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The following posts were made to the yahoogroup “The Other Blackfoot” By permission I am publishing here.
Hi all My name is John Poundstone and having traded a few emails with Linda Cater from the room here I thought I would come and join in and see whats history we can find for all of us Indians stuck here in the 21st century. My family is Shawnee/Blackfeet/Cherokee(on the silly rolls). My Grandmother was full blood, but of mixed tribes, which never made us much welcome anywhere either. We were the only indentified Indians in our community in Southern Indiana (what a joke INDIANA! land of Indians) Ok I’ll save the bitter jokes for later.
One part of my heritage is diffinitively Lakota from my Great Grandfather, but My Great Grandmother also had Backfeet/Blackfoot Souix. She was from Southern Illinois and there is a still surviving remnant there of this Blackfeet/Blackfoot community. Does anyone here have relatives there? Is there a possibility that this group is eastern Blackfoot? They arrived there around 1813-14 just after Tecumseh’s war and many of the arrivals were warriors for his united tribe. I would appreciate any and all input to this….to Email me directly send to: hawkheart07@aol.com
Thanks and Paselo(Take care)
They are sounding more like Eastern, Saponi Blackfoot if their arrival in Illinois coincides with Tecumseh’s war. It could also make them the last known warriors of that Nation. I know there were still some braves who journeyed from NC to Canada to fight with Joseph Brandt against the Americans in the Revolution. Saponi/Tutelo people are known to have been with the refugee tribes in Ohio, under allegiance to the Iroquois league. There are those who broke from this and joined with the Shawnee/Delaware.
I’d like to know more about this community of descendants in southern Illinois.
The range of the Blackfoot/Blackfeet which my famly knew as their community stretched from Shelby co. straight south through jefferson Co. and the east two counties to Edwards co. and then back north to Coles co. In this same area is a large group of resettled Cherokee, mostly old settlers from the 1817 agreement. A incredible genealogist and local historian from the area died this year, but he has left his entire historical library to the Effingham Genealogocal society. He had documented every Indian cummunity in this region. I and dying to get a chance to read his notes whic will be transfered some time in the next 2 months to them. He gave many lectures about these communities and always wowed his audience with his thoroughness and the sheer number of Indian settlements in this area which had been stripped of its native history.
Part of my Family in the area is Cherokee (all the correct silly rolls numbers and all), a few members of the family even show up in some of the contemporary histories of the trail of tears. Some of these “Old Settlers” joined the trail and went farther into exile while some stayed and helped the weary with rest camps while they were in Illinois. It is likely that some escaped the trail and as some who were on the trail were Also Saponi I would assume that some Blackfoot managed to come to Illinois by this route also.
As to the possibilities of there being Warriors of the Saponi/Tutelo with Tecumseh, that must be true. There are histories which tell of his attempts to raise the southern tribes for the fight and his general failure there, but there is also notations of small independent bands coming to join despite the wishes of elders, along with remnant groups who having lost all else turned to Tecumseh for a last stand against the white tide.
As for my family being Blackfoot eastern tribe I am unsure and would very much like to find other close members of my own comunnity who can remember some of our oral tradition. Mine is some what confused as I have Lakota from my Great Grandfather Pritchard who was descended from Shawnee(or Blackfoot?)half bloods in WVA Upsur co. and 2 generations of Lakota and related groups in SD, WY and MT. In addition My Great Grandmother was Half Shawnee, 1/4 Chrokee and 1/4 Blackfeet Souix(Blackfoot?). There lies the question but much of our oral history is muddled by the mixing of other tribal history from the other branches. Little Star was my Great Grandmothers Grandmother In So. Illinois. She was purported to me the daughter of a war leader or chief but her fathers name is lost to us. There maybe a way to trace this through the research of the late historian from Effingham co. or though oral traditions of some of the other families from the area. If anyone has any tibits..please let me know!
The warriors of Tecumseh stayed with the families who had come to join his new United Tribe as they were sworn to protect the women and children and should never abandon them even as the war was lost. That is part of our oral tradition and a reason why we still try and protect some of the land there. Part of the reason for the seizure of the land in Illinois is the oil which lay underneath. Millions of barrels have been pumped out from under all of the land there and uncounted acres stolen by the most crass methods.
