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Crystal,
I don’t think that ADilliard will take offense. She’s much brighter than that. You said what needed to be explained and it was for the education of everyone in general. Thanks, Cousin.
Bill
I commonly hear people say things like, “when they left”. “They” all didn’t leave. The Occoneechee or the Saponi were not ALL leaving and all going from one place to another all together.
BarryC
My question was not ment to insult anyone. It was just a question.
As someone who is still on the hunt for their ancestors, it can at times be confusing when you hear Haliwa Saponi over here and Occaneechi over there. I’m still learning along with alot of people on this website about their Native American Heritage and I learn something new almost everyday. Sometimes I think it is hard for people who have a better understanding of their heritage to understand people who do not have the same understanding. I would love to learn more about Fort Christanna and what life may have been like for the native people who lived there then and now.
The whole reason I asked the question is because I don’t really hear the two groups in NC (Haliwa and Occaneechi) mention each other and because I found a website that said that they wern’t blood related which makes things a little confussing, at least for me. I thought that if I wanted to find the answer that this would be the place to ask because you can’t always trust some websites. I have found so much info at Saponitown.com and all the moderators are really great.
One other thing is that I don’t live in the areas in which I am researching. So I go by books, website, things I heard word of mouth and so on. Sometimes the facts get a little muddled. So don’t get upset if you hear me say Haliwa or Occaneechi, It’s just my way of keeping things straight in my head for now. But I love information and any help I get on my search for my ancestors is very much appreciated.
ADillard
Andrea,
You should just keep on keepin on. You’re doing just fine and I wouldn’t think you’ve insulted anyone.
No, they didn’t all leave. Each individual post has it’s individual context. Some are rooted locally to the poster. Some aren’t. Each post has an individual context – and solution.
Many did stay, not all of them “documented”, for a multitude of reasons.
Some left. Those that did leave, probably didn’t go in only one direction. I submit that the “known” migration routes as well as the core-area settlements, are artifacts of family lines that have been documented to date and do not represent everything that happened or is possilbe to be known. None of this should be allowed to divide “us”.
Bill
Thank you Bill. At this point I look at it like no question is a dumb question for me even if it appears that way to others. As long as I still have questions, I’m going to ask. How else will I find anything out 😉
ADillard
Barry is on the mark in exposing the treachery of the Tontos who lead the so-called “recognized tribesâ€. A direct condemnation of these sad elements is long overdue. I wish to add a few thoughts.
The manipulator pulling the strings is not the “whiteman†in general. Rather, those calling the shots (and whose interest is being served) are the financial capitalists, the billionaires, who represent only a fraction of the “whiteman.â€
The financial oligarchs use their state machine, from the federal government down to the local city administration, to hold in check the oppressed masses. The so-called leaders heading the “tribes†are an integral part of that machine. In fact, the billionaires could not dominate the vast majority of Native Americans without the help of the bought off “tribal leadersâ€. Their basic job is to sabotage and disunite the struggle of the masses and prevent that struggle from becoming a revolutionary struggle to end the system of oppression. The warriors at Wounded Knee, SD in 1973 undertook the most recent example of such an honorable revolutionary uprising of native people in the USA. The US government uses the recognized tribes as a block, hoping to prevent future Native uprisings.
Moreover, today the Tontos must ignore, deliberately, the severe economic exploitation, theft of land, and state repression placed upon Native Americans. In the Piedmont and elsewhere, poverty and unemployment (brought on by capitalism and magnified by anti-Native chauvinism) have reduced many working class Native Americans to chronic homelessness and slow starvation. It is these brothers and sisters who are regularly subjected to severe police brutality and other forms of state terror that the Tontos gloss over.
