Haliwa-Saponi
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The Haliwa-Saponi are a group of mixed ancestry in eastern North Carolina, one of eight Native American tribes recognized by the state. The name Haliwa is derived from the two counties where most members live, Halifax and Warren Counties. The name Saponi was added in 1979 to reflect the tribe's descent from the Saponi, Tuscarora, and Nansemond peoples of present-day Virginia and the Carolinas.
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[edit] Demographics
Currently, the Haliwa-Saponi comprise slightly more than 3,800 enrolled members. About 70% of tribal members reside within a 6-mile radius of the town of Hollister, in Halifax and Warren Counties. Some tribal members are also located in Nash and Franklin Counties.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, approximately 2,737 Native Americans reside in Halifax and Warren Counties, representing 3.5% of the total combined population. Between 1980 and 2000, the Native American population of the two counties increased by 48%. During that time, the Black population increased by 15%, the Hispanic population increased by 50%, and the White population decreased by 5%.
[edit] Government
While the Haliwa-Saponi have state recognition as a Native American tribe, owing to the expensive and lengthy petition process, they have yet to gain federal recognition.
The tribe itself is governed by an eleven-member Council, including a Chief and Vice-Chief.[1]
[edit] Education
The Haliwa-Saponi Tribal School was originally established in 1957. The school was closed in the late 1960s due to federal desegregation laws, but in 1999, with funds from the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the tribe established a charter school in the same building as the earlier tribal school. This new school is developing in space and enrollment over time, with plans to serve grades K-12 by 2007.
The Haliwa-Saponi Day Care Center was first established in 1977 and served 22 children aged 2-5. Originally operated by the North Carolina Commission on Indian Affairs, the tribe assumed management of the center in 1990 and expanded the center three years later to serve up to 35 children from newborn to five years of age. The day care center is funded through fees, a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and appropriations from the tribal budget.
Using state-appropriated funds, the tribe manages two substance abuse prevention programs. The after-school program is part of a state initiative to eliminate drugs and violence from North Carolina schools and communities and is funded in part by a grant from RiverStone (formerly Halifax County Mental Health). The Family and Schools Together (FAST) program helps families to develop effective methods of communication.
[edit] Culture
The tribe’s annual pow-wow was instituted in 1965 in order to celebrate state recognition of the tribal nation. The Haliwa-Saponi pow-wow is held the third weekend of April each year and is funded in part by ad sales, donations, corporate funding and gate receipts, in addition to grants from the North Carolina Arts Council. The pow-wow utilizes over 100 volunteers and staff. Attendance for the three-day event ranges from 9,000 to 10,000, and net profits for over the last three years have ranged from $18,000 to $35,000.
Since 1972, the tribe has also operated a cultural retention program funded by the North Carolina Arts Council and private contributions. Classes for tribal members of all ages are held twice weekly at the tribe’s multi-purpose building. The program includes instruction in pottery, beadwork/regalia design and construction, dance/drum classes, and Haliwa-Saponi history, as well as day trips to culturally relevant locations.
[edit] History
The Haliwa-Saponi are a Siouan-descent Native American tribe of North America's Southeastern Piedmont. In 1670, John Lederer, a German surveyor visited a Saponi settlement along the Staunton (now the Roanoke River) River in southern Virginia. Thirty years later, John Lawson, commissioned by the Lords Proprietor to survey Carolina colony's interior, encountered groups of Saponi as they conducted trade. Throughout the post-contact period of increasing English colonial settlement and expansion, southeastern Siouan Piedmont peoples like the Saponi maintained autonomous villages in what is now northeastern North Carolina and southern Virginia. During the late seventeenth century, the Saponi undertook a political alliance with the culturally related Tottero, or Tutelo, and together comprised the Nassaw Nation. Another related people, the Occaneechi, who were expert traders, also lived in the region. Due to frequent incursions into Saponi territory made by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Five Nations), situated in present-day New York, the Saponi and their allies temporarily uprooted themselves and migrated throughout the region of present-day Virginia and North Carolina while continuing to seek economically and militarily advantageous alliances.
