Occaneechi Town and the Great Trading Path

In the chronology

Episodes in this history, earliest first. Each has its own page.

Other dated events here, earliest first. See these 52 dated events in the chronology →

1. c. 1000–1600 Indigenous communities occupy the Eno River Valley Excavations at the Hogue and Wall sites on the Eno near Hillsborough show farming communities growing corn, beans and squash, first in small scattered settlements (Haw River phase, about 1000–1400) and then in compact palisaded villages (Hillsboro phase, about 1400–1600). The Wall site village held perhaps 100 to 150 people in the mid-1400s.Search the index · UNC Research Laboratories of Archaeology, Ancient North Carolinians: Central Piedmont
2. c. 1680–1710 The Occaneechi settle on the Eno near Hillsborough After leaving the Roanoke River valley in 1676, the Occaneechi built a town on the Eno River near present-day Hillsborough and lived there from about 1680 to 1710. It was a small stockaded village of ten or twelve houses and probably fewer than 75 people, and it was the town John Lawson visited in 1701. Archaeologists dug the whole village between 1983 and 1986 at a place they named the Fredricks site, and they call this period of Occaneechi life on the Eno the Fredricks phase. People: John LawsonAncient North Carolinians — Historic period
3. 1701 Enoe Will agrees at Occaneechi Town to guide John Lawson to the English settlements Within two hours of John Lawson's arrival at Occaneechi Town on the Eno, Enoe Will came into the king's cabin and agreed to guide Lawson's party to the English, leaving his pay to their discretion. The next morning they set out for Adshusheer, his town about 14 miles east, which Lawson described as Shoccories mixed with Eno and Adshusheer people with Will as their chief man. People: John LawsonSearch the index · Documenting the American South: John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), pp. 55-57
4. 1701 John Lawson reached Occaneechi Town on the Eno and wrote about its people and the trading path John Lawson visited Occaneechi Town on the Eno. People: John LawsonAncient North Carolinians — Historic period
5. 1701 John Lawson's party fords the Haw and meets a Virginia pack train in the Haw Fields On the last stages before Occaneechi Town, Lawson's party stripped in cold weather to ford the Haw River, which he described as running among boulders the size of houses. The next day, crossing the rich land known as the Haw Fields, they met a pack train of thirty loaded horses and four or five men led by Massey, an Englishman from Leeds trading out of Virginia, and reached the Occaneechi town about three that afternoon. People: John LawsonInternet Archive: Douglas L. Rights, "The Trading Path to the Indians", North Carolina Historical Review 8 (1931), p. 417
6. By 1713 Occaneechi Town on the Eno is largely abandoned By 1713, when the Occaneechi signed a peace treaty with Virginia at Williamsburg, their town on the Eno near present-day Hillsborough was almost empty. They moved north to Fort Christanna in Virginia, and some Saponi families later resettled in North Carolina.Excavating Occaneechi Town (UNC Press web edition): Pre-Revolutionary War
7. May 27, 1730 Virginia pays an interpreter to the Saponi and Occaneechi Indians Charles Kimball petitioned the Virginia House of Burgesses for his allowance as interpreter to the Saponi and Occaneechi Indians. The petition shows the Occaneechi still named separately seventeen years after they left the Eno, and enough people speaking only their own language for an interpreter to be worth paying.Excavating Occaneechi Town (UNC Press): Pre-Revolutionary War
8. 1733–1754 The Saponi scatter between Virginia and the Catawba and a group settles in Granville County After living briefly with the Catawba the Saponi returned to Virginia in 1733 and had to petition Lieutenant Governor Gooch for leave to resettle. Over the next twenty years they broke into small groups and moved south to the Catawba and back again, and by 1754 about twelve or fourteen Sapona men with as many women and children were living on Colonel William Eaton's land in Granville County, North Carolina.Documenting the American South: Report concerning the militia in each county of North Carolina, 1754
9. 1750s Orange County tax lists record Bunch, Gibson and Collins families as mulatto Several Orange County tax lists of the 1750s class families named Bunch, Gibson and Collins as mulatto, and Jeremiah and Henry Bunch took land grants near the Eno. The term then covered many people of mixed descent, and Hazel argues some of these families may have been Indian people who never left the region.North Carolina Archaeological Society: Forest Hazel, Occaneechi-Saponi Descendants in the North Carolina Piedmont: The Texas Community, Southern Indian Studies 40 (1991), p. 11
10. Mid 1700s The Great Trading Path across the Eno becomes the settlers' wagon road The Indian route that Virginia traders had used since the 1670s crossed the Flat and Little rivers, forded the Eno at the place where the county town was laid out, and crossed the Haw near Swepsonville. After colonists reached the Piedmont in the mid eighteenth century the path was widened into a wagon road, and it is drawn on the colonial maps of Moseley, Collet and Mouzon.Search the index · NCpedia: Great Trading Path
11. 1756 Moravians record a visit from Indians living at a fort near the Haw River The Moravian settlers near present Winston-Salem recorded a visit in 1756 from Indians described as Cherokees from the fort near Haw River. The Haw was then in Orange County and a long way from any known Cherokee town, and the entry places an Indian settlement in the county decades after the Piedmont was supposed to be empty of them.Excavating Occaneechi Town (UNC Press): Pre-Revolutionary War
12. August 27, 1768 William Chavis of Granville County sells 320 acres on the Haw River William Chavis of Granville County, who held land beside the Saponi settlement on William Eaton's land and appears to have been of part Indian descent, sold Joseph Pritchit 320 acres on both sides of the Haw River from a 1751 grant. Hazel notes the tract lay near where Saponi families would settle about twenty years later.North Carolina Archaeological Society: Forest Hazel, Occaneechi-Saponi Descendants in the North Carolina Piedmont: The Texas Community, Southern Indian Studies 40 (1991), p. 10