The Occaneechi, known today as the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation (OBSN), are a Souian Indigenous people descended from those who have lived on the land now known as the North Carolina Piedmont for thousands of years. In the 17th century, the Occaneechi lived in areas that are now parts of Virginia and North Carolina, including along the Roanoke and Eno rivers and in parts of present-day Orange County. They spoke a dialect of eastern Souian and participated in fur and deerskin trading, acting as middlemen between Indigenous groups in the Piedmont and European colonists and settlers. In the early 18th century, their population diminished by disease and warfare, the Occaneechi joined a confederation of Indigenous nations that also included the Saponi, the Eno, the Tutelo, and others. Known as the Saponi confederation, this group settled at Fort Christianna in Virginia as part of an agreement with the colony of Virginia. OBSN community members are lineal descendants of these members of the Saponi confederation.
When Fort Christianna fell into disuse in the mid-1700s, the acculturated Saponi confederation community came to inhabit land in what is now Greensville County and Brunswick County in Virginia and Northampton County in North Carolina. Some community members later migrated to the Midwest and other parts of the South. Today, the OBSN community is primarily located at the settlement of Little Texas in Pleasant Grove Township in Alamance County, North Carolina. The community has continued to experience change over time: “Until the middle part of the 20th century, the community was largely occupied in agricultural pursuits, sometimes supplemented by day wage labor jobs or jobs in nearby factories. In recent decades the numbers of people engaged full or part time in agriculture has declined significantly, and most working adults in the community now work in offices, or as skilled workers and craftsmen, or in the few remaining factories in the area” (Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, History, n.d.). Occaneechi descendents also continue to live in Hillsborough.
From 1983 to 1986, archaeologists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill excavated an Occaneechi village, called Occaneechi Town, on the Eno River in Hillsborough, uncovering a small settlement that included houses, a central square, and a cemetery, as well as numerous artifacts of both Indigenous and European origin. Eno-Shakori chief Eno Will and English explorer and surveyor John Lawson had visited Occaneechi Town in 1701. A historic replica of an Occaneechi village exists on the Eno River in Hillsborough today.