Orange County NC Website
cloth, of which a yard and a half makes a matchcoat or mantile fit for their wear; <br /> as also axes , hoes , knives , sitars , and all sorts of edg ' d tools . Guns , poweder and <br /> shot , etc . are commodities they will greatly barter for (Alvord and Bidgood <br /> 1912 .9169470 as quoted in Stine 1990 : 18 ) . <br /> It is interesting that Lederer contrasted these "neighbor'' Indians to "further" Native <br /> Americans . These "further" groups were more interested in personal items for trade, <br /> such as "small looking glasses , picyures, beads and braclets of glass , knives, sitars , all <br /> manner of gaudy toys and knacks for their children" and other decorative and functional <br /> items ( Stine 1990018) . <br /> Lederer ' s accounts demonstrate that a well-established trading path was in <br /> existence , called the "Great Path, " the "Great Trading Path, " and/or the "Occaneechi <br /> Path" or "Occaneechi Trail" (Hargrove 1986 : 3742 ; Stine 1990 : 18 ) . It is unknown when <br /> this trade route was established, but it undoubtedly dates to prehistoric times . In the late <br /> seventeenth- century it extended for about 500 miles . It began in Piedmont Virginia (near <br /> modern Petersburg) in the vicinity of the trading post Fort Henry on the James River. <br /> From there it turned south and westward, eventually winding through the Eno River <br /> Valley (modern Hillsborough) , and then headed west by southwest to the villages of the <br /> Catawba Nation (near modern Rock Hill, South Carolina) (Merrell 1989 ; Meyer <br /> 1928 : 775 - 779 ; Stine 1990 : 184 9) . The importance of this trade route is suggested by the <br /> decision to illustrate the route on an early eighteenth-century map of the region (Figure <br /> 2) . Caravans of Virginia traders "with fifteen or more hired traders and sometimes more <br /> than one hundred pack horses loaded with trading goods brought from Europe each year <br /> traversed this route and brought back great quantities of light furs- beaver, otter, and <br /> muskrat" (Phillips 1961 : 177) 8 <br /> In 1670, the explorer Lederer stopped briefly at the village of the Shakori, which <br /> has been tentatively identified as the Jenrette archaeological site (31OR23Ia) in nearby <br /> Hillsborough (Davis and Ward 1991 * 45 ; see also Cross 1979) . The last Indian occupants <br /> of the upper Eno River basin are represented by the Jenrette phase (A. D . 1600 - 1680) <br /> and the Fredricks phase (A. D . 1680 - 1710) , both phases defined through RLA <br /> excavations near Hillsborough. Their investigations have shown that seventeenth- century <br /> Native Americans were again living in a small, palisaded village (Jenrette Site) along the <br /> Eno River (A. D . 1600- 1710) . These villagers seem to have preferred plain pottery, <br /> although some pots were decorated (brushed, or roughly smoothed, or corncob <br /> impressed, or simple stamped) . Jenrette phase sites tend to include European trade items <br /> such as beads , tobacco pipes , and gun-related artifacts (Davis and Ward 1991 : 45 ) . <br /> In 1676 , about six years after Lederer's visit, a number of refugee Indian groups in <br /> the north sought sanctuary near the Occaneechi Indian settlement along the Path on the <br /> Roanoke River (near the present boundary between Virginia and North Carolina) . These <br /> groups included the Saponi, displaced from their homes on the Rivanna and Otter Rivers <br /> to the north, the Tutelo from the upper Roanoke River, and the Conestoga. Warfare <br /> erupted between the Occaneechi and the Conestoga, and the latter were driven out . Later <br /> in the same year , the Saponi, Occaneechi and others were in turn driven out of the <br /> Roanoke River valley by a force of Virginians under Nathaniel Bacon, who opposed the <br /> Occaneechi control of the Trading Path ' s ford over the Roanoke River. The Occaneechi <br /> 8 <br />