Tutelo

Tutelo, self-designated Yesá:sahį́ and also called Tutelo-Saponi or Virginia Siouan, is the best-recorded member of the Ohio Valley, or Southeastern, Siouan branch, which includes the closely related Monacan, Saponi and Occaneechi speeches of Virginia. Tutelo oral history traces the people to the Ohio valley and the Fort Ancient culture before they moved east to the Big Sandy and Roanoke rivers.

During the later Beaver Wars the Haudenosaunee overran the region of the Monacan towns above the James River falls, and from 1671 the Tutelo drifted south to the Saponi and Occaneechi and then north through Pennsylvania. After the Treaty of Albany in 1722 they settled at Shamokin under Oneida protection, and in 1753 the Cayuga formally adopted them.

The Tutelo village near Cayuga Lake was destroyed by the Sullivan Expedition in 1779, and in 1785 the survivors lived at the Six Nations reserve on the Grand River in Ontario.