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 Waccamaw people are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, who lived in villages along the Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers in North and South Carolina in the 18th century. They were a Siouan-speaking people whose language was called Woccon
The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation are a state-recognized tribe in North Carolina. They were previously named the Eno Occaneechi Indian Association but changed their name in 1994. 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, where it carries out programs to benefit the roughly 1,100 enrolled tribal members.
The Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe, also the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe, is a state-recognized tribe and nonprofit organization in North Carolina. They are not a federally recognized as a Native American tribe and have never petitioned for federal recognition.
The Saponi or Sappony 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.
The Pee Dee people, also Pedee and Peedee, are American Indians of the Southeast United States. Historically, their population has been concentrated in the Piedmont of present-day South Carolina. In the 17th and 18th centuries, English colonists named the Pee Dee River and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina for the tribe.
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.
The Coree were a very small Native American tribe, who once occupied a coastal area south of the Neuse River in southeastern North Carolina in the area now covered by Carteret and Craven counties. Early 20th-century scholars were unsure of what language they spoke, but the coastal areas were mostly populated by Iroquois and Algonquian peoples.
Waccamaw Siouan Indians are one of eight state-recognized tribes in North Carolina. They are also known as the "People of the Fallen Star." Historically Siouan-speaking, they are located predominantly in the southeastern North Carolina counties of Bladen and Columbus. Their congressional representative introduced a failed bill for federal recognition in 1948. North Carolina recognized the group in 1971.
The Tutelo were Native American people living above the Fall Line in present-day Virginia and West Virginia. They spoke a Siouan dialect of the Tutelo language thought to be similar to that of their neighbors, the Monacan and Manahoac nations. Under pressure from English settlers and Seneca Iroquois, they joined with other Virginia Siouan tribes in the late 17th century and became collectively known as the Tutelo-Saponi. By 1740, they had largely left Virginia and migrated north to seek protection from their former Iroquois opponents. They were adopted by the Cayuga tribe of New York in 1753.
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."
The Occaneechi are Native Americans who lived in the 17th century primarily on the large, 4-mile (6.4 km) long Occoneechee Island and east of the confluence of the Dan and Roanoke rivers, near current-day Clarksville, Virginia. They were Siouan-speaking, and thus related to the Saponi, Tutelo, Eno and other Southeastern Siouan-language peoples living in the Piedmont region of present-day North Carolina and Virginia.
The Wateree were a Native American tribe in the interior of the present-day Carolinas. They probably belonged to the Siouan-Catawba language family. First encountered by the Spanish in 1567 in Western North Carolina, they migrated to the southeast and what developed as South Carolina by 1700, where English colonists noted them.
The Congaree were a group of Native Americans who lived in what is now central South Carolina of the United States, along the Congaree River. They spoke a dialect distinct from, and not intelligible by, Siouan language speakers; it is considered unclassified. This was the primary language family of Native Americans in the Piedmont, such as the Catawba. Some linguists, however, believe that the language was related to Catawban Siouan.
The Cusabo or Cosabo were a group of American Indian tribes who lived along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in what is now South Carolina, approximately between present-day Charleston and south to the Savannah River, at the time of European colonization. English colonists often referred to them as one of the Settlement Indians of South Carolina, tribes who "settled" among the colonists.
The Nottoway are an Iroquoian Native American tribe in Virginia. Historically, the Nottoway spoke an Iroquoian language, Nottoway.
The Eno or Enoke, also called Wyanoak, was an American Indian tribe located in North Carolina during the 17th and 18th centuries that was later absorbed into the Catawba and/or the Saponi tribes.
The Sissipahaw or Haw Tribe were most likely a Siouan tribe of North Carolina. They are also variously recorded as Saxahapaw, Sauxpa, Sissipahaus, etc. Their settlements were generally located in the vicinity of modern-day Saxapahaw, North Carolina on the Haw River in Alamance County upstream from Cape Fear. They are first recorded by the Spaniard Vendera in the 16th century as the Sauxpa. Their last mention in history is that the tribe joined the Yamasee against the English colonists in the Yamasee War of 1715.
King Yanabe Yalangway was the eractasswa (chief) of the Catawba Indian Nation, sometime around the 1740s. Not much is known about him other than the fact that he preceded King Hagler as chief. His training was evidently under "king" Whitmannetaughehee's leadership.
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.