We should have no illusion about government recognition and the role of the Tontos in brewing this poison. Through “recognitionâ€, the U.S. government is not seeking to respect the democratic, national rights of Native Americans. No, they do not truly want to create a situation where the Non-Native and Native are on a completely equal footing, where there is no domination (even of the slightest degree) of the former over the later. No, recognition seeks something quite different. Their goal is to establish a small group of tame, submissive people who willingly “recognize†and accept their overall subjugation in this society, in exchange for the “30 pieces of silverâ€. The oppressor then projects this caricature as representing the essence of the predicament and opinion of the Native masses. In the “recognition processâ€, the Tontos and their “helpers†at the BIA (recognition assistance officers) school the new tribal members in the proper etiquette of being gracious and thankful to the oppressor for the anticipated crumbs. They use genealogy and blood quantum to narrow down the size of the population that is to receive the crumbs. Likewise, they spread so much confusion about who is in and who is out of the tribe; about who is and isn’t a Native American, that the masses despair of collective action.
Accordingly, in our case, the Chiefs and their “helpers†at the BIA spread the big lies that there are only a “few†Sapony surnames and that Sapony groups living a few miles apart are not connected by kinship. They peddle many other absurdities to blind the masses, but time prevents me from detailing with them now.
The end result of recognition is the creation of a pro-US government Native American group that actually attacks the vital interests of Native Americans. Such groups willingly become tools of US imperialism, supporting unjust wars to rob the peoples in Africa, Asia and South America. Such is the case today, where the Tontos recruit Native youth for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and take pride in the military occupation and rape of those people. The Tontos pretend not to know that they are aiding the US government in stealing the land of the Arabs, in the same way that the US took our people’s land hear at home. These “recognized†leaders have completely disgraced our people in the eyes of the people of the world as arch lackeys. We should not be fighting other peoples oppressed by U.S. imperialism, but we should join with them in a common struggle against our common oppressor. This is the only intelligent policy that truly satisfies our real interests as a people and honors our great democratic heritage expressed in the deeds of such leaders as the noble Tecumseh.
Bess Veney.
Bess has hit the nail on the head regarding my frustration. Below is a letter that I wrote in January regarding my frustration with the issue. The letter went to public officials, tribal leadership and others. I have been at war for three years with the state of VA over the Occoneechee State Park issue. It is long but important:
After years of public feedback regarding what the public desires in Occoneechee State Park, and our state park system, it would be a breach of the public trust for the current IDA proposal to be approved. If the public trust is breached the public deserves to know this and to understand that this is how VA state government operates. If the administration intentionally, knowingly and deliberately breaches the public trust I will ensure that all of citizens in the state of VA know what occurred against their will and remember it long into the future. I understand the argument that we live in a representative democracy and the elected representatives and appointed boards have the decision-making authority. However, when representatives decide to repeatedly oppose 80% to 95% of their constituent’s desires then there is a problem with democracy and it is time for citizen action.
Why is this so important to me personally that I would expend such energy? Because this land is sacred to me and the Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee and the proposed development would be a desecration of this land. Most of the land in VA was Siouan territory. Now only 2,700 public acres remain in our name. Enough has been taken! Though all of Clarksville rests on land sacred to us, most of it has already been desecrated. I cannot do anything about the sacred Occoneechee burial ground bulldozed in Clarksville in 1950 with my ancestors bones, skulls and sacred items being crushed by bulldozers (Tisdale, 1952). I cannot do anything about the dam built that flooded our sacred islands. I cannot do anything about our sacred Roanoke River having been polluted with PCB’s. I cannot do anything about the thousands of acres of indigenous trees and plants in Mecklenburg being clear-cut and replaced with one giant pine plantation. However, Occoneechee State Park is public land and the public opposes the IDA’s plans and thus I can do something about the potential further desecration of this land. It is the only land still in our ancestors’ name — land our ancestors called home. It is still mostly undisturbed virgin land, with indigenous trees and animals, including the sacred bald eagle.
