Saponi

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Tribal area of ​​the Tutelo and Saponi, probably before 1600.

Saponi (also Sappony ) is the name of one of the eastern tribes of the Sioux Indian people in the United States of America . They are related to the tribes of the Tutelo , Occaneechi , Monacan , Manahoac and other eastern peoples of the Sioux, whose original habitat was in what is now the states of North Carolina and Virginia . Two of the Saponi tribes are recognized by the State of North Carolina, the Occaneechee Band of the Saponi Nation and the Haliwa-Saponi . Several other groups and organizations see themselves as descendants of the Saponi, including the Mahenips Band of the Saponi Nation in the rear Ozarks -Bergland with administrative headquarters in West Plains, Missouri , the Saponi Descendants Association ( Association Saponistämmiger ) in Texas and the Saponi Nation of Ohio . A number of communities also claim to be descended from the Saponi through kinship with the Melungeon , such as the Carmel Indians of Carmel, Ohio and a group in Magoffin County , Kentucky .

history

The first known contact between the Saponi and European settlers was recorded in 1670 when John Lederer visited a Saponi village near Charlotte Court House in Virginia. In 1671 Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam led an expedition that also passed this village and led to another village on Long Island ( Campbell County , Virginia). The Saponi, like their closely related Occaneechee, were brutally attacked by settlers during the Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, a result of raids by the unrelated Doeg tribe . By this time the Saponi were almost extinct and they withdrew together with their relatives and allies, the Occaneechee and the Tutelo, to three islands at the confluence of the Dan and Staunton rivers near Clarksville .

At the beginning of the 18th century, the Saponi moved with the two allied tribes between North Carolina and Virginia in an attempt to protect themselves from the government of the two colonies and other tribes. They fought unsuccessfully against the northern Iroquois and waged a war against the Tuscarora . A source from 1728 indicates that Colonel William Byrd II was surveying the border region between North Carolina and Virginia, led by a Saponi hunter named Ned Bearskin. Byrd counted several abandoned cornfields, which indicated that there was serious conflict between the local tribes. In 1740 a group of Saponi and Tutelos surrendered to the Iroquois in Pennsylvania and joined them. After most of the Iroquois supported the British in the American War of Independence , the Saponi and Tutelos, who had joined the Iroquois, were exiled with them after the American victory in Canada. After this point there are no more records of this tribe.

Genealogists have discovered that the expression Blackfoot in the ancestry of the Eastern Indians often also means Saponi. Saponi who joined white African American communities or the Cherokee , Melungon and Goinstown Indians were often referred to as "Blackfoot" , presumably because of their black moccasins . Their descendants form groupings that are known today as "Eastern Blackfoot" (Eastern Blackfoot), "Southern Blackfoot" (Southern Blackfoot) or simply as the "Other Blackfoot" (other Blackfoot) to distinguish themselves from the Blackfoot of Montana , Idaho and Distinguish Canada .

language

There is little information about the extinct language of the Saponi, after William Byrd II they spoke the same language as the Occaneechee and the Stenkenock , probably also that of the Meipontsky. By the time linguistic data was being collected and collected, these related eastern Sioux tribes had settled near Fort Christanna in Brunswick County , Virginia. While the language of the Tutelo could be recorded very well by Horatio Hale, there are only two sources of the Saponi. It is unclear whether the Saponi language differed from the Tutelo language at all, and if so, to what extent this was the case.

One of the sources is a word list of 46 expressions and sentences that was recorded by John Fontaine at Fort Christianna in 1716. The other are some translated names of streams that William Byrd II listed in his History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina in 1728. Fontaine's list, however, only contains 16 to 20 expressions from the Sioux language family, the others come from the Iroquois and Algonquian languages . Byrd's list also includes a number of Indian names not related to the Sioux language.

Individual evidence

  1. a b The Pittsylvania Packet (Pittsylvania Historical Society): "Henry H. Mitchell: Rediscovering Pittsylvania's" Missing "Native Americans, " Chatham, Virginia, 1997. pp. 4-8
  2. Saponitown: The Other Blackfoot
  3. Claudio R. Salvucci et al .: Minor vocabularies of tutelo and Saponi , Evolution Publishing, 2002. Pages 1-7. ISBN 1-889758-24-8 .

See also

List of North American Indian tribes

Web links