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I published the following post to http://www.tuscaroras.com forum sometimes last year.
Chapter One
There are a few of you around who remember how I came to this forum. It all started when one of the actors in the little movie I made (30 minute piece based on an NC folk tale) “gave” me a project he had always fancied doing.
He said the Grifton Shad Festival should do an outdoor theater about a local Indian massacre. He knew he’d never get around to it, but thought I might, so he gave me his blessings to take the idea and run with it.
I tied that in with the almost-arrowheads we were always finding near the creek behind our property. There must have been a “factory” out there back into pre-history! Very high reject rate. By then I was tied down with three more kids and thought it might be an easy (hahahahahha) project, a little shoe-string documentary about the Tuscaroran War.
I started reading about it, then tracked down some people from the Southern Band.
I mentioned to them that there was a smidgen of Indian ancestry in our family, but I’d never figure out what it was and they asked me the name/place. I said Harris/PA. They said there were Tuscarora Harrises in PA. I thought that was just TOO coincidental, and didn’t think much of it.
Still, I was curious and looked up my ancestor’s town when I got home and searched for it on the atlas. It was Chambersburg, in TUSCARORA PATH VALLEY. How totally improbable. I was hooked. What a coincidence!
I scurried down to the University library, but all I saw was a sentence claiming the Valley was named for the Tuscarora because they’d camped over one night on their way up north. Huh?
I wrote to the librarian in old Thomas Harris’ home town. She sent me a lot of copies, among them was the first page of an article. It was just getting good when the page ended so I asked her to send the rest.
It was an old, obscure 100 year old article giving fairly good evidence that Tuscarorans were the main occupants of what’s now Franklin and Juniata counties for about 50 years, just the period when whites started pouring in.
I’d noticed this website, so I sent the article to Loren and Trader Don. They published it and I was all agog with the honor of it.
Chapter Two
Okay, so that’s what got me going. The only story we had in the family about it was from my grandma, who said we were “related to a Blackfoot chief.” I discounted this, because our people were out east, the Blackfoot are out west, and just Everybody’s got the chief or the princess thing going on. That’s just too hackneyed.
I kept snooping around in Indian country and learned lots of interesting new words, like “Wannabe” and “New Age Indians” and got lots of welcomed relief and distraction from all the sibling rivalry going on in my home with my newly adopted children and their big brother.
T.com got going strong and I got up the nerve to publish gr-grandpa’s picture and was deeply encouraged when the crew here at T.com assured me he HAD to be at least half Indian, and looked like some people they knew on the rez. No doubt about it, that was one honkwe onwe.
We got a chat going here and one night Wahtrot was on. By then I was playing with the theory that maybe the Blackfoot term was a corruption of someone’s name. Maybe it wasn’t a “Blackfoot chief,” maybe it was supposed to be Chief Blackfoot or something.
I saw there was mention of a Chief Blackhoof. Foot, hoof, sound the same, perform the same function. It would be easy to goof that up. I was giving that book report on the chat when Wahtrot, by coincidence, said he’s descended from Chief Blackhoof.
Chapter Three
We got to corresponding, and I have to tell you, Wahtrot is a great guy. He wasn’t the least bit offended or threatened at the prospects that we might be cousins. He even exchanged information with me. How perfectly, well, normal.
By coincidence, he keeps stumbling on all these good tips for me and sending them my way. He spotted a thread on the Mingo-EGADs list about “Blackfoot of the Seneca” so I checked it out.
Chapter Four
That led to a nice correspondence with Thomas McElwain, who told me about the Non-League Iroquois and Associates who high tailed it into the WV mountains, since “mountaineers are always free.” I did a little more digging and sure enough, great-Grandpa’s other grandparents were from WV. What a coincidence.
So my grandma wasn’t just whistling Dixie about the Blackfoot thing. There really were people in the east by that name. And they were documented about 90 miles from where my family was. And how convenient, it’s not exactly Tuscarora, but there’s still a tie to the Iroquois, so I haven’t settled myself in the wrong cabbage patch.
Then Maverick tells me the WV town, Martinsburg, where the Other Grandparents were from is also on the Tuscarora Path. What a coincidence.
Thomas is another one who’ll go out of his way to give you information. The only requirement is that you have to be studying the Mingo language. Hahahaha. (Indians are just SOSOSOSOSO generous!!!) (Just kidding. He’s one of the last Mingo-speaker he knows of and wants company.)
