by Scott Collins
saponi360@yahoo.com
1 May 2008
Saponi Commentary on Tribal Recognition
The current government and tribal systems in place for Federal recognition of Native American tribes is inadequate, illogical, and destructive. The policies practiced, both in the past and present, destroy Native American Indian communities and families via blood quantification, tribal sovereignty, and paradoxical definitions.
Blood quantification for race is an illogical and unscientific method of determining tribal affiliation. Looking at what genetics show us in heredity, it can be deduced that a person does not necessarily express fifty percent of their DNA from each parent exclusively. This is due to “variability arising from independent assortment”, which creates “new gene combinations”. Genes are not “parceled out in mathematically precise combinations” (Marieb 1148-1149). The policy of blood-quantum can therefore be shown as a way to extinguish Native claims to tribal status and bolster racial policies hidden within tribal sovereignty issues. This policy specifically targets mixed blood Native American Indians and is a way to restrict access, recognition, and membership. Katel poignantly points out that tribes are no longer obligated to use blood-quantum established in 1932 “ by the Indian Affairs Commission”, but that it is endemic in tribal constitutions (Katel 379).
The Saponi tribe of the Siouan Nations came from the Ohio River valley. They belonged to the Yesah, Santee linguistic branch of Siouan speakers, which migrated eastwardly between 1100 and 1200 A.D. Some Siouan groups migrated west to the Great Plains, some remained in the Ohio River Valley, and some settled into the Piedmont regions of the Appalachian Mountains. It is thought that the great wars between the Northern tribes, Iroquois and Algonquians, and the Southern tribes, the Muskogee, sandwiched and pushed large groups of the Siouan eastward into the forest where territory was claimed as common grounds for all tribes (Mooney 29).
The Saponi, Tutelo, Occaneechi, Nahyssan, Moneton, Monacan, and Manahoac make up the Tutelo linguistic division and Monacan Confederacy of tribes. During the time of colonization, beginning in 1607, most Native American Indians, in the eastern and northern forests, where evolving confederacies to strengthen and share in protection and resources. One key alliance was the Monacan Confederacy. The Monacan tribe held control of the eastern regions’ copper mines. The Powhatan, the Cherokee, and the Erie were dependent upon the Monacan for trade in copper. Powhatan took the opportunity to establish a treaty with the English in order to break the copper monopoly of the Monacans. It is perhaps the only reason that the English were able to establish Jamestown (Hantman 660-676).
The Catawba are another Siouan linguistic division directly related to the Tutelo division. The Catawba and Monacan were important strategically for the colonies. The Monacan Confederacy was used to buffer the colonies on the north against the Iroquois and was a port of entry to the South. The Catawba held the Southern trade routes of the Occaneechi Trading Path and buffered against the tribes to the south and west, such as the Cherokee and Creek, and helping to confederate other Siouan tribes to act as buffer nations on the early frontier often mustering warriors to attack interior Indians for the colonial government (Merrell 1-16).
The records from the Colonial Era into the Revolution Era began to take shape in the 1740’s and 50’s. We can pick up certain family groups in the census and land records of the time. The Collins family is one such family that figures into the history of the Saponi. In 1742, Orange county, VA, Saponi men were arrested for utilizing a slash and burn agricultural technique used to clear planting grounds and create meadows for deer and turkey to browse. The charge was made that these Saponi men were terrifying a colonial named Lawrence Strouther (Orange County, VA 309). Two of the men brought into court were John Collins and John Collins, Jr. It is still controversial in some quarters, however the John Collins in the Orange county court case and the one later in Grayson County, VA, son of Old Thomas Collins and 1st cousin to Vardy Collins of Newman’s Ridge, son of William Collins brother to Old Thomas, are believed to be the same people. DNA testing has proven a male direct line, linking the John Collins and Vardy Collins lines. These are two separate labs scientifically coming to the same results; Relative Genetics: Collins DNA Project and Family Tree DNA: The Core Melungeon DNA Project (Jeskie and Family Tree DNA). Having traced out all the other John Collins lines, I can only come to the same conclusions.
