Nessoneick

Nessoneick belongs to the inland Piedmont of Virginia, where the upper James and Roanoke rivers cut through red clay hills and small creek bottoms. The Saponi and Tutelo, Siouan-speaking peoples of this country, farmed the river flats and moved between towns along the James and the Roanoke. In 1650 the English explorer Edward Bland described the Nessoneick living on the Roanoke. Two decades later, John Lederer visited a Saponi village, and in 1676 Bacon's rebels attacked the Occaneechi on their island in the Roanoke, scattering several of the inland peoples who had lived there.