Gathering celebrates Indian (Native American) Heritage
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A gathering in Virginia was attended by a few hundred people celebrating their Native American Indian heritage in Virginia according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
It was homecoming weekend, and Barry Carter’s tribe put on its Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee American Indian demonstration.
They continue to give a background of the areas that the tribes lands encompassed in Virginia and North Carolina.
In 1714, the tribe’s land was taken and they were regulated to a 23,757-acre Siouan Indian reservation in current-day Brunswick County called Fort Christanna. Within a couple of generations, the reservation was gone although many Indians continued to live in the area.
The Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee tribe was based in Mecklenburg and Brunswick counties.
Much of Virginia was Siouan territory, of which Carter’s tribe is part.
There are many Siouan tribes, communities and individuals still living in the piedmont of Virginia and North Carolina, Carter said. They include the Haliwa-Saponi in neighboring Warren County, N.C., the Sappony in neighboring Person County, N.C., the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, the Eno-Occoneechee and the Monacan. In addition there are many thousands of people of Siouan ancestry that are not part of any tribe or are from communities all over Southside Virginia.