Also a story which is important to note is that of the removal of the Miami. This was done mostly one night when soldiers, lacking any official US gov authority came and at rifle point took nearly the entire Miami population away at gun point, loaded onto flatboats and sent to MO then KS. The Blackfeet/Blackfoot who were there avoided this fate by pointing out to the soldiers that they were Blackfeet Souix and not listed for removal in the order. Most of the Cherokee in the area had citizenship papers which were their reward for service to the US or as a reward for their voluntary removal from the Carolinas.
These make up the largest part of the Indian community in So. Illinois, there are mostly assimilated but Indian By Blood. They can’t take that away, even if they can lie to us about it and bribe the nations with gov handouts to try and continue the paper genocide which is meant to abolish our existence.
Also The Blackfeet Souix (Sihasapa Lakota) link is pretty strong too. The Lakota tribe has an oral history that they sent Sihasapa (Blackfeet) warriors, the best trackers on the plains, to join Tecumseh. These came with 2 Dakota war chiefs (One was named Chief Six) and their Dakota and Sauk and Fox warriors. None of these Sihasapa warriors ever returned to their home villages are were given up for dead, but no tale was every told of their defeat and deaths.
The Lakota historian Bronco LeBeau agrees with me that these may be the same ones in So Illinois, as they too would have thought it dishonourable to leave the villages unprotected after the loss of the war. If this was true would the eastern Souian speaking people have settled near or among the western in IL? Language bonds to them were nearly unbreakable and the western Souix had a tradition of lost kin left in the far east.
The Western tribes are at this moment working with tribes country wide to create a “name place map” using all of the know Indian names for things and places through out the country. They hope to use this to debunk the Univesity PHD attempts to limit and reduce the the spread and history of our people. More on that at another time too…
If there is oral history from the Sioux of sending Sihisapa warriors, then that gives a lot of weight to them being the ones in your family. To my understanding, the word “Sioux” is not a name used in the east. It wasn’t until linguists came along in the late 19th century, and realized the languages were related that they came to be called Siouan, long after they’d been disrupted, so someone in 19th century Illinois calling him/herself Blackfoot Sioux, combined with the info that Sihisapa were sent there, probably tells the story.
I am very interested to hear which bands of the Sioux have tales of relatives far to the east. I’ve met at least one Lakota person who was very adamant there’s no such thing as Eastern Siouan, since the Sioux people never leave anyone behind. I know there are Sioux bands that would dispute this. I’d be interested in knowing more about this.
The Tutelo language was similar to the Dakota, though I’m not sure if they’d be mutually intelligible.
The Souix linkage with my Illinois line is fairly firm, but as I have two lines where this occurred (a husband/wife) the naming of Souix may still be a cross over. What makes it firmer is the other families there which also use the Souix name. But this in only one lineage of many in my family. The same line which marries into two generations of Lakota in SD/WY came from the top of the Blue Ridge in WVA. They had been living in mixed Indian villages there for 4 generations. Do you have any information on the Blackfoot/Saponi groups living there? My relatives lived on settlements reaching from the Little Kanawha, to French Creek to the Monongalia headwaters. This was a line of Pritchards who married into Indian families for the first two generations after they came from Wales in 1624. They moved up into western VA around 1760. Once there they married into two more Indian families and a third as a second marraige-a Delware woman, no childern in late life marriage. This man Joseph pritchard moved with his Delaware wife, her children grown children and his own to Indiana in the 1850’s. Then the one son (my ancestor) moves to join cousins in SD before 1860. the family had been apperating as traders with in the Indian communities in WVA and in SD for many years. Any info on these communities in WVA?
