Sissipahaw
Sissipahaw
Total population
Extinct
800[1] (1600)
Regions with significant populations
On Haw River in present-day Saxapahaw, North Carolina.[1] Possibly in South Carolina.[2]
Languages
Probably Siouan[1]
Religion
Native American religion
Related ethnic groups
Shakori,[1] Catawba[1]

The Sissipahaw or Haw were a Native American tribe of North Carolina. They are also variously recorded as Saxahapaw, Sauxpa, Sissipahaus, etc. Their settlements were generally located in the vicinity of modern-day Saxapahaw, North Carolina on the Haw River in Alamance County upstream from Cape Fear.[1] They are possibly first recorded by the Spaniard Vendera in the 16th century as the Sauxpa in South Carolina.[2] Their last mention in history is that the tribe joined the Yamasee against the English colonists in the Yamasee War of 1715.[3] Some scholars speculate that they may have been a branch of the Shakori due to being so closely associated with that tribe but others disagree with this assumption.[1][4]

Name

The meaning of sissipahaw is unknown but it probably derives from a Siouan language.[1] Colonel John Barnwell reported in a letter that the Sissipahaw were called Shacioes by some during the Tuscarora War.[4] Linguist Ives Goddard proposed that this may be the Sissipahaw's endonym but acknowledged the impossibility of ascertaining how Barnwell actually spelled the term due his letter surviving only as a copy.[4]

History

The Sissipahaw were possibly first encountered and recorded as the Sauxpa by the Spanish officer Vandera in 1569 as a placed visited by the explorer Juan Pardo.[1] If true, this would imply a historic migration from coastal South Carolina.[4] However, in the opinion of Goddard, this assumption is unfounded and primarily based on a misreading of a nineteenth century rendering of "Sauapa" which itself is likely a misrendering of "Sanapa".[4] Regardless, the tribe is later referred to as the Sissipahau in 1701 by English explorer John Lawson, who had likely heard of them as living on the Haw River from his guide, Enoe Will, the chief of the Shakori.[5] Will had a Sissipahaw servant or slave, who traveled alongside he and Lawson.[5][3] On January 28, 1712, during the Tuscarora War, an army of four hundred and fifty natives and thirty three white men are noted to have rested at a recently abandoned Sissipahaw town on the Neuse River.[6] The final mention of the tribe is in 1715, when they united with other tribes of the region to fight against the English in the Yamasee War.[1][3] It is thought that the Sissipahaw, along with other remnants of Siouan tribes, joined the Catawba after the war.[1] In 1728, the site of the former Sissipahaw village was known as the Haw old fields and was noted as being the largest body of fertile land in the region.[3] Present-day Saxapahaw, North Carolina probably corresponds to the site of these old fields.[3]

A c. 1724 annotated copy of a deerskin Catawba map of the tribes between Charleston (left) and Virginia (right) following the displacements of a century of disease and enslavement and the 1715–7 Yamasee War. The Sissipahaw are labelled as "Saxippaha".

Culture

Very little is known of the Sissipahaw, aside from a few notes in history. Archaeological evidence from Alamance County indicates that the Sissipahaw, much like the Shakori, lived in wigwam-like structures, farmed corn and beans, and hunted the woods for turkey, venison, and bear.[citation needed]

The Haw River area was the homeland of the Sissipahaw Tribe

Language

While the Sissipahaw were probably of the Siouan linguistic family, their language is extinct, with no words being known.[1] Four numbers attributed to the Sissipahaw are given by the historian, Sallie Walker Stockard, in The History of Alamance, however, these numbers appear to be taken from John Lawson's word list of "Tuskeruro" which has been identified as the first substantial documentation of the Tuscarora language.[7][8][9]

Legacy

There is no recorded history of the Sissipahaw after the Yamasee War of 1715, other than to mention the tribe's participation against the English colonists.[6] Stockard states that the tribe is remembered through local names such as Haw River, Saxapahaw, and Altamahaw, North Carolina.[7] She also alleges the town of Ossipee, North Carolina derives its name from the tribe but the term "Ossipee" occurs in other states and has been thought to possibly derive from Abenaki.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Swanton, John Reed (1952). The Indian Tribes of North America. Genealogical Publishing Com. p. 84-85. ISBN 9780806317304. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  2. ^ a b Swanton, John Reed (1952). The Indian Tribes of North America. Genealogical Publishing Com. p. 100. ISBN 9780806317304. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  3. ^ a b c d e Mooney, James (1894). The Siouan Tribes of the East. Johnson Reprint Corporation. pp. 64–66. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e Goddard, Ives (2005). "The Indigenous Languages of the Southeast". Anthropological Linguistics. 47 (1): 25. ISSN 0003-5483. JSTOR 25132315. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  5. ^ a b Lawson, John (2010). A New Voyage to Carolina. BoD – Books on Demand. pp. 54–60. ISBN 978-3-86195-398-2. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  6. ^ a b Hicks, Theresa M.; Taukchiray, Wes (1998). South Carolina Indians, Indian Traders, and Other Ethnic Connections: Beginning in 1670. Spartanburg, SC: Reprint Company. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-87152-508-6. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  7. ^ a b Stockard, Sallie Walker (1900). The History of Alamance. Capital Printing Company.
  8. ^ Lawson, John (2010). A New Voyage to Carolina. BoD – Books on Demand. pp. 236–241. ISBN 978-3-86195-398-2. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  9. ^ Rudes, Blair A. (1 January 1999). Tuscarora-English/English-Tuscarora Dictionary. Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press. p. XV. ISBN 978-0-8020-4336-8. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  10. ^ Bright, William (2004). Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. p. 358. ISBN 978-0-8061-3598-4. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
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