SIOUA 

 MOONEY 



fy] THE WOCCON TRIBE. 65 



Sippahaws. — Martiu, History of North Caroliiin, 1829, vol. i, p. 129. 

 Sissipahdii. — Lawsou (1714), History of Carolina, reprint 1860, p. 94. 

 Sissispahdivs. — Latham, Varieties of Mau, 1850, p. 334 (misprint). 



Cape Fearx. — Albany Conference (1751) in New York Colonial Documents, 1855, vol. 

 vi, p. 721. 



Il'arroinimcock. — LeJerer, Discoveries, 1672, ji. 2. 



. Of the aSTortli Carolina tribes bearing the foregoing- names almost 

 nothing is known, and of the last two even the proj^er names have not 

 been recorded. The Woccon were Siouau; the Saxapahaw and Cape 

 Fear Indians presumably were Sioaan, as indicated from their associa- 

 tions and alliances with known Sioiiau tribes, while the Warrennuncock 

 were probably some people better known under another name, though 

 they can not be identified. The region between the Yadkin and the 

 Neuse, extending down to the coast, was probably occupied by still 

 other tribes whose very names are forgotten. They were virtually 

 exterminated by smallpox and other diseases long before the coloniza- 

 tion of this region in the middle of the eighteenth century, and prob- 

 ably even before the Yamasi war of 1715 disrupted the smaller tribes. 



About all that is known of the Woccon was recorded by Lawson, 

 who states that about 1710 they lived not more than two leagues from 

 the Tuskarora (who occupied the lower ]!^euse and its tributaries), and 

 had two villages, Yupwauremau and Toopta^meer (p. 383), with 120 

 warriors, which would indicate a population of 500 or 000 souls. This 

 was by far a larger poinilation at that period than any other of the 

 eastern Carolina tribes excepting the Tuskarora. He gives a vocabulary 

 of about 150 words, which shows that their dialect was closely related 

 to that of the Catawba, although the two tribes were separated by 

 nearly 200 miles (Lawson, 7). Ilis ma]) of 1709, reproduced by Hawks, 

 places the Woccon between the main Neuse and one of its tributaries, 

 perhaps about the i^resent Goldsboro in Wayne c<mnty or Snow Hill 

 in Greene county. They joined the Tuskarora against the whites in 

 the war of 1711-1713, as learned from incidental references in the colo- 

 nial documents of that period. Since there are no later records con- 

 cerning them, they were probably destroyed as a tribe by that war, 

 and the remnant may have tied northward with the hostile Tuskarora 

 to the Iroquois, or southward to the Catawba and Yamasi; or per- 

 haps they were assigned to the reservation with the friendly Tuskarora 

 who remained in North Carolina. 



The Sissipahaw must have been an imj)ortant tribe at one time, as 

 Haw river, the main upper stream of the Cape Fear, derives its name 

 from them, and the site of their former village, known in 1728 as 

 " the Haw old fields," was noted as the largest body of fertile land in 

 all that region. It Avas probably situated about the iiresent Saxapahaw 

 on Haw river, in the lower part of Alamance county, North Carolina. 

 They are probably identical with the Sauxpa mentioned by Vandera 

 BULL. v=22 5 