Some Indians have said that the land in Occoneechee State Park is not sacred. They have even gone as far as stating that the land is not sacred to “our†community, Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee. They have said or implied that only government recognized tribes should have a say in what goes on in Occoneechee State Park or what is sacred. Some people in Clarksville have responded with ‘Yeah, how do these people in Clarksville just up and start a tribe and call themselves Occoneechee, and Barry Carter make himself chief.’
It is important to understand the forgotten history of Indians, Blacks and Whites in VA and to understand how the IDA proposal is another extension of centuries of abuse of Native lands. This history also explains why a tribe would say that the land is not sacred. When Europeans came to this land there was an intentional effort for hundreds of years to steal our land, exterminate our Indian ancestors, brainwash our ancestors into being ashamed of and forgetting who we are, forgetting our culture, our religion and even our tribal identities. There was also an intentional effort to establish systems to divide and conquer and pit Indian against Indian. These systems are still operating today.
There are all kinds of figures regarding the percentage of Indians that were exterminated on this continent. Some people have it documented as high as 96%. To put this in perspective this would mean that 9.6 million out of 10 million Indians were killed. What most people today do not understand is that there was a holocaust of enormous magnitude that occurred just a few hundred years ago on the land where they live in Virginia. For Indians it was a “Road Warrior Era†where everything we’d known for thousands of years was torn away in a matter of decades. Our religion was gone, our names were gone, our land, our towns, tribes, beliefs, communities, foods, wealth creation system, cultural knowledge and wisdom were all gone. Within the span of a lifetime or two nearly all of one’s brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, parents, uncles had been killed. And the greatest system of social order, based upon freedom and liberty of the individual, that this continent has ever known, was gone. It was as though aliens had come from outer space and killed virtually everyone and everything that we knew and replaced it all with its foreign systems, values and thinking. A social system based upon community, family and individual freedom was replaced by one based on selfishness, fear and control (Indian Givers, Weatherford 1989). Not only this, we were coerced into believing that we were backwards, ignorant and unworthy savages. We were brainwashed into being ashamed of our great civilization and ourselves.
The vast majority of people with Indian ancestry who remained in Virginia were forced to hide this ancestry. Southeastern Indians who identified as Indian were either killed or removed and relocated west of the Mississippi. Many people of Indian ancestry clustered in what were called tri-racial or bi-racial communities. Most were forced to label themselves as either white or black. There was even a systematic effort by the state of Virginia to change Indian birth certificates and erase all records of Indians still in VA. There could be no more Indians because Indians owned the land and the land was going to be taken. So the only choices for Indians were to leave or hide. The invaders intentionally destroyed records of Indians and eventually the Indians themselves destroyed this knowledge because they understood the consequence of the community around them knowing that they were Indian. The invaders who wanted the land and did not want records showing that they were not the owners intentionally erased most of the history. Tribal identities were intentionally forgotten because remembering was simply too painful and could mean death to oneself and one’s family. Civilized ways of our ancestors were forgotten and the savage ways of the invaders adopted and called civilized.
For the past hundred years there were dozens, perhaps hundreds of communities of Indian descendents throughout Virginia and North Carolina. In fact, the area became known as the mulatto belt. Some of these communities were accepted as dark-skinned white people while others were seen as light-skinned Black people. All of these communities knew that they had strong Indian ancestry but kept it quiet. One hundred years ago, none of the communities in Virginia or North Carolina were recognized by either the state of Virginia or North Carolina as Indian. The majority of the current state-recognized tribes have been recognized in the past twenty years. The bottom line is that there are tens of thousands of Indian people in VA and perhaps hundreds of communities that have not gone through the recognition process. This makes them no less Indian than the people who have gone through the recognition process.
