The Sissipahaw or Haw were a Native American tribe of North Carolina. They are also variously recorded as ''Saxahapaw'', ''Sauxpa'', ''Sissipahaus'', etc. Their settlements were generally located in the vicinity of modern-day Saxapahaw, North Carolina on the Haw River in Alamance County upstream from Cape Fear. They are possibly first recorded by the

Spaniard Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex history, including a number of different languages, both ind ...

Vendera in the 16th century as the ''Sauxpa'' in South Carolina. Their last mention in history is that the tribe joined the Yamasee against the English colonists in the

Yamasee War The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee and a number of other allied Native American peoples, includ ...

of 1715. Some scholars speculate that they may have been a branch of the

Shakori The Shakori were an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. They were thought to be a Siouan people, closely allied with other nearby tribes such as the Eno and the Sissipahaw. As their name is also recorded as Shaccoree, they can be co ...

due to being so closely associated with that tribe but others disagree with this assumption.

Name

The meaning of ''sissipahaw'' is unknown but it probably derives from a Siouan language. Colonel John Barnwell reported in a letter that the Sissipahaw were called Shacioes by some during the Tuscarora War. Linguist Ives Goddard proposed that this may be the Sissipahaw's

endonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...

but acknowledged the impossibility of ascertaining how Barnwell actually spelled the term due his letter surviving only as a copy.

History

The Sissipahaw were possibly first encountered and recorded as the ''Sauxpa'' by the Spanish officer Vandera in 1569 as a placed visited by the explorer Juan Pardo. If true, this would imply a historic migration from coastal South Carolina. However, in the opinion of Goddard, this assumption is unfounded and primarily based on a misreading of a nineteenth century rendering of "Sauapa" which itself is likely a misrendering of "Sanapa". Regardless, the tribe is later referred to as the ''Sissipahau'' in 1701 by English explorer John Lawson, who had likely heard of them as living on the Haw River from his guide, Enoe Will, the chief of the

. Will had a Sissipahaw servant or slave, who traveled alongside he and Lawson. On January 28, 1712, during the Tuscarora War, an army of four hundred and fifty natives and thirty three white men are noted to have rested at a recently abandoned Sissipahaw town on the Neuse River. The final mention of the tribe is in 1715, when they united with other tribes of the region to fight against the English in the

. It is thought that the Sissipahaw, along with other remnants of Siouan tribes, joined the Catawba after the war. In 1728, the site of the former Sissipahaw village was known as the Haw old fields and was noted as being the largest body of fertile land in the region. Present-day Saxapahaw, North Carolina probably corresponds to the site of these old fields. Indians NW of South Carolina

Culture

Very little is known of the Sissipahaw, aside from a few notes in history. Archaeological evidence from Alamance County indicates that the Sissipahaw, much like the Shakori, lived in wigwam-like structures, farmed corn and beans, and hunted the woods for turkey, venison, and bear.

Language

While the Sissipahaw were probably of the Siouan linguistic family, their language is extinct, with no words being known. Four numbers attributed to the Sissipahaw are given by the historian Sallie Walker Stockard in ''The History of Alamance'', however, these numbers appear to be taken from John Lawson's word list of "Tuskeruro" which has been identified as the first substantial documentation of the Tuscarora language.

Legacy

There is no recorded history of the Sissipahaw after the

of 1715, other than to mention the tribe's participation against the English colonists. Stockard states that the tribe is remembered through local names such as Haw River,

Saxapahaw Saxapahaw ()
from the North Carolina Collection's website at the

, and Altamahaw, North Carolina. She also alleges the town of

Ossipee, North Carolina Ossipee is an incorporated town in northwestern Alamance County in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Ossipee is one of the newer municipalities in the state, as it was incorporated officially on December 9, 2002. It was part of the Altamahaw-Ossi ...

derives its name from the tribe but the term "Ossipee" occurs in other states and has been thought to possibly derive from Abenaki.

References

{{authority control Native American tribes in North Carolina Siouan peoples Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands Extinct Native American peoples Extinct languages of North America Languages extinct in the 18th century