The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation are descendants of the historic Saponi and other Siouan-speaking Indians who occupied the Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia. The community is located primarily in Pleasant Grove Township, Alamance County, North Carolina. The tribe maintains an office in Mebane, where it carries out programs to benefit the roughly 1100 enrolled tribal members.
Limited documentation exists linking members of the tribe to the historical Occaneechi and Saponi tribes. After warfare in the Southeast in the 18th century, most of the remaining Saponi tribe members went north in 1740 for protection with the Iroquois. After the American Revolution, they relocated with the Iroquois in Canada, as they had been allies of the British.
After the war and migration, the Saponi disappeared from the historical record in the Southeast, in part because of racial discrimination that often included them in records only as free people of color, when the states and federal government had no category in censuses for American Indian. This was especially true in the late 19th and early 20th century, after white Democrats regained control of state legislatures across the South and imposed a binary system of racial segregation.
Remnant Saponi who stayed in North Carolina were mostly acculturated. The community was traditionally located at the old "Little Texas" community of Pleasant Grove Township, where the tribe owns 25 acres of land. In the twentieth century, the tribe worked to revive its cultural traditions. It is developing a tribal center facility. This will include a reconstructed 1700 Occaneechi village, museum, log farm from the 1880s, community meeting space, and classroom areas.
