Sapponah

The Saponi were a Siouan-speaking people of the wooded interior between Virginia and Carolina. Their communities moved between the rivers of the region in the face of conflict and changing alliances. In 1670 the traveller John Lederer visited a village he called Sapon; by the beginning of the next century the Saponi were living farther south on the Yadkin River.

In 1701 John Lawson visited their fortified town on the Yadkin, then called the Sapona River. He found it standing in a large clearing and described a leader and council, as well as a local healer who kept herbs and medicines. The Saponi later moved again toward Virginia, where they joined other Indigenous communities around Fort Christanna in the early eighteenth century.