo</span> Historic Indigenous tribe of the Eastern Woodlands

The Tutelo were Native American people living above the Fall Line in present-day Virginia and West Virginia. They spoke a dialect of the Siouan Tutelo language thought to be similar to that of their neighbors, the Monacan and Manahoac nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheraw</span> Indigenous tribal group of southeastern North America

The Cheraw people, also known as the Saraw or Saura, were a Siouan-speaking tribe of Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, in the Piedmont area of North Carolina near the Sauratown Mountains, east of Pilot Mountain and north of the Yadkin River. They lived in villages near the Catawba River. Their first European and African contact was with the Hernando De Soto Expedition in 1540. The early explorer John Lawson included them in the larger eastern-Siouan confederacy, which he called "the Esaw Nation."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occaneechi</span> Historical Native American tribe from Virginia and North Carolina

The Occaneechi are Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands whose historical territory was in the Piedmont region of present-day North Carolina and Virginia.

The Eno or Enoke, also called Stuckenock, was an American Indian tribe located in North Carolina during the 17th and 18th centuries that was later absorbed into the Catawba tribe in South Carolina along with various other smaller tribal bands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shakori</span>

The Shakori were an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. They were thought to be a Siouan people, closely allied with other nearby tribes such as the Eno and the Sissipahaw. As their name is also recorded as Shaccoree, they can be confused with the Sugaree, but the latter are Catawba people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama</span> State-recognized heritage group in Alabama, US

The Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama is a state-recognized tribe in Alabama and Cherokee heritage group. It is based in northern Alabama and gained state-recognition under the Davis-Strong Act in 1984.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coharie Intra-tribal Council, Inc.</span> State-recognized tribe in North Carolina, United States

The Coharie Intra-tribal Council, Inc. is a state-recognized tribe in North Carolina. The headquarters are in Clinton, North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keyauwee Indians</span>

The Keyauwee Indians were a small North Carolina tribe, native to the area of present day Randolph County, North Carolina. The Keyauwee village was surrounded by palisades and cornfields about thirty miles northeast of the Yadkin River, near present day High Point, North Carolina. The Keyauwee village was vulnerable to attack, so the Keyauwee constantly joined with other tribes for better protection. They joined with the Tutelo, Saponi, Occaneechi, and the Shakori tribes, moving to the Albemarle Sound with the last two for a settlement that would later be foiled. The Keyauwee would move further southward along with the Cheraw and Peedee tribes, close along the border of the two Carolinas, where they conducted deerskin trade with Charleston traders and allied with the Indian neighbors in the Yamassee War. Eventually, their tribe name vanished from historical records, and with time, they were absorbed by the Catawba tribe.

The Missisquoi Abenaki Tribe is one of four state-recognized tribes in Vermont, who claim descent from Abenaki people. The Missisquoi Abenaki Tribe specifically claims descent from the Missiquoi people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sappony</span> State-recognized tribe in North Carolina, United States

The Sappony are a state-recognized tribe in North Carolina. They claim descent from the historic Saponi people, an Eastern Siouan language-speaking tribe who occupied the Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia.

References