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I am a bit rusty on all this, but if memory serves you are mentioning names and places the Occaneechi Saponi used in their bid for state recognition. You might want to look in that direction. I would think the material they submitted is public record. Unless your family has lived around Hillsboro NC since forever, you won’t be admitted to their tribe, but if it’s just closure you want on these family secrets and mysteries, go for it.
Sad news. There was so much more he could have contributed. I’m remembering the long conversations at pow wows. He was always running over with his latest discoveries. There is so much that has now been accepted legally that started with Rick. People need to know that, since he’s often not credited. Accredited ‘scholars’ would appropriate his findings and never give credit. I saw it myself more than once. But he just went on doing what he did.
I also read “black” and “negro” denoted any non-white inhabitant of early colonial Virginia, regardless if they were African or Native American. How true is that? I’m skeptical they would label different peoples this way.
After 1830 and the Removal Act there were, legally, only two races to exist in the South, Black and White. So if you were a person of color who wanted to remain in that locale you had to submit to being called Black and accept the consequences of that in terms of your civil rights (or lack thereof). When did this person die/live? Earlier than that it’s a bit less defined, though the culture was obviously moving in that direction for awhile. Going back to really early colonial time, it’s doubtful, though at that point in time there wouldn’t be ANY records of native people. They belonged to another nation, off the colonial grid. So it’s a slippery slope knowing what’s behind some individual’s records.
That word could be native, but then, perhaps it’s an African word. In either case, it’s quite a find. Pursue it. See if there are Iroquoian or West African words that might fit.
battyboy12;38680 wrote: He lived from around 1660-1713.
Okay, what I can tell you is that 1713 is the year of the Tuscarora War that ended in Snow Hill, NC at Fort Neoheroka. It’s very interesting that he died that year. I can also tell you that the reason the war was fought was because the British wanted to gain possession of the pine forests of North Carolina because of the incredibly tall pine masts that grew there. The forests were maintained as game preserves. Trees grew to incredible heights because of this management and gaining those masts meant a huge strategic advantage to the British navy. The Tuscarara did not want to sell because that was their sustainable resource for meat production. So, when the T’s refused to sell the British simply withdrew the way they had been protecting the Tuscarora from the scalawags they’d dumped into the colonies. Natives were duped into addictions to alcohol and a slave trade in Tuscaroran children skyrocketed. Kidnappings were in epidemic proportions. And once the Tuscarora had declared war on the colonies the British had the excuse they needed to go in and annihilate the Tuscarora. I can also tell you that the Fort was designed by an escaped African descended slave. He died a martyr’s death, tortured by the Brits.
What we can say from this historical narrative is that both African and Indians were enslaved in that time period by the colonists and that they were tight. It would be entirely reasonable to assume your ancestor had both going on. If the DNA shows some West African blood, and the middle name is Algonquin then I would say it’s entirely reasonable to believe that’s what he was. Daddy was African, momma was Algonquin. The fact that you have a name and dates for the guy is quite remarkable. To expect anything more from colonial documentation is probably a lost cause. What I can see is that the guy probably led a remarkable life and my hunch is he ran off and fought in the war. That’s where my imagination will go with it.
I saw a blue and white vase that had been glued back together with super glue that was taken from New Bern when it was attacked by the Tuscarora and brought back to Fort Neoheroka, where it was found. The bill of lading from Germany for it is also in existence. I saw dried peaches that had been harvested by the Tuscarora ladies the summer before the battle, found at the fort. They also found a tunnel that could have been used the night before the final battle to escape, but they all chose to remain there and make their stand. Better the grave than a slave.
That’s what Black and Indian people in NC were doing together in 1713.
Any proceeds from the book are for hiring a linguist to work on Tutelo-Saponi language revitalization.
Spilledi, here on the forum, has spent a lot of time working on Tutelo and hopefully will be referred to by anyone looking to further that work. http://tutelo.org is ours and has some of her work.
Welcome Barbara. Where do you live? I live near Orange County, NC. Maybe I could get you a picture of Ben’s Creek.
I don’t but plenty of people have posted about them. Make sure you use the search feature to find them.
Looks like I don’t need to take a trip:
Quite a site with lots of history
If there’s oral history of NA origins, and there’s DNA evidence along that line, that’s about as good as it’s going to get for most of us. Plus you’re tracing these people to the states where the “Blackfoot” id we’re talking about here arose. You’ve got as good a reason to make that claim as anyone. We are talking about ‘extinct’ people with little to no documentation of even having existed, certainly no treaty rights, and all of their descendants likely are mixed race, either Black/Indian, White/Indian or tri-racial.
We have a claim, but to whom are we claiming? Certainly, there’s no federal or state recognition to be claimed. The rules for that are carefully crafted to exclude people like us from the git go. The intent has always been for us to simply blend in with the currently ‘relevant’ races and shut up. All this is useful just to us. So that we can know who we are and can honor those we come from.
It would be very useful to encourage those people to share their stories here. It would take all this to another level. It might even prove something academically.
We are dismissed scholastically. It’s believed that the id of ‘Blackfoot’ was just glommed onto by people trying to pass for NDN instead of Black. If we can demonstrate the story centers around people who are demonstrably related by way of Native-identified DNA segments and they’re all coming out of the same time/place, well before the word ‘Blackfoot’ became known on the East Coast I think we’d have something.