Chapter Five
We got a Mingo Firetalk chat going. One night it got going really good and this guy wanders in.
He’s skeptical about us. He knows someone who speaks Mingo. We get all excited. Who? Who? He says it’s someone he’s run into at PowWows. He says he’s the lead singer for Wolf Creek Drum. My husband’s wandering by and recognizes the guy’s voice. He’d just been listening to an instructional tape on drumming that day. It was this guy’s tape. What a coincidence.
Still, he won’t tell us how to contact him. (Isn’t it funny how some people just want to fight the Universe?) He says he’s Eastern Blackfoot. I told him we had that name running around in our family. He told me the Eastern Blackfoot were Saponi people who migrated north and were adopted by the Cayuga.
I’d heard that before somewhere, but I’d never paid much attention to it. I guess I wasn’t interested in being Saponi-descended. I had my own thing going on with the Mingo list and was having a nice time, in my own space.
Chapter Six
You see, my husband’s a Linda Keres Carter wannabe. He criticized me for a year for being all obsessed with the Indian thing. Then he went to the Occaneechi Pow Wow a couple miles from where he was born, looked around. thought he was at a family reunion and TRIPPED OUT.
Everything I do, he wants to do. Only by then it’s his idea. He’s the real Indian. Just look at him. Anybody can see I’m just some old white person.
My husband is Saponi.
What a coincidence.
We were born a thousand miles apart. We belong to two different “races.” We met on the opposite coast in LA. We were married 13 years when we decide to check out our Indian heritages. What are the odds that, out of 500-odd Nations, we would both trace back to the same obscure, allegedly extinct tribe, that by 1730 or something was down to 600 souls in Brunswick County, VA?
Chapter Seven
What a coincidence.
Chapter Eight
I haven’t told many people about this, trying to confirm it from another source. Of course, everybody I need to talk to is looking for me to run some gauntlets, pass some security clearances, sign an Oath of Allegiance to be their side of some feud, before I’ll be entrusted with the Sacred Low Down.
Finally, Barbara Mann, e-mailed me yesterday and told me that there was an oral tradition about the Blackfoot/Saponi connection. I asked how old was that oral tradition, 5-6 years? She said 300 or so, to her knowledge. So I will venture forth with this public revelation.
So if you hear me raving that there are Ancient Grandma Matchmakers up to mischief, you’ll know why I’ve lost my reason, lost my grip on statistical probabilities.
The lengths some people will go to to keep a family together. Why? All families do is bicker, trifle, squabble? Why bother? What is there to this that we can’t see?
IP: 12.20.143.37
Update: Since this post I’ve found another, unrelated source for the “Blackfoot/Saponi” identification. I met a gentleman from South Carolina whose family knows it is Saponi, and has always referred to itself as Blackfoot.
In addition, I’ve learned that there is documentation in D.C. of a Chief Harris who led a band of Saponi from NC to NY to fight with Joseph Brandt against the Americans during the RevWar.
Also, Richard Haithcock lists a number of Harrises he claims were Saponi, a half dozen or so of them named Thomas Harris living in NY and PA with the Cayuga in 1810. These documents are also supposed to exist in D.C.
[This message has been edited by Linda (edited 03-18-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Linda (edited 04-11-2001).]
Hi Linda – Loved your story, thanks for posting.
The name Harris – there are several in Hollister (Haliwa-Saponi). Is there a link there?
Thanks, Annie, and thanks for registering. Welcome. I see you’re a pow wow person in NC. Our family sings with Eastern Bull Drum and are on the circuit all the time. Hope to meet you one day.
I’m aware that there are Haliwa Harrises and am looking forward to the day when I can look into that more.
I was on the Firetalk chat the night the man came on who talked about the Eastern Blackfoot. My mother’s family lived in Elkins, WV. My grandad’s family lived there as far back as anyone can remember…. Grandad’s garden had been what he called “a Seneca war camp”…there were always odds and ends appearing there…arrowheads, etc.
One day when I was there, Grandad came in from the garden and said “I found something in the garden that must belong to you”. He handed me a spoon. The date on it was May 19, ’21. (My birthday is May 19th).The spoon says “Eartham, Iowa” on it. I asked Grandad how old it was. He said it had to have been 1821, as “there weren’t any Indians out there after the Civil War”…….it is Gorham Sterling; the Gorham company was founded in 1798.