Moving forward from genealogical data, census, land, court, military, and church records along with family oral tradition; we can logically deduce the correlative heritage between the Collins family and the Saponi. Known under several racial labels, this family migrated as needs arose; doing so for the sake of survival. Any group of people will migrate to gain employment, economic opportunity, to escape racial prejudice, or to escape untenable laws which restrict normal living. The Collins family is a well researched break away band of the Saponi tribe. In a letter to a Mrs. Stallard of Coeburn, VA, Robert K. Thomas, a well known Cherokee field ethnographer, states that, “As far as I can determine, all the Collins of Northeastern Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, and Eastern Kentucky are descendants of one household of Collins who resided in Orange County, N.C. in 1760; a family of Saponi Indians. I know that it must be mind boggling to imagine that the thousands of Collins in your area are all descended from just one household, but such is the case. Further, this is not too amazing as it sounds its common among pre-Revolutionary American families” (Thomas).
Over the course of time the Collins family migrated out in several directions. The contacts in this family remain, to the present, through family reunions, letters, email, family web-pages and family associations. The ability to maintain Indian identity became a matter of family tradition and not one of criteria and reservation living. The Salyersville Indians are a part of the Collins story as the family migrated westwards. Dr. Richard Allen Carlson states, “Salyersville Indian identity is the product of cumulative historical actions guided by specific socio-cultural processes that subvert notions regarding race, class, ethnicity, religiosity, or political affiliation” (Carlson 3). He continues on explaining that the community standard became more complex as the tribe filtered out into the country side, integrating and assimilating into white society, however, keeping a form of community through strong family ties and traditions.
Defining a community may not seem like a difficult task when utilizing standard and simple dictionary terms. However, some communities are diverse, complex, and are not easily defined under government policies. Community may be classed into definitions that are empirical and abstract. The meaning of community may change between these two polar opposites when government policy conflicts or agrees with the community in question.
“Community”, as defined by The American Heritage College Dictionary, is “A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government . . . A group or class having common interests”. Contrast Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, which states, “a group of people with a common characteristic or interest, living together within a larger society . . . a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interest”.
The U.S. government policy that defines Native American communities uses definitions such as, “A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government” (“community”American). In this definition a community is defined by the geographic location and further qualified through a common governing body.
In the historical context, the Saponi never had a specific micro-geographic location or a micro-political body operating autonomously. It would be more appropriate to maintain that the Saponi shared a regional geo-political range they themselves called Amanishuck and moved around within those bounds as the need or inclination arose. Saponi government was decentralized. Decisions were made on the basis of consensus by the family, clan, tribe, and even the confederacy to which the tribe belonged. The complexity this presents shows the basic need for context in understanding how and why the Saponi and all descendent groups should be recognized. Moving through time and circumstance, the Saponi would find their self removed from their historic region and into the regions of other tribes. Whether farther along South, East, or West, by migrating out and joining surrounding tribes, they were following a more abstract pattern of community. Such an abstraction would be like the one Merriam-Webster denotes as “a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society” (“community” Merriam).
Communities can be separated by geography and still maintain a “common interest” in preserving cultural heritage (“community”American). In this manner they have not ceased to be a community by separate geographic locations. They have maintained their sense of community in an abstract manner and not the empirical one the U.S. government decides to impose over a mobile population. Often during the Colonial Era, and into the 1800’s, Native American tribes became so decimated by hostilities that a tribe would break apart into bands or family groups. Migrating to safe havens, they would wait until they could either return or decide to move completely out of the theater of violence. In some cases these groups or bands dispersed into and with the settler communities that sprang up. Anthropologists use the terms etic and emic to help further define a community. The etic view would be that which arises from outside communities. The emic view would be that which arises from within the community; its self view. While self determination is a right all Americans enjoy, the Salyersville Indian community emically identified themselves as a community of Native Americans as others outside the community etically defined them as such. The Salyersville community and the outside community had the same definition, but the governments’ definition differs enough to exclude, thus failing the added criterion of “continuous community” as stated in 25 CFR 83.7: Procedures for Establishing that an American Indian Group exists as an Indian Tribe (25 USCS 83.7, 2008).
When a tribe in modern times seeks to gain recognition with the U.S. government, the petitioning tribe must show an empirical standard of community continuity. This standard, although correct by definition, may not be the best method for determining tribal status. The reversal of the dispossession of Native American tribes can only occur when the definition of community is understood from the prospective of situational and historical contexts. The stern deductive logic of community definition used by the U.S. government, therefore, loses its saliency and tumultuously splits families into factions. These families very often live in separate states or perhaps across the continent.
