The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation

We are the Occoneechee, Saponi, Totaro Indian Tribe of the Saponi Reservation.  We have lived in current day Virginia for thousands of years. We are of the same language group, and thus the same people, as the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota of North and South Dakota. The map below shows our migration over time and not necessarily the territory at any given time.

The maps below shows our territory around 1492. We had largely separated from our western cousins as shown on the map below. Some oral history says there was a vision of the coming "white man" and the destruction they would bring and more people migrated west.  We referred to ourselves as Yesah--The People. 

We were comprised of hundreds of communities, towns and extended families groups though out the majority of the current day states of Virginia and North Carolina as well as parts of South Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio. These communities had names such as: Occoneechee, Tutelo (Totero, Totaro), Saponi Hoonthymiha, Manahoacs, Monacan, Metiponski, Mawseeuntkey, Stukena, (Stukanoe),  Nahyssans,  Monasukapanough,  Moneton, Shackaconia, Manaskahod, Massinurga, Stegata, Tauscania, Rassawek, Massinacak, Mowhemcho, Cape Fear, Catawba, Cheraw (Saura), Eno, Keyauwee, Shakori, Sissipahaw, Waccamaw, Wateree, Waxhaw, Woccon, Saxapaha, Sutaree, Sugah, Pedee, Quiawae, Chacee in the region shown below. 

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Saura Woman is a reconstruction of Cheraw ancestor based upon her remains found on the Dan River on the border of NC and Virginia.  She is on display at the NC Museum of Natural History in Raleigh NC.  Below is tribal member Ihza Carter with Saura Woman.

In 1712 a 36 square mile reservation was created in what is now Brunswick County, Virginia. Prior to this our territory had covered the majority of the states of Virginia and North Carolina.  After 200 years of genocide, since the 1492 European invasion, we sought refuge from the British government.  Our people have lived on the reservation land since its creation in 1712. Below are some of our people from the Saponi Reservation Greentown Community. 

After the reservation closed in 1718 we move a few miles east and created a community called Greentown.  As shown on the map above the isolate Native community of Greentown resides on the Saponi Reservation land a few miles from 1712 Saponitown and Fort Christanna.  The reservation spans approximately 25% of what is now Brunswick County.

 

 

 

In 1713 we Occoneechee, Saponi, Tutelo, (Totaro), Stukanoe, Mawseeuntkey natives signed the treaty of 1714 with Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood.  This treaty sets forth 36 square miles of what is now Brunswick County as our Saponi Native Reservation. 

Before the Saponi Reservation

Our Northern Yesah ancestors had resided in most of what is now the state of Virginia and North Carolina for thousands of years.  By 1646 to 1676, after 250 years of genocide, much of our population was living near present day Clarksville Virginia, on three Islands sandwiched between the Dan and Roanoke Rivers.  Our Tutelo (Totaro) ancestors lived on the upper island which was four miles long and a half a mile wide. Their cousins, our Occoneechee, ancestors lived on the island adjacent to this, which ran four miles all of the way to current day Clarksville.  The tip of this island ended under the current 58 business bridge leading into Clarksville.  These two islands were separated by a narrow body of water 10 to 30 feet wide--thus they could be also classified as one eight mile long island.  Our Saponi ancestors lived on a third island several hundred feet further down the river.  This island is directly in front of current day Occoneechee State Park.  All three islands are now covered under Buggs Island Lake, due to the rivers being dammed in 1952 with John Kerr Dam..

In 1676 the rebel and traitor Nathanial Bacon, enraged by the King of England's direction to take no more Native land, rebelled against the king and the governor of Virginia. They betrayed our Occoneechee ancestors, after being welcomed onto Occoneechee Island.  Bacon and his band of murderers surprise attacked our Occoneechee ancestors and massacred babies, children, women, elders and families and decimated the tribe, burning Occoneechee Town on Occoneechee Island. After the massacre our surviving Occoneechee ancestors moved about, in our homeland, trying to find ways to survive in a hostile new world as shown here.

This traitorous and murderous rebellion is referred to, in history, as "Bacon's Rebellion" and it was the beginning of the American Revolution in 1676--100 years before the 1776 Declaration of Independence. 