I have the line in my family of Poundstone from Mecklenberg TN/Monongalia WVA and PA also. John Poundstone move to WVA with brother Phillip and then on to Whitewater Village before 1808. After Tecumsehs war he settled in what would become Northern Rush co. This was a mixed Miami/Shawnee/Delaware and I am now learning Saponi area. I have been unable to find John’s wife, but records indicate she was not white and was a refugee…so Saponi heritage seems quite possible. If she was Shawnee I should know and the same for Delaware. John’s son marries a Catharine Burch/Birch who lives in Fayette co. just east of Rush co. Her parents were from NC and again of colored/Indian decent from one census. I had earlier assumed Cherokee but they were seperate from other known Cherokee I have found there. It seems very likely that there were Saponi Blackfoot living in this refugee settlement and that they came into close contact with people like John Poundstone who came to fight for Tecumseh. The possibility that records may exist from Brandts villages is hopeful to me in tracing some of these warriors.
The idea of Eastern Souian peoples is a hard one for many western Dakota/Nakota/Lakota. The first problem is their dislike of the word Sioux. It is a short version of the Ojibwe’ or Chippewa slur meaning “little dangerous snakes”. So when they whole language connection is brougfht up they freeze mentally. But despite this they are finding many similiar name places and old stories which show this connection.
In their oldest stories they talk about the times when they lived east of the Mississippi and how most of the tribal groups migrated to the western plains, hills and the deep forests of Minnesota. The Portage des Souix near what is now the north suburbs of St Louis was used by them for centuries according to the last Souix living in that area in the late 1800’s. They claim that they had regular contact with eastern “friendly” communities who spoke a strange dialeck of their own tongue. They claimed regular visits all the way to the eastern mountains. This group there must have been the various Saponi peoples. I’ll try and remember more but there is some of the history.
Has anyone been able to find Saponi name places in So IL? There are some rather strange city names like Oskaloosa, Shattuc, Wynoose, Wamac, Owaneco,and many others. These names come from later times when refugee communities came to the area. The early names from the Illinois confederation were alsomt all in French as the French were the dominant force there before 1795. This leaves a possibility that some name place in So. IL could be linked by language to a Saponi settlement. There are likely 4 or more language groups represented in the area so one needs a background in Saponi Language to find the similarites here.
One of the first clues I got about my heritage was information about a roadside marker which once stood in Elkins, WV about the “Blackfoot of the Seneca.” I now believe these were Saponi/Tutelo refugees who are documented to have been among the Indians tributary to the Seneca in PA and OH. As that confederation fell apart, many of these groups took to the mountains. Thomas McElwain, the language informant at Mingo-EGADs, still speaks a dialect of the Seneca language that was spoken until the fifties in Elkins. He tells me virtually everyone in the small town of Parsons, WV, just up the road from Elkins, is Blackfoot. There are many other spots in
WV with communities of people with this ID handed down.
Thanks for your info, it says a lot. Are you saying that your sense of it is that your Sihisapa relations recognized a commonality with their eastern Blackfoot relations? I have a hunch that the Blackfoot ID is very ancient and goes back to the time before the Siouan people split east and west.
Let me know if you get access to Brandt’s records. The story in our family
was that we were “related to a Blackfoot chief.” One of the family names at
that point was Harris. They were living along the Tuscarora Path in
Chambersburg, PA. There are some records in Washington DC taken from an
interview of John Buck, one of the last full blooded Tutelo at Six Nations
who remembered that there was a Chief Harris who came up from NC with 20
warriors to fight with Joseph Brandt against the Americans during the
RevWar. They would have taken that route via the Tuscarora Path.
I’ve also heard lately from an individual who said he’s seen records, he believes it was in the records of the London Company in VA, of an explorer who found the Sissipaha on the Dan River, VA, calling them the “Blackfoot of the Dan.” They were decimated by the Yamasee, who sold them as slaves to Barbados, the survivors fled to the Occaneechi. I realize now that there are too many doubters regarding the eastern Blackfoot connection for me to put this forward as fact until I can refer people to the actual citations, but it is something I could use help in looking for so I will mention it.
Did I mention the the Poundstone family originated in Mecklenberg…which Mecklenberg (including the co. in VA) is the question. Richard Poundstone the oldest we know of with certainty is said to have been born there and a possible sister settled in the Brunswick VA.