Did Barry Carter pull together a rag-tag group of people with 1/100th Indian ancestry and anoint himself Chief of the Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee? No! In 1714 the Siouan Indians from all across Virginia were placed on a 36 square mile reservation in neighboring Brunswick County Virginia known as Fort Chistanna. The Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee Indians of Mecklenburg and Brunswick Counties are the only Indian community still living on this Siouan reservation land. We live in a tri-racial community called Greentown and have continuously lived there since this was Siouan reservation land three hundred years ago. We have always known we were Sioux. It has always been passed down quietly in our oral history from generation to generation. We are the only community out of many Siouan tribes with the direct connection of still living on the reservation land—still hunting, fishing and farming as our ancestors have done for eons.
We also have members living in neighboring Mecklenburg County. We embrace and acknowledge our other tribal cousins in NC and VA, both recognized and not recognized. However, we will not be sucked into the divisive systems setup by Europeans decades and centuries ago for divide and conquer purposes. There are major problems with the current notions of state and federal recognition that are racist and divisive at their core. To get perspective let’s look at a parallel holocaust situation. Let’s pretend that the Nazis won World War II. Four hundred years have passed and the year is now 2342. Some German Jews survived WWII. Now their descendents receive reparations from the German government for the wrongs done to their ancestors. Jews spent centuries in hiding and forgetting most of what it was to be Jewish because they were forced to.
Continued on next post
Continued from previous post:
The Jews are the only people in the country who must carry a card to prove who they are – Jewish. Councils of Jews are set up by the German government to recognize any family or group claiming to be Jewish. Rigid criteria requiring documented records have been established by the government in order for one to prove that he/she is Jewish. This system was setup by the same government that intentionally erased the records. The reparations provided are split among the people recognized as Jewish. The more people the councils recognize as Jewish, the less money each currently-recognized Jew receives. Thus the motivation for the recognized Jews is to recognize as few Jews as possible and to keep the criteria strict and rigid. Jews who do not have a card are taunted by card carrying Jews and the dominant culture as “wannabee†Jews.
The Nazi’s 300 years ago established a system that inherently keeps the Jewish population low. This limits their political, economic and social power and keeps them in a weak position of depending upon welfare. The recognized Jews are highly motivated to work closely with the German government in keeping the Jewish numbers down because it is now in their short-term, individual best interest. This is a simple scenario. The American Indian issue is the same except far more complex because of issues such as the one-drop black rule, the land belonging to Indians, Indian treaties, etc. For example the one-drop rule means that Indians are highly motivated to deny any black ancestry because they lose their perks as Indian. However, the vast majority of southeastern Indians have black ancestry.
Sometimes we get so close to the trees that we cannot see the forest. The point here is that we all must understand the systems dynamics of what is occurring and why some recognized tribes may be motivated to take certain positions. The other point to remember is that there are hundreds of thousands of people in VA with significant Indian ancestry who are waking to what was done to them. I do not judge those who have gone the official recognition route nor do I say that our community will not someday go for formal government recognition. However, today it is not our path. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody regarding my Indian heritage, especially the government that intentionally tried to erase the history and memory of our people. Our ancestors have always known who they were from the heart. It is the way of the Europeans to document, analyze, and fragment and to prove from the head. The head is to miss the mark and come from fear and sin. The heart is the way of our people.
For a tribe or business people in Clarksville or the state of VA to say that the Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee cannot have a say in what happens in Occoneechee State Park, or that the land is not sacred because we have Black ancestry or because we are not state recognized is inappropriate. It may also be illegal. Why? Up until two years ago, the tribe now saying that only recognized tribes should have a say in Occoneechee State Park was not recognized by any state. Yet they were very active in Occoneechee State Park for over a decade. Hundreds of thousands of Va tax dollars were spent in Occoneechee State Park based upon their tribe’s input and they weren’t even VA tax payers. This is fine with us, however, a precedent has been set that non-state recognized tribes can have significant input into Occoneechee State Park and other state activities. If the state is now saying it will not accept input from the Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee the question is what is the discriminating factor?