Bacon's Rebellion was 100% about the freedom to exterminate Natives and steal Native land.  The finale to this 100 year revolt against England was triggered by the Kings decree of 1763. This decree forbid the invaders from stealing any more Indian land.  A few years after this decree the invaders, committed treason and went into full treason and rebellion against their own king in order to attain the freedom to steal more Native land. The temptation of free and almost unlimited wealth was so great that it caused the invaders to become traitors so that they could mass murder, kill, exterminate and steal without restraint, all for greed. 

It is important to note that the American Revolution started on Occoneechee Island in current day Clarksville Virginia. The massacre at Occoneechee Island was another major step towards the greatest theft and holocaust in human history-- manifest destiny. 

The Reservation 1712 to 1718:

As the Native populations declined rapidly after 1492 as shown here, many bands, families and groups were moving around in our traditional homelands as documented here.  Between 1712 and 1714 approximately 600 of our Yesah ancestors moved onto to the Saponi reservation at a location of the Meherrin River that we called Junkatapurse.  We created a village there called Saponitown.  A small fort was fort built up the hill within a musket shot of Saponitown--Fort Christanna.   

The Saponi Reservation is located in Southern Virginia in current day Brunswick County, adjacent to current day Mecklenburg County and Greensville County.

The reservation served several purposes including housing a boarding school for Native children, Christianizing and colonizing our Native ancestors, protection for our ancestors since our numbers had fallen very low.  Meherrin Native children were held hostage by the White people to discourage attacks by the Meherrin Indians. 

But the primary objectives of the White people were: 1) to clear the way for westward expansion for White people and 2) a money making venture for Governor Alexander Spotswood.  With all of the Yesah people on the reservation the rest of Virginia was open up to be stolen.  Spotswood had plans to monopolize the fur trade between Natives and White people and enrich himself.  The Virginia company was the vehicle for his financial venture.   

Many history books point to the noble motives of Spotswood but as normal he and his co-conspirators had a very selfish motives. As has been the norm since 1492 the agenda was to steal Native land, plunder Native resources and to get rich. And Spotswood was using a people on the verge of extinction, as a tool to get rich, by using our weakened ancestors as a buffer against other tribes.  Despicable behavior disguised as generous behavior.

The financial venture failed after a few years and the reservation status ended in 1718. Land that was promised to our Yesah people was taken and sold to White people. And in 1720 Brunswick County was created.  Was it an accident that Brunswick county was created as soon as the reservation status ended?  Absolutely not!!!  There were White people advocating for the closure of the reservation so that they could steal these thousands of acres of land.  

"The reservation was parceled out in large tracts to wealthy White elites. The parcels were 6,000 acres to Henry Harrison, 12,000 acres to John & Joseph Allen, 1,200 acres to Thomas Cock, and 2,000 acres each to Thomas Ravencroft and Benjamin Edwards."   

The Reservation from the Yesah People's Eyes

We must put ourselves in the place of the Saponi people in 1718.  We had experienced a holocaust where over 99% of our population had been exterminated.  We had a population in the millions when the aliens arrived and were reduced to 600 people by this time as shown here.  Our civilization infrastructure had been destroyed in the previous 200 years.  Our ancestors were beaten down and demoralized and the last mass group of Northern Yesah Natives was breaking up and separating from one another forever.  John Fontaine documented the following on his 1716 trip from Williamsburg to Saponitown, on the Saponi reservation where Fort Christanna resides, "these people live as lazily and as miserably as any people in the world."

With our civilization collapsed we had moved all over our homeland trying different ways to survive.  We must keep in mind that we had lived in peace, harmony and abundance for thousands of years.  Now we had been reduced to homeless people, in our own homeland, at the mercy of aliens with selfish motives, continually on the move for survival.  No matter what we did we could not escape the horrors that the aliens had brought to our land.  

Each family or small group sought ways to eek out a living, and survive, in a foreign new world of dangerous and manipulative aliens.  They did not understand the ways and thinking of these aliens--who sought to own and control everything--the land, the water, the animals, the trees and even other human beings. When one reads Adam Smith's Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), one finds that Europe was a civilization based upon selfishness-where take all you can any time you can was the norm. Smith's book is the bible of European Civilization Smith says civilization, "works best when each individual looks out for his or her own self interest." Selfishness was their worldview.  This was alien to our natural Yesah ancestors.  It was the opposite of our Yesah worldview where peace, giving, collaboration and caring for others and Mother Earth and all things was the norm.  