I will go thru my Pritchard and Poundstoen lines toady and find the settlements and areas in WVA where they lived for comparison also.
The words for Blackfeet/Blackfoot from the eastern and western languages are too close for two speakers coming from different directions not to recognise the other as related. Their lore was much deeper than anything we now retain. It would be a strech for them NOT to see the other as a lost relative.
Mecklenburg, VA??? Whoa, now you’re getting into ground zero. That’s where Occoneechi Island was, where the VA/NC Siouan nations were defeated in 1673 by Bacon and his vigilantes. My husband’s family has lived there at least as far as historical records go, and is full of known NDN surnames.
Brunswick County is the same. That’s where Fort Christanna was, the last place all the VA/NC Siouan people were all together before the Diaspora.
His mother’s family has lived within the boundaries of the old reservation for at least as long as the historical records go. That family was so NDN, they stood guard on either end of their road on Saturday night and didn’t allow white or black men entrance, keeping them away from their women, to “keep the blood strong.”
If brother was in Mecklenburg and sister was in Brunswick, then it’s logical to be Virginia, since those two counties are contiguous in VA.
What, in your opinion, is the Eastern Siouan word for Blackfoot?
BTW, the name Pritchard is listed on the “Southeastern American Indian Family Surnames” list as Saponi.
The Virgina connection is a real possibility I think but I can’t ignore mecklenberg TN where the Shawnee lived at the same time. Thats why I’m hoping to find common names between families and see what fits best. The same line claims Seneca/Shawnee heritage after the arrive in western PA, Monogalia valley. Part of the line, a lateral part returns to northern and central WVA starting in 1800 or so. This line continues there and moves thru OH, and IN marrying repeatedly in Indian families. Now If I can just find Poundstones first family root!
As far as the eastern Souian name for Blackfoot, I’ve heard others here use Sissapasha? which is nearly identical except in internal word order to Sihasapa which is the Lakota word…meaning Those with black moccasins..shoes..feet. Are there other possible names?
I feel that’s what it means, and others too see that in the name, and as I said earlier, I’m hunting down some historical documentation that would pretty much prove it. The Tutelo (which may or may not be definitive, since the Sissipaha people were close to, but not actually Tutelo) words via Hale are ‘isi asepa,’ foot black. I can see Sissipaha being a corruption of that. It could also mean foot hill. Hopefully, we shall see.
There are two western Blackfoot/Blackfeet groups….nonrelated. One is the Blackfoot Tribe Blackfoot/Piegan/Blood sub groups) of MT and Canada and then there is the Blackfeet Souix/Sihasapa Teton Lakota of
the Blackhills SD (old range west to the Teton Mountains). The second group here in located at the Cheyenne River reservation and that is the name where you will find their web site. I have had a few discussions with their tribal historian Bronce LeBeau to help explain the Blackfeet Souix in IL, but we haven’t been able to find person to person trace back to the tribe. They have no records back that far so we can only compare oral histories.
There is certainly a tendancy for the Welsh to marry freely with Indian communities, why is another question. In my case Thomas Pritchard worked for the Virgina Company and came twice before settling in Jamestown(1620,1624). On the second trip he stayed and married a woman from outside the english settlement…which means an Indian, as do his son. Then the family marries into the line of an indentured servant and then again back into Indian lines before they move off to the mountains, more Indian amrriages follow.
The Poundstone line living in PA claims to be from Mecklenberg Germany, but each piece of their history has proven false (persons not on ships registries,no one with that name every noted as leaving Germany before 1855,fictitious later records which disagree with early offical records). A very touchy subject…but they have constructed a genealogy which covers the Indian root of the family. This is extremely common, and early Indian/christian converts did so very very often. Everytime I discuss this within the family I get new converts to the non-german side and more and more stories of Indians known in the family. Indian genealoogists from the Shawnee tribe will tell you that the majority of the Penn Dutch or Black Dutch were Moravian Indian converts and the have good records of their villages to prove it. But they don’t share the name lists outside the tribe. š I wish there was more openness in the modern tribal community!
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