Oxa:teta
A digital monument to Yesáh Peoples & our futures

Before You Enter

Who are the Yesą́?

We are the Eastern Siouan peoples present in Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, whose interwoven histories reinforce our shared Tutelo-Saponi-Monacan linguistic and cultural features. Although related to us, the term Yesàh generally does not include the Ofo, Biloxi, Catawba, and other more southerly Siouans, whose cultural and linguistic features remained distinct from their northern cousins and accepted greater influence from the Mississippian cultural landscape and Muskogean societies of the south.

We Yesàh live contemporarily in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina as the Saponi Nation of Ohio (Ohio); the Monacan Indian Nation (Virginia); the Sappony Tribe (Virginia and North Carolina); the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation (North Carolina); and the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe (North Carolina) — and as individuals and families in many other tribal communities, nations, and urban centers.

Yesáh communities have survived many attempts at annihilation – including violence, isolation, forced migration, and assimilation – and we continue to stand strong in the places of our ancestors.

As people of the eastern woodlands, we Yesàh have been present in the Ohio River Valley and Great Lakes region since time before memory. Our ancestors were part of the Adena (500-100 BCE) and Fort Ancient (1000-1750 CE) cultures, and we have maintained a continuous presence in our ancestral lands from then to today.

Burial mound-building, of both the accretional earth and individual stone-covered type, is part of Yesàh culture and has been retained through the historic period and into today as the practice of hillside/hilltop burials marked with stone cairns. These burial cairns mark the resting sites of our ancestors — and create places of memory across our mountains and valleys.

We call the Ohio River Valley/Great Lakes area the Okahu:k Ama:i [translation: “the land of all lands”] and according to the stories of our elders across many Yesàh tribes, it is the place from which all Siouans came before parting ways to form the Siouan diaspora, connected to relatives speaking similar languages in the South (Biloxi, Ofo) and the West (Mandan, Crow, Hidatsa, Dakota, Lakota, Winnebago, Omaha-Ponca, Osage, Quapaw, Stoney, Assiniboine).