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Ishi Sephieyea
Or is this lost to the world? I found this in some very early writings about the family.
Whoa,
Ishi Sephieyea
could it be
Issi asepahiya, Tutelo for “blackened foot?”
Tell me about these writings.
Spilleddi just had an old family Bible dropped in her lap that opened all kinds of doors, and she said “you never know when something will turn up.” Maybe this is getting to be one of those times when all kinds of things started surfacing.
See my article at http://saponitown.com/Blackfoot.htm
I’ve been tracing back some deeds, bible notes, and land grants. This name is from around 1690’s. It appears the family was in what is now Dinwiddie or Prince George, Virginia. His son was David “Little Foot” Parker. Little Foot’s son was John Bear Foot. Blackened Foot could be right. None of this is by any means verified other than by what is in the bible and written down by people long gone, but I thought it an interesting name.
It just got me a little further back in my history.
You realize this is really amazing. Quite likely, what this signifies is that there are two people documented to be from the Saponi Blackfoot tribe, which, if you’ve read my article, nobody wants to acknowledge even existed. Among the Ohio and the Missouri Saponi, the ID is so common in families they’ve just assumed that’s what it meant — Saponi.
Aren’t Dinwiddie and Prince Georga on the Coastal Plain?
Linda;36383 wrote:
Aren’t Dinwiddie and Prince Georga on the Coastal Plain?
Dinwiddie is just southeast of the Richmond Metro area. Prince George is south and east, part of the Tri-City area, Hopewell, Petersburg and Colonial Heights.
I wouldn’t get too excited. So far, it is a name. The only name in that group that I have verified is William, Little Foot. Several people have his name in their histories.The other two names are from this page. It looks like a copy of a bible page. The first several names are in the same handwriting. The others vary in their writing. I only got to look at it for a few minutes and I think I wrote it down right. When I get a scan of it I will share it with y’all.
spilleddi;36384 wrote: Hi Allen,
Do you have a copy of the page the name is written on? I’d really like to see it.
I saw it at a family gathering, but I asked for a scan of it. Maybe once I get you could take a better look at it.
Yeah, it would be good to see that. Ishi could be Tutelo isi for foot, and sephieyea could be Tutelo asephiye or sephiye, which means blacken.
Are you related to any of the Powhatan tribes? I’ve seen several of your surnames associated with them.
If you think in terms of soundex, of people just writing down what they hear, you couldn’t get much closer.
Spilleddi, how much is known of VA Algonquin, the Powhatan languages? Could there be Algonquin explanations? But you know, you’ve got a family group that’s using the ‘foot’ word in their names a lot, and here’s some words in another language that just happens to be using a word that, if Siouan, also means foot.
Allen, is this from your paternal or maternal line? What other names come later in that line?
Dinwiddie county is just two counties over from Mecklenburg, along 85, which basically is the Great Trading Path that the Siouan nations dominated in the 17th century. (The Siouan were in the Piedmont of Virginia. In 1690 there was very little English incursion into those areas yet.)
The Occoneechee, and the rest of the Siouan nations, were disrupted in 1676, in what’s now Clarksville, in Mecklenburg County. Are you sure that Bible dates back all the way to 1690? It wasn’t until 1713 that the Saponi nations were herded into Fort Christanna, the next county east, Brunswick, near what’s now Lawrenceville (also along 85). There was a school there, ca 1720, so they were “civilized” before the Civilized Tribes were.
I just took a leap of imagination. Most of the free persons of color were the children of white indentured servant women who married black or Indian men. I suppose it’s not terribly likely many of them were literate. But if you had a family that was still using Native naming patterns, it would seem more likely that non-Indian parent would have been female. So I just had a glimpse of such a lady writing down the family names in her Bible.
There may be just a few words there, but there could be quite a story behind them.
spilleddi;36389 wrote: Yeah, it would be good to see that. Ishi could be Tutelo isi for foot, and sephieyea could be Tutelo asephiye or sephiye, which means blacken.
Are you related to any of the Powhatan tribes? I’ve seen several of your surnames associated with them.
My grandmother on my Dad’s side was associated with the Pamunkey tribe. We come down from the West and Beverley connections.
We have a couple of connection points with the Pamunkey, but we are not members of the tribe and are not eligible, as I understand. There is also a connection to the Mattaponi, but tenuous.
Linda;36391 wrote:
I just took a leap of imagination. Most of the free persons of color were the children of white indentured servant women who married black or Indian men. I suppose it’s not terribly likely many of them were literate. But if you had a family that was still using Native naming patterns, it would seem more likely that non-Indian parent would have been female. So I just had a glimpse of such a lady writing down the family names in her Bible.
There may be just a few words there, but there could be quite a story behind them.
I have been working under the assumption that what we have is a list of people’s ancestry listed in a paper, perhaps in a bible or just a piece of paper. The copy I saw was made on thermal paper and is somewhat hard to read. It has yellowed severely. The lettering was not pretty like you see in courthouse records. I assume it was written by family.
I thought that the first three or four names came about because they were written by someone who remembered their names and were written at one time. William, who died in 1768 and there is a record of his death, fixed a point where I started counting back, assuming a 20 year span between births and Wm’s 50 year life and got to about 1670. It could vary by decades.
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