Sissipahaw

The meaning of sissipahaw is unknown but it probably derives from a Siouan language.[1] Colonel John Barnwell reported in a letter that the Sissipahaw were called Shacioes by some during the Tuscarora War.[4] Linguist Ives Goddard proposed that this may be the Sissipahaw's endonym but acknowledged the impossibility of ascertaining how Barnwell actually spelled the term due his letter surviving only as a copy.[4]

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.[1] If true, this would imply a historic migration from coastal South Carolina.[4] 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".[4] 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 Shakori.[5] Will had a Sissipahaw servant or slave, who traveled alongside he and Lawson.[5][3] 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.[6] 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 Yamasee War.[1][3] It is thought that the Sissipahaw, along with other remnants of Siouan tribes, joined the Catawba after the war.[1] 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.[3] Present-day Saxapahaw, North Carolina probably corresponds to the site of these old fields.[3]

A c. 1724 annotated copy of a deerskin Catawba map of the tribes between Charleston (left) and Virginia (right) following the displacements of a century of disease and enslavement and the 1715–7 Yamasee War. The Sissipahaw are labelled as "Saxippaha".

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.

The Haw River area was the homeland of the Sissipahaw Tribe

While the Sissipahaw were probably of the Siouan linguistic family, their language is extinct, with no words being known.[1] 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.[7][8][9]

There is no recorded history of the Sissipahaw after the Yamasee War of 1715, other than to mention the tribe's participation against the English colonists.[6] Stockard states that the tribe is remembered through local names such as Haw River, Saxapahaw, and Altamahaw, North Carolina.[7] She also alleges the town of Ossipee, North Carolina derives its name from the tribe but the term "Ossipee" occurs in other states and has been thought to possibly derive from Abenaki.[10]