Our tribal affiliation of Sappony is derived from the word Monasusapanough, one of three villages located in the Piedmont near our current home of High Plains. From the mid-seventeenth to the early part of the eighteenth century, the Sappony played a key role as middlemen in the lucrative fur trade between the colony of Virginia and their cousin tribe, the Catawba located in South Carolina. Judging from the Sappony name given to two churches near the tribe and the comments from prominent colonists and traders, the Sappony were held in high regard. William Byrd the trader who surveyed the same boundary line that runs through High Plains stated the Sappony were “the Honestest and bravest Indians Virginia has ever known.”

As the colony and trade expanded further west, the Sappony were no longer needed or at times welcome in the colony. The Sappony currently living in High Plains represent those who remained behind in their homelands while others either went north to join the Iroquois in New York or went south to join their cousins, the Catawba.