The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (west), and the Eastern Cherokee of North Carolina, although split by geography half a continent away from one another, never lost their community from the distance imposed upon them. They maintained familial and cultural ties that spanned the distance and continue to make their Nations one community, “a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests” (“community”Merriam). The government policies of the past and the present define community in such an empirical way that it discounts the historical context and present thinking of many Native American communities.
Tribal sovereignty, in the United States, is paradoxical in that Native American Indian tribes exist in their sovereignty as dependents of the federal government. Their sovereignty is limited by the policies of recognition, funding, and legislative whim. The use of sovereignty rights are often denied when substantive issues are being addressed as to the care and welfare of the tribal members. Used as a weapon to deny the legitimate birthright of descendents that may fall outside of the criteria, replete with paradoxical definitions of community, blood quantum, or geographic bias; tribal inner circles in the leadership often continue the government bias in order to secure monetary gains or press their personal agendas. Russel L. Barsh and James Youngblood Henderson in their book “The Road” show my assessment to be correct on membership of tribes and the way that membership was handled traditionally. They also agree that the U.S. governments’ policies influenced the uses of blood-quantum by tribal governments and impressing “. . . itself on the ideology of tribalists.” These authors also go on to state that “tribalists prefer a repressed tribal society . . . They do what they can to perpetuate reservations and the laws that maintain them . . . also unavoidably the racial theories that justify the laws” (Barsh and Henderson 244-245).
These actions cleave Native communities and families creating rifts that can last generations. The Saponi, along with other Southeastern Siouan tribes, are good examples of denial to recognize based on erroneous and fallacious government policies. Colonial, state, and federal documents can clearly show proof and evidence of the valid claims of these tribes and descendents. Instead of trying to understand the historical context of survival within these communities; the government suppresses context in favor of dogmatic criteria. This criterion has its basis in the Allotment Act and the Indian Reorganization Act, both utilizing as their basis, forced enrollments and round-ups during the removal period. They do not take into account the tribes that were scattered into the country prior to the Revolution, colonial treaties, Citizen Indians; the federal governments’ success at assimilation, those who escaped the Trail of Tears, and the systematic paper genocide that became policy for smaller scattered tribes in the Southeast.
Peter Katel in his work American Indians speaks about the issues of self-determination and how “Red Power”, the activism effort to secure Native American rights, directly impacted the governments’ policies. He states, “Amid the surging Indian activism, the federal government was trying to make up for the past by encouraging tribal self-determination. In 1975, Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which channeled federal contracts and grants directly to tribes, reducing the BIA role and effectively putting Indian communities in direct charge of schools, health, housing and other programs”. Was this a dodge by the government in effect abrogating treaty responsibility? In opting out and limiting government interference did the government actually make the system worse? Katel goes on to illustrate the supposed sincere approach of Washington stating, “And to assure Indians that the era of sudden reversals in federal policy had ended, the House in 1988 passed a resolution reaffirming the “constitutionally recognized government-to-government relationship with Indian tribes.” Separate legislation set up a “self-governance demonstration project” in which eligible tribes would sign “compacts” to run their own governments with block grants from the federal government. By 1993, 28 tribes had negotiated compacts with the Interior Department. And in 1994, President Bill Clinton signed legislation that made self-governance a permanent option” (Katel 361-384). By taking out supervision the government allowed corruption to take control fostering competition and rivalry within the Native communities.
Shawn Zeller, in CQ Weekly, shows a prime example in the dangers of power afforded to out of control leadership. The tribal membership of the Cherokee Nation became an issue when the Nation kicked off the Freedman from their rolls. In reaction to this alleged break in treaty terms, the U.S. government began to have hearings concerning the legality of this act and possible economic sanctions. Zeller states, “Cherokee Chief Chad Smith has made several trips to Capitol Hill this year to lobby against any such legislation. He has visited more than 60 offices, arguing that Congress has no cause for tampering with tribal sovereignty. “One of the foundations of tribal sovereign government is that we have the right to decide on our own citizenship,” says Cherokee spokesman Mike Miller” (Zeller 3524). Perhaps the sovereignty rights issue and the policies of the U.S. government created the problems seen in both the Cherokee and Seminole cases in which a minority in the tribal government decides to cut off large groups of Native Americans in favor of monetary gains. In giving the right to define tribal membership, the pitfall of denial for Native Americans will ultimately fall into the hands of unscrupulous Native leaders setting up a money machine for self interests. This leaves the fate of the many in the hands of a few and underscores the need for oversight and basic defining terms that are fair and true to the heritage.