Our ancestors saw ourselves as connected to and part of all things and saw all things as alive. This was the foundation of a love and collaboration worldview,  This allowed us to live with the other animals without fear. The Europeans saw themselves as separated from all things and all things as dead.  This was the foundation for a fear, fragmentation and having dominion over and a taking worldview where all things must be conquered, controlled, manipulated and engineered.

Coming from our ancestors perspective what they saw from the Europeans was literally insanity, hell and evil. These aliens sought to take rather than give.  They rarely kept their word. There were always selfish motives behind everything they did. Their diet was poor and they did not know how to eat to properly nourish their bodies and spirit.  They were unhealthy and obese and thus were given names such as Wasicu which in Siouan language translates into "keepers of the fat.". They had short life spans.  They were sick, had poor hygrine, were diseased.  They did not know how to live in the world.  They had no ceremonies to connect them to the Oneness of this universe.  They had no drum which is the core of all Natural people worldwide

Our ancestors were experiencing something 100% new that they nor any of their ancestors, for the last 10,000 years and longer had ever experienced. It was beyond their wildest dreams or nightmares. White artist Fredrick Remington said, "no white man could penetrate the mystery of the Indian mind, nor explain the reasons for its acts"  Our worldview was so vastly different from the Europeans that we literally could not understand their thinking and they could not understand ours.

Imagine seeing all that you have ever known disappearing before your eyes.  Imagine 99% of you sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, grand parents. great grand parents, friends being killed and everyone that you have ever known being gone and gone in a horrible way.  Imagine your peaceful and giving social systems being gone and other tribes that you had lived in peace with now reduced to fighting and stealing from one another for survival.  White people dwell on the fact that after 1492 there were hostilities among the tribes. They leave out the fact that this was created by collapsing our civilization and forcing us through slavery, torture and manipulation into their worldview. They embellish this post-1492 violence as Natives having a "war culture" and it helps them justify the holocaust that they inflicted while stealing our land.

The 1718 breakup at the Saponi Reservation could be seen as the end of an era that had lasted tens of thousands years where a very mature spiritual civilization had evolved. Though our civilization had collapsed and was dying since 1492, pre-1714 we had lived largely in the Native worldview and way.  We still largely knew our Native history going back thousands of years and had our Native names and had our Native language.  After 1718 we were forced to begin shifting to the European way of life and worldview.  We began adopting European names, converting to Christianity, learning English, seeking allyships and sponsorships by some white person who could provide a level of protection for our families in a hostile new world.. Much of our history began to be lost.  Over time our elders became resistance to even talking about the old days and old ways.  Many became ashamed of the old ways and some began to advocate for the white ways.

The Reservation After 1718

On December 10, 1730 "the Virginia House of Burgesses abrogated the Treaty of Peace with the Saponi Nation of Indians and dissolved the Fort Christanna Reservation. This was done in response to a petition for the “former” Saponi lands by land-hungry colonists. The greedy petitioners were awarded the former reservation lands."

"The reservation was parceled out in large tracts to wealthy English elites. The parcels were 6,000 acres to Henry Harrison, 12,000 acres to John & Joseph Allen, 1,200 acres to Thomas Cock, and 2,000 acres each to Thomas Ravencroft and Benjamin Edwards."   

With the closure of the fort our ancestors moved a few miles to the east and settled in an area that would come be known as Greentown. The name came from Fred Green who purchased land that was part of the reservation. He married Native Mary Polly Jackson.  Other Native families in the community were James, Green, Jackson, Travis, Johnson, Chavis, Pearson, Powell, Harrison.  The 1920 census documented Greentown people as Mulatto which is the normal classification for Natives at that time.

Though the official records maintained by White people were intentionally falsified to show no or few Natives in Virginia. This was done by those like Virginia state registrar genocidist Walter Pleckler.  However, there are ways to determine Native communities in the upper South.  In almost all cases after being massacred, abused, mass murdered, cheated and nearly driven to extinction our people formed unique habits for survival. 

The communities that Yesah people formed into are called isolate communities.  Isolate Native communities of the upper south had very unique and specific characteristics.  And Greentown exhibited all of the Characteristics of an Isolate community:

• These communities were skeptical of the outside world and isolated themselves from the rest of the world.
• They had roads into the community patrolled and guarded at the entrances.
• They did not let outsiders into their community.
• They separated themselves from their non-native neighbors.
• The married from within the community in order to prevent from going extinct including marrying their own cousins.
• Many maintained ways that were natural and close to Mother Earth. But seen as backwards to the outside world.
• Many had white sponsors, such as Fred Green, who provided sponsorship and thus protection for a larger Native community.