[edit] Eighteenth Century
By the beginning of the century, continuous warfare with the Haudenosaunee and repeated outbreaks of infectious disease reduced the once populous Saponi. Joining with the Tottero and the Occaneechi, the Saponi migrated to northeastern North Carolina to be closer to the center of Virginia's colonial trade. However, in 1711, Carolina colony went to war with the powerful Tuscarora Confederacy. With the defeat of the Tuscarora two years later, the Saponi and their closest allies met in Williamsburg with the Tuscarora and Nottoway to discuss the terms of peace and enter into a new treaty of trade with Virginia's Governor, Alexander Spotswood. On February 27, 1714, Virginia colony reached an agreement. Moreover, the Saponi, Tottero, Occaneechi, Keyauwee, Enoke (or Eno), and Shakori formally coalesced, becoming "The Saponi Nation." Another refugee band known as the "Stuckanox" shortly thereafter joined the Saponi Nation. Despite the success in treaty-making and tribal coalescence, the years between 1709 and 1714 were extremely difficult, with continuing population decline due to disease. Travellers enumerated the Saponi Nation at a little more than 300 people. That same year, the Virginia Council asked the Nansemond tribe to merge with the Saponi in order to strengthen their settlements and thus, create a necessary buffer between Virginia's plantation settlements, other Southeastern Siouan Piedmont groups, and the Haudenosaunee.
[edit] Fort Christanna
To strengthen Virginia's borders, Alexander Spotswood convinced the colonial Board of Trade to approve the establishment of Fort Christanna between the Roanoke and Meherrin rivers, about thirty-two miles north of the present-day Haliwa-Saponi Powwow grounds. Fort Christanna was built to protect the Virginia colony in two critical ways: as a bulwark intended to ward off military assault, and as a center for the Christianization and education of the Saponi and other Southeastern groups. Fort Christanna also served as a major trading post for the corporate Virginia Indian Company.
[edit] Christianization and Education
Roughly seventy Saponi children were educated and Christianized by missionary teacher Charles Griffin of North Carolina. By 1717, under charges of monopoly, the Colonial Board of Trade lost interest in the Fort and ordered the Virginia Indian Company to disband and dissolve. The Saponi Nation continued to maintain peaceful trade relations with the colony, and a portion of the Saponi Nation continued living in the Fort Christanna area from 1717 to 1729. Another group of Saponi migrated into northern Virginia, near Fredericksburg, and at least one band of Saponi and Tottero made peace with their former enemies, the Haudenosaunee, at Albany in 1722. Eventually, the Haudenosaunee adopted these tribes into their nations, with formal confirmation of adoption coming in 1753. Another group of Saponi migrated south to the militarily and linguistically-related Catawba in what is now northeastern South Carolina, occupying a village there from 1729 to 1732. In 1733, however, they returned to the Fort Christanna area with some Cheraw Indians, only to discover that colonists had taken patents on their traditional lands. Justifiably upset that their lands had been appropriated illegally, the Saponi made agreements with Virginia for new lands, but also made a separate arrangement with the Tuscarora, in April of 1733 to live with them and under their suzereignty.
The Tuscarora Reservation, known as Reskooteh Town and Indian Wood, was located in Bertie County, approximately thirty miles east of the modern Haliwa-Saponi community. The reservation consisted initially of 40,000 acres (160 km²), bordered eastern Halifax County, and included a village known as "Sapona Town." By 1734, some Nansemond were also living with the Nottoway in Virginia, and other Nansemond had resettled near the Tuscarora in North Carolina. Also migrating with these Indians were Virginia traders who wanted to continue their trade relations with these tribes. One of the most noted traders was Colonel William Eaton, an "Old Granville" (modern day Franklin, Warren, and Vance) County resident, who traded with the Saponi, Catawba, and others. From the 1730s to the 1770s, Haliwa-Saponi tribal ancestors closely associated in and near the modern Haliwa-Saponi area. The Haliwa-Saponi Tribal community began coalescing in "The Meadows" of southwestern Halifax County, North Carolina immediately after the American Revolution.
[edit] Nineteenth Century
During the early 1800s, ancestral Haliwa-Saponi remained relatively isolated in the Meadows, having little contact with other Indians. They attempted to live peaceably alongside their non-Indian neighbors. During the 1830s, when the United States enforced policies to remove all Indians living east of the Mississippi River, the federal government basically ignored most of the relatively landless and powerless small tribes settled in the southeastern Coastal Plain. However, Haliwa-Saponi tribal elders tell of several families migrating west to Indian Territory on their own, some merging into the general population, while others were adopted by one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma. Still, over the course of the 1800s, the Haliwa-Saponi maintained a close, tight-knit tribal community in modern Halifax, Warren, Nash, and Franklin Counties.
