The Spanish first called us Cofitachique, which was from a Muscogeean language word, since the scouts who came with the Spanish were Muscogeean speakers.  This was the word for the main city of the Yesah/Esaw, and not all the people. But since I don't know what the Spanish called ALL the Eastern Siouans, I'll just use Cofitachique. Next, the English in Virginia knew of us nearly a half a century before the South Carolinia colony was founded. While the Virginians referred to us as the the "Yesah" people. In South Carolina, the English tried to recreate the same word and came up with "Esaw". Virginia and South Carolina both undersood the same word; they just spelled it differently. Some researchers say the Northern and southern Siouan people spoke different dialects. But all we really know is that the English in different colonies spelled the same word in different ways.

After the Tuscarora and Yamasee Wars, many of the Siouan bands became extinct, due to war, the slave trade, and Smallpox.  Our people became known from this time forward as the Catawba, which was the name of the largest surviving band of our people. The Saponi, Tutelo, Cheraw and Pedee also survived. Most of the other bands, however, did not. One bunch, a largely Saponi group, came to be known as Melungeons. This name was given to the people by a French Huguenot who was a member of the Stoney Creek Primitive Baptist Church, a church some of my ancestors also attended. In the French language, it is first person, plural of the verb "mélanger" and means "we mix", meaning some French Huguenots married outside of their race. And lastly, some of us had migrated to Indian Territory and Arkansas by the latter half of the 19th century. As a last-ditch effort to stay together as a people, some of the people in Arkansas and what was to become Oklahoma (at the time known as "Indian Territory") created the Western Catawba Indian Association. This is my testimony to record our story, as I perceive it.