Slavery and Free People of Color in Greentown

Native slavery had been happening since the aliens arrived in 1492.  In fact Natives made up a majority of the slave population for at least 200 years.  The entire worldview of the aliens was and is how to I get as much as possible for myself with as little work or investment as possible.  It is called "return on investment".  What better ROI than free labor and free land.  If you can subdue someone or group (steal people's lives) and force them to work for you for free and if you can take their land free and get them subjugated on their own homeland this is a double win. This kind of ROI takes stealth, manipulation, sneakiness and conning.  Another word for ROI is laziness or theft. 

Only a lazy people seek to get something for nothing and twist things around to make the victim seem lazy.  These concepts were completely foreign to pre-1492 Yesah Native people.  It would be seen as unthinkable, dishonorable and mentally and spiritually ill to steal from another or to get something for nothing.  It simply was not part of our worldview.

Greentown had both free Natives and Native slaves.  Both of groups needed some sought of protection from some white sponsor in a hostile white supremacists world.  Matilda Barner was a Native slave on the Phipps plantation on Iron Bridge Road on the Saponi Reservation land a few miles from the 1712 Saponitown.  She was impregnated by Winfield Phipps at a young age and had daughter Sarah Barner who was also raised on the  W Phipps plantation shown here on the map at the USA Library of Congress, north of the Meherrin River and East of Saponitown and Fort Christanna. 

Sarah had a daughter with a white man from Lawrenceville Tom Heartwell. Beulah Heartwell Rice Travis was her name.  

Though laws in Virginia in the 1600's had banned Native slavery it was common for Saponi Natives to end up in slavery. It was also one of the safest ways to survive and get protection.  Though many natives were kidnapped and sold into slavery.  Our ancestors were faced with people who continually manipulated politics and laws for their highest personal ROI.  Native slaves are well documented in the history of Virginia.  Spotswood himself had at least one documented Native slave Catina. She was referred to as a Sioux Indian Princess.  Catina was listed in Spotswood's will as slave property given to his wife. Beulah Heartwell Rice Travis born on the Phipps planation, on the Saponi reservation land, was also referred to the Natives in Greentown as Sioux Indian.  The Lakota and Dakota are western Siouan natives and the Yesah (Occoneechee, Saponi, Tutelo) are Eastern Siouan natives.

Mary Polly Jackson a Saponi Native woman was a Free Person of Color who also lived on the Saponi Reservation land.  She was born free in 1819.  At age 16 she became the spouse of Fred Green age 36, a white man and they had nine children.  Greentown was named after Fred Green.  

Both of these groups experienced special treatment in the class system created by white people.  My great grandmother Beulah Travis, during segregated times, would take her grand daughter Eleanor Travis to the local drug store in Lawrenceville and eat at the whites only segregated lunch counter.

Late 1800's

During the late 1800s we began to integrate more and more into White society.  By the 1900s many Greentown Saponi Natives were attending Saint Pauls College in Lawrenceville a few miles away, still on the reservation land.  Mary Polly Jackson’s and Fred Green's grandson Fred Chiles Green pictured below was one such Native.  Many Natives from Greentown attended Saint Pauls College

In fact a case can be made that the college was a Native college in addition to being an African American college.  Tribal member Eleanor Travis pictured below from Greentown, who attended Saint Paul's college stated that in 1954 one of her teachers said to her, when a young lady of African origin became homecoming queen, “have you ever heard of a Black queen”. The queens before that had likely all been Native queens.  Yes that reflects the racism of the USA and Virginia and the racist class system established by White people, but the point is up until that  time Natives had played an important role at the college.

Today some members the Occoneechee, Saponi, Totaro Indian Tribe of the Saponi Reservation still reside on the reservation such as Ralph Travis, Oscar Palmer and Nannie Mae Powell.  However, the economies of the area caused most of the population in Greentown to leave Brunswick County and Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s and move to Northern states.  And even the one's who stayed their children went to college and moved away and now most of the generation who stayed has died.   One of the goals of The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation is to rebuild the economics of the area so that our people can return to our reservation land.