The Haliwa-Saponi spent the late nineteenth century organizing a tribal government and fighting for separate Indian schools. In the 1870s the Haliwa-Saponi began meeting at Silver Hill, which is a remote location within the Meadows. These early efforts at formal organization resulted in the Indian schools, Bethlehem School (1882) in Warren County, and the Secret Hill School in Halifax County. Early tribal leaders such as Tillman Lynch, Alfred Richardson, Manuel Richardson, Stephen Hedgepeth, Cofield Richardson, Bennet Richardson, Solomon Mills, and Bill Silver tried to formally reorganize the tribe, but found great opposition and little support because many Indians were simply afraid.
[edit] Twentieth Century
In 1920 an observer wrote:
Probably the largest group of free Negroes to be found in North Carolina was the exclusive "old issue" settlement known far and wide as the Meadows, near Ransom's Bridge on Fishing Creek in Halifax County. The group still bears the appellation "old issue" and are heartily detested by the well-to-do Negroes in the adjoining counties.
In the mid-20th century, the push for formal organization was finally realized through the leadership of John C. Hedgepeth, Lonnie Richardson, B.B. Richardson, Chief Jerry Richardson, James Mills, Theadore Lynch, and others by 1953. After living for years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, W.R. Richardson returned home to the community and soon became the first elected Chief of the modern tribe, with Percy Richardson elected as Vice-Chief.
From 1957-1969, the Haliwa-Saponi built, maintained, and operated the Haliwa Indian School, the only non-reservation, tribally supported Indian school in the state. After a few years of operation, the State Department of Public Instruction provided funding for teacher salaries. However, tribal members paid for supplies and materials, the building, and maintenance out of their own pockets. Then the Tribe had much to celebrate when in 1965, North Carolina formally recognized the Haliwa Indian Tribe. The Tribe incorporated in 1974 and added Saponi to its tribal name in 1979 to reflect the historical origins of the people. The Tribe has since built an administrative building, multipurpose building, and instituted various service programs. Programs include tribal housing, daycare, senior citizens program, community services, Workforce Investment Act, cultural retention, after-school and youth programs, energy assistance, and economic development.
Federal recognition through the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Federal Acknowledgement (OFA) remains a top priority for the Haliwa-Saponi, since they first submitted a formal petition in 1989. They are currently seeking and compiling additional information in order to respond to the OFA’s Letter of Obvious Deficiencies (L.O.D.). The Tribe continues to perform research, update files, and monitor the federal acknowledgement process.
The Haliwa-Saponi's latest and most exceptional accomplishment is the opening of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribal School, which is 98% Indian, and boasts a curriculum based on standard course of study, small classrooms, technology, and American Indian Studies. The Haliwa-Saponi tribe continues to be culturally active and is proud of the community’s many dancers, singers, artists, advanced degree students, and young professionals.
[edit] Citations
- ^ R.H. Taylor, The Free Negro in North Carolina, James Sprunt Historical Publications, 1920, v. 17, no.1, p.23
[edit] References
- Cumming, William P. Mapping the North Carolina Coast: Sixteenth-Century Cartography and the Roanoke Voyages. North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources: Division of Archives and History, 1988.
- Farris, Phoebe. "Images of Urban Native Americans: The Border Zones of Mixed Identities," Journal of American Culture 20 (Spring 1997).
- Howard, James H. "Pan-Indianism in Native American Music and Dance," Ethnomusicology 27 (Jan., 1983): 71-82.
- Lawson, John. A New Voyage to Carolina, ed. Hugh Talmadge Lefler. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
- Leaming, Hugh P. Hidden Americans: Maroons of Virginia and the Carolinas. New York, NY: Garland Publishing, 1995.
- Lederer, John. The Discoveries of John Lederer. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1966.
- Richardson, Marvin, and C.S. Everett. "Ethnicity Affirmed: The Haliwa-Saponi and the Dance, Culture, and Meaning of North Carolina Powwows." In Signifying Serpents and Mardi Gras Runners: Representing Identity in Selected Souths, edited by Celeste Ray and Luke Eric Lassiter. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003.
