Orange County NC Website
DocuSign Envelope ID:D5941DC8-4A54-4A7E-A6CC-6D885C3C8F1B <br /> VICKIE JEFFERIES-Native American Storyteller <br /> Vickie Jeffereies is a member of the Occaneechi Band of the <br /> Saponi Nation—OBSN for short—is a small Indian community <br /> located primarily in the old settlement of Little Texas, Pleasant <br /> Grove Township, Alamance County, North Carolina. <br /> She works at UNC Hospitals and has agreed to share stories and history of the <br /> Ocaneechi community with the hospitalized children there. <br /> History--Until the middle part of the 20th century, the community was largely occupied in <br /> agricultural pursuits, sometimes supplemented by day wage labor jobs or jobs in nearby <br /> factories. In recent decades the numbers of people engaged full or part time in <br /> agriculture has declined significantly, and most working adults in the community now <br /> work in offices, or as skilled workers and craftsmen, or in the few remaining factories in <br /> the area. <br /> The OBSN community is a lineal descendant of the Saponi and related Indians who <br /> occupied the Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia in pre-contact times, and <br /> specifically of those Saponi and related Indians who formally became tributary to <br /> Virginia under the Treaties of Middle Plantation in 1677 and 1680, and, who under the <br /> subsequent treaty of 1713 with the Colony of Virginia agreed to join together as a single <br /> community. This confederation formed a settlement at Fort Christianna along the <br /> Virginia/North Carolina border in what is now Brunswick County, Virginia. The <br /> confederation included the Saponi proper, the Occaneechi, the Eno, the Tutelo, and <br /> elements of other related communities such as the Cheraw. All of these communities <br /> were remnants of much larger Siouan communities that had lived in North Carolina and <br /> Virginia in prehistoric times. <br />