It is easier for the government to set up a system, where in, over the course of three or four generations, a people become bred out by way of marriages to outsiders of the community. It is mathematically impossible for a people to maintain full blood status when the majority of tribal people are mixed bloods. Further, why waste time, money, and man power to keep the system running when you can make it look politically correct by placing the people in question at the head of the process. Tribal sovereignty and programs implemented to allow Native Americans to “run their own affairs” become an escape from responsibility while continuing the process of slow genocide. Like the Jews in the concentration camps, those which became supervisors and guards to their annihilation, the Native American privileged get to aid the state in wiping themselves out. Being fooled that they are participating in implementation of reforms, the only real reform is that the state is allowing the complicity of these privileged few to maintain the blood-quantum rule and make a mockery of Native tradition and history in government paradox. If you can whittle a persons’ blood-quantum down to one sixty fourth you can re-label them as non-Natives, and thusly refuse services, restrict enrollment, and make the slice of economic entitlements larger for those left. In some cases this can apply without the blood-quantum rules. In the policy that allows tribes to set their own standards for enrollment and under the heavy hand of biased leadership, this effectually excludes the majority of the tribe.
Joane Nagels’ work, American Indian Ethnic Renewal, speaks about outspoken critics of blood-quantum and tribal sovereignty. M.A. Jaimes, in regards to blood-quantum and the American Indian Arts and Crafts Act, states that this is a “contemporary reassertion of eugenics principles”. Nagel shows that Jack D. Forbes believes it to be an “intrusion of authorities into the ethnic designation process a violation of “the human right of ethnic self-identification”. Forbes goes on to state that the authorities should not infringe upon this basic right. Nagel follows up by saying, blood-quantum “when applied by the Federal government . . . tends to heighten tension among Native Americans, creating disunity and suspicion” (Nagel 244).
Community must have real meaning whether we use its empirical definition or its abstraction. The government definition is contrary to the policies of self determination and is exclusionary to a people which it governs through the use of U.S. Code Title 25. There are portions which are contradictory with other government agency definitions. Contradictions between the Office of Federal Acknowledgments’ definitions and the U.S. Code Title 25 would be a good example. These paradoxes can be found in U.S. Code: Title 25 450b: Definitions, Part A: Indian Self Determination, and 25 CFR 83.7: Procedures for Establishing that an American Indian Group exists as an Indian Tribe (25 USCS 83.7, 25 USCS 450b, and Part A, 2008).
The definitions of community change congruently with government policy creating a definition paradox. In order to fairly assess tribal continuity the government must first utilize a more stable use of terms that incorporate context, both historical and practical. These definitions must not encumber or dismantle the communities they seek to define or acknowledge. To do so would be a logical fallacy and a further injustice. The most logical definition of community takes all definitions into account and utilizes them based on context and surrounding data. This is how the English language, and community itself, works, evolves, and survives posterity. Community is a grouping of people, animals, objects, environments, and a combination of these, which form relationships, one with the other, either in an empirical form or an abstract form giving definition to, or insight about, their classification.
Currently there are no references in published Native American histories that reflect the true scope of Saponi and Southeastern Siouan heritage. Many reference the Saponi as a side note relegating them to be classified as an extinct tribe of the Southeast. Factually, this is a misnomer and caused by the laziness of historians to do the homework necessary in telling the Southeastern Siouan tribal history. Most references state that the Saponi moved north with the Tutelo to join the Six Nations. In actuality part of the Saponi left prior to the Tutelo movement north, and it was the Tutelo alone whom joined the Six Nations.
