Saura

The Saura, also known as the Cheraw, were an Indigenous people of the Carolina Piedmont. Their towns stood along the Dan River near the Virginia border, where their cultivated fields extended for miles. John Lederer visited the Saura in 1670, and the traders James Needham and Gabriel Arthur encountered them three years later. The old towns left their name on the river country long after their inhabitants moved away.

By the early eighteenth century, disease and raids had reduced the Saura, and they moved south to join the Keyauwee in the Yadkin–Pee Dee valley. Some accompanied John Barnwell's expedition against the Tuscarora in 1711–1712, though they did not complete the campaign. After the Yamasee War, a 1715 colonial census recorded a Saura community near the boundary between the Carolinas.