While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Eno. A tribe associated with the Adshusheer and
Shakori in
North Carolina in the 17th century. Mooney thinks it doubtful that
the Eno and the Shakori where of
Siouan stock, as they seem to have
differed in physique and habits from their neighbors, although their
alliances were all with Siouan tribes. Little is known of them as they
disappeared from history as tribal bodies about 1720, having been
incorporated with the Catawba on the south or with the
Saponi and their confederates on the
north, although they still retained their distinct dialect in 1743. The
Eno and Shakori are first mentioned by Yardley in 1654, to whom a
Tuscarora described, among
other tribes of the interior, living next to the Shakori, "a great nation
" called Haynoke, by whom the northern advance of the Spaniards was
valiantly resisted (Hawks, N. C., ii, 19, 1858). The next mention of these
two tribes is by Lederer, who heard of them in 1672 as living south of the
Occaneechi about the headwaters of Tar and Neuse rivers. The general
locality is still indicated in the names of Eno river and Shocco creek,
upper "branches of these streams. In 1701 Lawson found the Eno and Shakori
confederated and the Adshusheer united with them in the same locality.
Their village, which he calls Adshusheer, was on Eno river, about 14 miles
east of the Occaneechi village, which was near the site of the present
Hillsboro. This would place the former not far north east of Durham, N. C.
Eno Will, a Shakori by birth, was at that time,
according to Lawson, chief of the three combined tribes, and at this
period the Shakori seem to have been the principal tribe. They had some
trade with the Tuscarora. Later, about 1714, with the
Tutelo, Saponi, Occaneechi, and Keyauwee,
together numbering only about 750 souls, they moved toward the
settlements. Lawson includes Eno in his list of Tuscarora villages at that
date, and as the Eno lived on the Neusead joining the Tuscarora, it was
natural that they were sometimes classed with them. In 1716 Gov.
Spotswood, of Virginia, proposed to settle the Eno, Sara, and Keyauwee at
Eno town, on " the very frontiers" of North Carolina; but the project was
defeated by North Carolina on the ground that all three tribes were then
at war with South Carolina. From the records it can not he determined
clearly whether this was the Eno town of Lawson or a more recent village
nearer the Albemarle settlements. Owing to the objection made to their
settlement in the north, the Eno moved southward into South Carolina. They
probably assisted the other tribes of that region in the Yamasi war of
1715. At least a few of the mixed tribe found their way into Virginia with
the Saponi, as Byrd speaks of an old Indian, called Shacco Will, living
near Nottoway river in 1733, who offered to guide him to a mine on Eno
river near the old country of the Tuscarora. The name of Shoekoe creek, at
Richmond, Va., may possibly have been derived from that of the Shakori
tribe, while the nacre of Euoree river in South Carolina may have a
connection with that of the Eno tribe.
Lederer speaks of the Eno village as surrounded by
large cultivated fields and as built around a central plaza where the men
played a game described as "slinging of stones," in which "they exercise
with so much labor and violence and in so great numbers that I have seen
the ground wet with the sweat that dropped from their bodies." This was
probably the chunkey game played with round stones among the Creeks.
Lederer agrees with Yardley as to the small size of the Eno, but not as to
their bravery, though they were evidently industrious. They raised
plentiful crops and "out of their granary supplied all the adjacent
parts." "The character thus outlined," says Mooney, "accords more with
that of the peaceful Pueblos than with that of any of our eastern tribes
and goes far to indicate a different origin." It should be remembered,
however, that Lederer is not a leading authority, as it is doubtful if he
was ever in North Carolina. The houses of the Eno are said to have been
different in some respects from those of their neighbors. Instead of
building of bark, as did most Virginia and Carolina tribes, they used
interwoven branches or canes and plastered them with mud or clay, like the
Quapaw Indians of east Arkansas. The form was usually round. Near every
house was a small oven-shaped structure in which they stored corn and
nuts. This was similar to the storehouse of the Cherokee and some other
southern tribes. Their government was democratic and patriarchal, the
decision of the old men being received with unquestioned obedience.
See Mooney, Siouan Tribes of the
East, Bull. B. A. E., 1896.
The books presented are for their historical value only and are not the opinions of the Webmasters of the site.
