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Pow Woodland societies , which could be reflected in fewer sites , with longer occupation ranges (Trawick Ward , pers . comm . ) . Settlements remained small and widely dispersed during the Late Prehistoric Period (A . D . 1000 to 1600) , with village sites generally found on the floodplains of the Eno and Haw Rivers and on knolls and ridges. bordering the larger creeks (Davis and Ward 1991 ) . In the first several centuries of this period , Native American life greatly resembled life in Woodland times . People lived in small groups along rivers and streams . The Hogue Site (31Or233 ) , located along the Eno River in Hillsborough , is one such example of a Late Prehistoric Period hamlet. This sparsely populated site contained only a few houses built with wooden posts and some underground storage pits . Archaeological research suggests that village locations changed every few years . Settlements that were more compact characterized later sites from this period , but to date there is no evidence of long-term occupation on these sites . The latter part of the Late Prehistoric Period , between about A . D . 1400 to 1600 , was characterized by palisaded villages of fifteen to twenty households , with smaller hamlets of scattered households located near valleys or on nearby uplands . The Siouan tribes , who inhabited these villages and hamlets , practiced a mixed subsistence strategy of agriculture , hunting , and gathering . The Wall Site (310r1 I ) ., an example of one of these Protohistoric villages (dating to the fifteenth century) , has been extensively excavated by the Research Laboratories of Archaeology (Dickens , Ward and Davis 1987) . Round houses were spaced closely together around a central open area . A wooden palisade surrounded the entire town, which was home to between 150 and 200 people . The inhabitants raised corn, squash , and beans , and hunted deer , turkey , and other game . European and Native American contact in Orange County began in the mid- seventeenth century , and European trade goods are commonly recovered on sites dating from this period . The Jenrette Site (31Or231a) , occupied between around 1650 to 1680 , is the earliest excavated Orange County site to show evidence of such trade (Ward and Davis 1993 ) . A later Siouan palisaded village (Fredricks Site--31Or231 ) was occupied between around 1680 and 1710 (Dickens , Ward and Davis 1987) . The Fredricks , Jenrette , and Wall sites all lie within a bend of the Eno just southeast of Hillsborough . Not only was the soil there fertile from periodic flooding , but the river also afforded protection on three sides . Additionally , the sites were located along two transportation routes : the river and the trading path . This trading path , which extended from Virginia to Georgia , bisected Orange County and Native American settlements clustered along it . It served as the main artery for Native-American trade , as well as later becoming a conduit for European American travel into the Carolinas . The positioning of these settlements along the trading path helped the Occaneechi to gain a pivotal role m the fur trade (Dickens , Ward and Davis 1987) . Contact with European-Americans remained sporadic until the third quarter of the seventeenth century . It was only then that the indigenous peoples of the North Carolina Piedmont experienced decimation from Old World diseases such as smallpox (Ward and Davis 1991 ) . By the mid-eighteenth century , there were virtually no Native-Americans remaining in Orange County . 5