Saponi - 20th-century State Recognition - North Carolina

North Carolina

Three groups each recognized by the state of North Carolina, claim descent from the historical Saponi. The people known as the Indians of Person County were recognized by North Carolina in 1911 as an American Indian tribe. Also known by the name of Cherokee-Powhatan Indian Association which is listed by the Cherokee Nation of Oaklahoma as a fake Cherokee group and was the Name Indians of Person county had before the name of Indians of Person county. In 2003 they formally changed their name to Sappony.

The Haliwa-Saponi, a group based chiefly in Halifax and Warren counties, is another Native American band formally recognized by North Carolina (1965). Founded in 1965 under the name Haliwanash Indian Club. They changed their name to include a reference to the historic Saponi in 1979. "Their official name is Haliwa - a contraction created by putting together the names of the counties of Halifax and Warren and creating the term Haliwa. Many of the Indians in this group refer to themselves as Cherokee. They do not accept the term Haliwa and refer to themselves as Cherokee although the term Haliwa is gaining more acceptance as time goes on. This tribe appears from the research I have done, to be the remnants of the North Carolina Tuscaroras. In any case, it appears that the Haliwa are remnants of the neutral Tuscarora." Leading Cherokee professor Robert K Thomas in 1978 There was some media attention for this group when it misrepresented itself in saying it had tribal council review and approval for an approved loan for $700,000 and a $600,000 HUD grant for matching funds. The North Carolina Auditors became involved during this time.

The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation was recognized by the state of North Carolina February 4th 2002. Founded in 1984 as Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association. In 1995 it added Saponi to it's name.

Both the Indians of Person County/Sappony and the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe of North Carolina were at one time classified by some anthropologists as among groups known as tri-racial isolates. Members were observed to have (or claimed) European, African and Native American ancestry, to varying degree. Some such groups settled and created communities in frontier and border areas of the southern states.

These two communities each stressed cultural identification with historic American Indians. They acculturated new members in that tradition in the 19th century, a process known as ethnogenesis. Their applications for recognition as American Indian tribes were approved by the state of North Carolina in 1911 and 1965, respectively.

Some late 20th-century history and genealogical researchers have found that a high percentage of people identified as "free blacks" or "free people of color" (when there was no designation for Indian) in federal censuses from 1790–1810 in North Carolina were descended from families of people classified as free African Americans in colonial Virginia. This was documented through extensive research in colonial records of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay Colony, including court records, land deeds, wills and manumissions. Some free African Americans were descended from enslaved Africans freed as early as the mid-17th century. By the early decades of the 19th century, free families had many descendants.

At the time, the federal censuses had no classification for American Indian, and did not ask people with which culture they identified. Native Americans and some people of mixed-race Native American and European, or Native American and African descent, tended to be classified as mulatto or free people of color without regard to how they identified themselves. In some of the early Spanish and Portuguese colonies, mulatto meant mixed-race African and Native American, but under the English tradition, it came to mean persons of European and African ancestry. By contrast, in Maryland, for instance, the Catholic Church kept records that showed how its Indian parishioners identified themselves, regardless of their ethnic ancestry.

Most of the free African Americans in colonial Virginia were descended from unions of White women, indentured or free; and African or African-European/American men, indentured, free or slave. In many cases these free families migrated to frontier areas of Virginia and North Carolina before the end of the 18th century. Later some moved on to settle in frontier areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. Migrating to the frontier gave them the chance to purchase affordable land and avoid the social strictures of the coastal plantation areas. They were generally well accepted by neighbors. In some areas, the lighter-skinned descendants formed close communities in which they called themselves or were known as Indian, Portuguese or one of a variety of terms, such as Melungeon. In some cases, descendants married more into one or another of their ancestral communities, becoming increasingly white, black or Indian.

Given intermarriage, people of mixed race could have African American, Native American and European ancestry. The colonial and early United States governments generally failed to recognize how people identified culturally. Critics have contested the conclusions of researchers about the identity of the numerous free blacks or free people of color recorded at the turn of the 19th century.

Issues about identity became more confusing in the 20th century, as both North Carolina and Virginia adopted one-drop rules related to their racial segregation laws, which classified all people as either white or black (essentially, all other). They classified as black any person with any black ancestry, regardless of how small. Walter Ashby Plecker, the Registrar of Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics, became notable for issuing orders to change birth records of individuals whose families he had decided were trying to pass as Indian to avoid being classified as black. Due to his application of the Racial Integrity Act, records of many Native American-identified people were changed without their consent, and often without their knowledge.