Is the Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee speaking for other Siouan tribes? There are thousands of people and perhaps dozens of family communities in Virginia and North Carolina with Siouan ancestry. Not any one of these groups owns the Saponi, Occoneechee, Tutelo or other Siouan names. They each took their own separate paths to get here. Some of the recognized tribes want to say only the people and communities who took their exact path are legitimate. Going through a holocaust each person or family had to take the path that would help them best survive. There is no one valid path. We have our own Indian community. We don’t speak for anyone except ourselves.
In regards to sacred land, anyone who understands the least bit about Native American spiritually knows that sacred is something specific to an individual or group and it is also location based. At the most fundamental level the interconnectedness and relatedness of human beings to the earth provides the first principle for our rich spirituality. For traditional American Indians, human proclamations or declarations have nothing to do with sacredness. Sacredness is about a spiritual connection to a place, which comes from living, loving and experiencing in this place. Indigenous means “to be of a place.†Our people are historically and culturally connected to a place. They can and do draw on power located in this place. These two concepts, place and power, are the basic experiential dimensions of the Indian world. Though all of Mother Earth is sacred, there is a special, sacred spiritual connection to the specific land that one has lived on for hundreds of years. To a tribe in Alaska, Occoneechee land in Virginia has little spiritual meaning when compared to Occoneechee people who have lived in the Boydton-Clarksville area for the past 500 to 1,000 years.
The American Indian is a natural system thinker. Our worldview is holistic, resulting from experience in the earth’s living systems. In the fragmented Western view of space, time, and energy, time relegates experience powerless. In other words a place has less importance as we move away from it over time. This is not the case for the Indians. Our Ancestors’ power stays in a place and we remain connected to our ancestors. Thus, when we are in this place, if we are of the ancestry of the people who lived here, we feel their power. If one does not feel this power in a place then one has no Ancestors here. If an Irishman stands on Occoneechee land and does not feel a spiritual connection, it is only because his Ancestors do not speak to him from this place. Thus this place is not sacred to the Irishman. We the Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee people still live in the Boydton-Clarksville area and we feel a deep spiritual connection to this land and thus it is sacred to us. My grandfather was born a couple of miles from the park and the islands. My great grand parents are from here and on and on. We’ve been here as far back as we have records or memory. More important than those documentable facts is that our hearts are connected here.
From a VA Occoneechee Indian perspective Occoneechee State Park rests on sacred land and at all costs cannot be desecrated deep within the wilderness areas with high impact, commercialized activity. As citizens of VA Occoneechee State Park is public land and the vast majority of the public opposes the IDA plan.
Barry Carter
Chair, Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee
OK, back to the subject. ADillard, lots of tribes intermixed. The Senecas of the Sandusky are believed to be made up of a mixture of southeastern tribes who went north and then west as my people did.
Techteach
Hey Everybody, well **** has hit the fan and not for the fist time.
I will always be here and don’t intend to leave so any one want to take a shot at me email me!
Next if you are emabarassed at what you have said re-list with a different handle!
Iam NOT HAPPY that page 3 has been erased, I have always stood by what I have had to say.
Linda thank you for the stand with the Blackfoot , we have all been apart for way too long.
Barry email me I’d like to know what you posted!
The question remains everyone re post “Intermarriage” with the stap on topic in mind!
“SOP it up” ha ha we are all here , stand by what you say and say what you mean, proof read and re-proof if you have to!.
If you don’t agree with me, now or ever, have a beer and come back to join in.
Never Again divided we fall!
Sorry to have deleted your post, Tom. You said nothing offensive. I removed all of the debate that had gone ugly, and had to remove all references to it. By that logic I should be removing these two posts, too.
Tom, Barry, and Linda!
Glad to see you here..
Linda..”hate to ask, but does anybody remember…..”
Don’t ask.
You know us women, we remember for days EVERYTHING and never let you forget it either!…Best left alone..
glad you are here..
