Named event or history
The living community: state recognition in 2002, the tribal lands near Pleasant Grove, and the nation’s own telling of its history.
Starting source“State recognized in 2002. Siouan-speaking people. Settled here in "Texas" community in the 1790s. Tribal lands 1 mile east.”
State historical marker: G-142: Occaneechi Indian Tribe
35 indexed records are connected with this event.
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"Occaneechi people talk about their history and culture, about their sense of what it means to be Occaneechi. Their words, interwoven with images of past and present reveal the primary landmarks of Occaneechi identity, …
Occaneechi Town, also known as the Fredericks site, was excavated by archaeologists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The visual and descriptive information describes and interprets the buried remain…
Dated events connected with this event: sixteen of 22, the highlights and the earliest of the rest, in date order. See all 22 in the chronology →
Descendants of the Occaneechi, Saponi and related Siouan peoples living around the Little Texas settlement reorganized in 1984 as the Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association, with the aim of winning state recognition. The group has since been governed by an elected nine-member tribal council headed by a chair.
After years of genealogical and historical research, the Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association filed a petition for state recognition with the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs.
While its recognition petition was under review, the Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association changed its name to the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation.
John Jeffries planned the first annual powwow on the Eno River in downtown Hillsborough. The band now holds its annual powwow and fall festival on its tribal land in Alamance County.
People: John Blackfeather Jeffries
Jeffries chaired the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation from 1995 to 2000 and remained on its tribal council through 2020.
The Recognition Committee of the NC Commission of Indian Affairs voted to deny state recognition, finding the petitioners had not met five of the eight required criteria. The band then sought a contested case hearing, filed January 3, 1996.
IRS records list the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, based in Mebane, as a tax-exempt nonprofit since August 1996. The group had taken that name in 1994 and in January 1996 filed to contest the state Commission of Indian Affairs' denial of its petition for recognition.
Tribal members led by John "Blackfeather" Jeffries built a replica of the palisaded Occaneechi village beside the Eno River in Hillsborough, modelled on the site excavated by UNC archaeologists. The village fell into disrepair and was dismantled in 2003.
People: John Blackfeather Jeffries
After a contested case hearing that ran from February 1997 to July 1998, an administrative law judge recommended that the Commission of Indian Affairs grant the Occaneechi Band tribal recognition.
At a June 11, 1999 hearing the Commission of Indian Affairs voted against the administrative law judge's recommendation, and on July 11 it issued a Final Agency Decision denying the petition. The band appealed to Orange County Superior Court on August 16, 1999, which affirmed the denial.
The Court of Appeals reversed the Orange County Superior Court and held that because the Commission of Indian Affairs missed its statutory deadline, the administrative law judge's recommendation for recognition became the final agency decision by operation of law. It remanded the case for an order consistent with that holding.
Following the 2001 appeals ruling, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation became the eighth tribe officially recognized by the State of North Carolina through the Commission of Indian Affairs.
In 2002, the year North Carolina recognized the tribe, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation began buying back ancestral land through the Occaneechi Homeland Preservation Project. Its first purchase, a 25-acre parcel in Alamance County, followed in 2004, and a later phase funded by the NC Tobacco Trust Fund planned heritage farms linked to the tribe's reconstructed 1680 village.
Session Law 2003-54 (House Bill 746), ratified May 19 and signed May 20, 2003, added G.S. 71A-7.2 designating the Indians of the Little Texas settlement in Pleasant Grove Township as the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation of North Carolina. The same act recognized the Meherrin Tribe and updated the Lumbee statute.
The band bought a 25-acre tract of former tobacco farmland near Dailey Store Road in northeastern Alamance County, the first land it had held as a tribe in over two centuries. The site became its ceremonial ground, open-air museum and tribal center.
The band established a permanent ceremonial ground on the Alamance County tract, which later hosted its powwow and its annual School Days for area students.
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