If I knew how to post pictures of my Grandad on here, I would! I have a very old picture with both Grandad and his father in it, from before 1900….
Hello Karen! So glad to see you here. If you have a scanner, scan in the photo and send it to me as an attachment and I’ll put it up for you.
Tips on scanning: If it’s a small photo, set the scanner at a high resolution, scanning only the head and shoulders. Then you can use Paint Shop Pro, (which I know you have, hehe) to resize the cropped image to a size easy to see on the monitor (make sure to select “normal viewing”. You should end up with a resolution of 72 dpi for the web. It will jump around in size as you adjust the dpi, so specify that it remain at the size you want while you adjust the resolution. Hope that’s in English.
Your first photo came through as a blank sheet, but the road crew looks great. I’ve compressed it way down so it’s speedy online, and then broke it into some close ups so we could see these great faces. Are these men from near Elkins? Do you think any of them had that “Blackfoot of the Seneca” thing in their family trees?
[This message has been edited by Linda (edited 04-12-2001).]
Hi Annie:
I am from Mecklenburg Co Virginia. THis is the County directly above Warren Co NC where the Haliwa-Saponi are. We have Harris’ in Meck that I am sure are Indian. Are you from Holister?
Just wanted to note that the lady, Barbara Mann, who helped confirm the connection between Blackfoot and Saponi for me was on C-Span tonight. She’s a professo of History at the University of Toledo, and an Ohio Seneca. She has cousins who report the Blackfoot/Saponi heritage.
It was great to see her. An obviously original thinker, she knows her oats.
No response since April… Well I’d like to share some family lore…I’m the Griot in my Family (African word for History Keeper)Ever since I can remember my Mother,Grandmothers, Aunts and Uncles on both sides of my Family would tell us of our Indian heritage. Growing up in a mixed neighborhood in New York I/we were always questioned as to ‘what we were’, Puerto Rican was the most popular assumption. As I got older my inqueries continued…I began to know what kind of questions to ask…Tribal names’ Town names etc., ‘What did my Grandfathers/Grandmothers look like’. All of these answered by my Grandma from the eastern part of the state. One answer never sat well with me and I began to doubt the validity of it all. My Grandmother said we were Mohawk!!!! Now being twelve or so I learned a bit in school and I knew that the Mohawks lived in New York State. She and generations before her were born and raised in N.C. Because of this doubt I stopped asking questions. OH…Little did I know!!!! Years later after my Grandmother died…With noone left to confirm or deny this I began reading history books on NC Indians and came upon Rights book on American Indians of NC. A passage about Bishop Spangenbergs travels to the ‘Last’ NC Tuscarora reservation in Bertie Co. “Indian Woods’!!!!!! On this reservation were “REMNANTS of the TUSCARORA and “OTHER EASTERN TRIBES” united under the authority of Chief Tom Blount. “Indian Woods” that was swimming in my head. I had to call my brother to confirm. All of my family had been there except me ( I’m the baby) My Father was born there and 3 generations before him. Upon further reading “SOME of the Tuscarora” systematically left and joined the 6 nations, the Haudenausaunee. The 6 nations consists of the Cayuga, the Onendaugua, the Seneca, the Oniedas, the Tuscaroras and the MOHAWK! I was Floored! Well to humble me further (more like chastisement) I married a man whose mother went to church with a woman who claimed to be my cousin…When I finally spoke to her…YES…she was my Fathers first cousin…my eastern Grandmothers brothers daughter!!! She told me a whopper…Her father came to New York from NC upon the prompting of his cousins. Two “Italian” looking brothers found jobs in a fancy uptown restaurant…called her father to come work…His complexion was “ruddy”…and upon seeing him…the owner of the restaurant FIRED the cousins… NO INDIANS in his establishment (altho’ he didn’t quite use as polite a’ words)… She, my cousin, remembers as a little girl, traveling with her dad going to visit those cousins on a NY reservation!!!!! WHAM!!!!SO SORRY GRANDMA C. A Lesson For Us All! This cousin of my Dads is quite a bit older than me…and my Dad passed away when I was very young. They were Best Cousins! Now I learned a valuable lesson. And since then other of my familys’ oral histories have been confirmed by Papers, books, archived information and through other oral histories from other families and through the Spirit. Because each tidbit is another light and another open door. Neyahway Xinde
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