Sue J
The term “Intermarriage” can rarely be found on Marriage Bonds in Virginia. Marriage Bonds were available prior to the use of the term “Marriage License”. Not to be confused with the term “Inter-Mixed” which is found on census records, sometimes stating the Tribe as well.
If you don’t go out into the field when researching you won’t be able to see the Marriage Bonds. 😉 I wish you much luck in your search.
Bess wrote: Barry is on the mark in exposing the treachery of the Tontos who lead the so-called “recognized tribesâ€. A direct condemnation of these sad elements is long overdue. I wish to add a few thoughts.
The manipulator pulling the strings is not the “whiteman†in general. Rather, those calling the shots (and whose interest is being served) are the financial capitalists, the billionaires, who represent only a fraction of the “whiteman.â€
The financial oligarchs use their state machine, from the federal government down to the local city administration, to hold in check the oppressed masses. The so-called leaders heading the “tribes†are an integral part of that machine. In fact, the billionaires could not dominate the vast majority of Native Americans without the help of the bought off “tribal leadersâ€. Their basic job is to sabotage and disunite the struggle of the masses and prevent that struggle from becoming a revolutionary struggle to end the system of oppression. The warriors at Wounded Knee, SD in 1973 undertook the most recent example of such an honorable revolutionary uprising of native people in the USA. The US government uses the recognized tribes as a block, hoping to prevent future Native uprisings.
Moreover, today the Tontos must ignore, deliberately, the severe economic exploitation, theft of land, and state repression placed upon Native Americans. In the Piedmont and elsewhere, poverty and unemployment (brought on by capitalism and magnified by anti-Native chauvinism) have reduced many working class Native Americans to chronic homelessness and slow starvation. It is these brothers and sisters who are regularly subjected to severe police brutality and other forms of state terror that the Tontos gloss over.
We should have no illusion about government recognition and the role of the Tontos in brewing this poison. Through “recognitionâ€, the U.S. government is not seeking to respect the democratic, national rights of Native Americans. No, they do not truly want to create a situation where the Non-Native and Native are on a completely equal footing, where there is no domination (even of the slightest degree) of the former over the later. No, recognition seeks something quite different. Their goal is to establish a small group of tame, submissive people who willingly “recognize†and accept their overall subjugation in this society, in exchange for the “30 pieces of silverâ€. The oppressor then projects this caricature as representing the essence of the predicament and opinion of the Native masses. In the “recognition processâ€, the Tontos and their “helpers†at the BIA (recognition assistance officers) school the new tribal members in the proper etiquette of being gracious and thankful to the oppressor for the anticipated crumbs. They use genealogy and blood quantum to narrow down the size of the population that is to receive the crumbs. Likewise, they spread so much confusion about who is in and who is out of the tribe; about who is and isn’t a Native American, that the masses despair of collective action.
Accordingly, in our case, the Chiefs and their “helpers†at the BIA spread the big lies that there are only a “few†Sapony surnames and that Sapony groups living a few miles apart are not connected by kinship. They peddle many other absurdities to blind the masses, but time prevents me from detailing with them now.
The end result of recognition is the creation of a pro-US government Native American group that actually attacks the vital interests of Native Americans. Such groups willingly become tools of US imperialism, supporting unjust wars to rob the peoples in Africa, Asia and South America. Such is the case today, where the Tontos recruit Native youth for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and take pride in the military occupation and rape of those people. The Tontos pretend not to know that they are aiding the US government in stealing the land of the Arabs, in the same way that the US took our people’s land hear at home. These “recognized†leaders have completely disgraced our people in the eyes of the people of the world as arch lackeys. We should not be fighting other peoples oppressed by U.S. imperialism, but we should join with them in a common struggle against our common oppressor. This is the only intelligent policy that truly satisfies our real interests as a people and honors our great democratic heritage expressed in the deeds of such leaders as the noble Tecumseh.
Bess Veney.
I hope not to excite anyone, but this post has some good points.
Shirley
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