The Collins Saponi went west into North Carolina along the Yadkin and New Rivers and from there into Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri and Texas. Some Saponi stayed in the areas they had been in, moving around in familiar localities. Some of the Saponi went to the Catawba in South Carolina before making their way back up north and from thence outward into the various communities. These family groups can be traced through the official records residing in what would later be called tri-racial communities. The Occaneechi, the High Plains Sappony, and the Haliwa are Saponi groups that have state recognition. Of these, the High Plains Sappony is the group that remains in the actual historic area that the Saponi were commonly found during some of the first exploration of the interior. The Ohio Saponi, the Missouri Saponi, Saponi Descendents Association, Eastern Siouan Descendents Association, and the Fort Christanna Saponi-Occoneechee Indians are among those Saponi people that have been chewed up and spat out by the recognition process.
Although these groups do not fit the governments’ faulty criteria, they never the less have the proof in genealogy, DNA, and historical records to back their claims. There are close kinships between the Lumbee/Chowan, Waccamaw Siouan, Salyersville Indian community, Carmel Indian community, Peedee tribe, and a litany of survival descendents that make up what have come to be known as tri-racial isolate communities like the Melungeons, Brass Ankles, and the Ramapo Mountain People. Regardless of predominant phonotypical appearances, whether African, Indian, or Caucasian, these groups embrace their heritage and maintain their Indian identity in the face of skeptics and the recognition machine.
Often many of the Saponi descendants have been played one against the other in a legitimacy game, a vicious cycle, played all too well by government and tribal agencies. Most of these people only seek to be recognized as the descendants of the Saponi, or other Southeastern Siouan tribes, and perhaps to seek grants for school, health care, and revitalization programs to reinforce their beleaguered cultural heritage. With the procession of time, all the tribes in the United States will, under the current system, face the same fate that the Saponi faced long ago. The Saponi lost their reservation in the middle of the 1700’s prior to the American Revolution. Once the land base was taken away, and the ethnic relabeling efforts began, the historical notation of the Saponi became a minor footnote in the history books of America.
Blood-quantum, will in time, take every tribe down the same path. What happens to one strand of the spider’s web will affect the entire web. When enough strands have been destroyed the whole web will collapse. The federal government policies, and in many cases tribal, seek to destroy the greater Native American community. The process for recognition is inadequate in serving the communities in question and alienates families. Tribal sovereignty becomes a red-herring in the survival of Native American Indians and creates an atmosphere of pernicious competition. Through racial relabeling, equivocation, blood-quantum, and recognition criteria, which is out of context; the federal government is compliant with cultural genocide. The current government and tribal systems in place for Federal recognition is inadequate, illogical, and destructive. The policies practiced destroy Native American Indian communities and families via blood quantification, tribal sovereignty, and paradoxical definitions.
Works Cited:
Barsh, Russel Lawrence, and James Youngblood Henderson. “The Road: Indian Tribes and Political Liberty.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Carlson, Richard Allen, Jr. “Who’s Your People?: Cumulative Identity Among the
Salyersville Indian Population of Kentucky’s Appalachia and the Midwest Muckfields, 1677-2000, Vol. I.” Diss. Michigan State University, 2003.
“Community.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003.
“Community.” The American Heritage College Dictionary. 4th college ed. 2007.
Family Tree DNA. Genealogy by Genetics, Ltd. The Core Melungeon DNA Project. 2001. 7 April 2008 http://www.familytreedna.com/public/coremelungeon/.
Hantman, Jeffrey L. “Between Powhatan and Quirank: Reconstructing Monacan Culture and History in the Context of Jamestown.” American Anthropologist 92 (1990): 660-676
Jeskie, Emily. Letter to the author. 23 August 2007.
Katel, Peter. “American Indians.” CQ Researcher, 16, 2006: 361-384.
Marieb, Elaine N., and Katja Hoehn. Human Anatomy & Physiology. 7th ed. San Francisco: Pearson, 2007: 1148-1149.
Merrell, James H. “The Catawbas.” Indians of North America. Ed. Frank W. Porter. Vol. 7. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. 1-16.
Nagel, Joane. “American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture.” New York: Oxford University, 1996.
Orange County, VA. Order Book 3. 1741-1743. 309. Virginia State Archive. Orange County, VA Microfilm Reel 31, 309.
Thomas, Robert K. Letter to Kerri Conley. 12 August 1980.
Zeller, Shawn. “Tribal Wrongs? The Cherokee Raise Racial Ruckus on the Hill.” CQ Weekly 65 (2007): 3524.
