I am inclined to believe that, in both these cases, the term was used by the natives around New York Bay in its simple geographical sense of "south" or "southern," and not as a tribal designation. It frequently appears with this original meaning in the Waluam Olum.
The Sapoonees.
A tribe called the Sapoonees, or Saponies, is mentioned as living in Pennsylvania, attached to the Delawares, about the middle of the last century.[44]
They are no doubt the Saponas who once dwelt on a branch of the Great Pedee river in North Carolina, and who moved north about the year 1720.[45]
They were said to have joined the Tuscaroras, but the Pennsylvania records class them with the Delawares. Others, impressed by the similarity of Sa-po-nees to Pa-nis, have imagined they were the Pawnees, now of the west. There is not the slightest importance to be attached to this casual similarity of names.
They were called, by the Iroquois, Tadirighrones, and were distinctly identified by them with the nation known to the English as the Catawbas.[46] For a long time the two nations carried on a bitter warfare.
The Assiwikales.
This band of about fifty families, or one hundred men (about three hundred souls), are stated to have come from South Carolina to the Potomac late in the seventeenth century, and in 1731 were settled partly on the Susquehanna and partly on the upper Ohio or Alleghany. Their chief was named Aqueioma, or Achequeloma.
Their name appears to be a compound of assin, stone; and wikwam, house, and they were probably Algonkin neighbors of the Shawnees in their southern homes, and united with them in their northern migration.[47]