TUTELO, tc-t5/16, or TOTERO. An east ern tribe of Siouan stock, calling themselves Yesaii, formerly living on the Upper Roanoke and Dan rivers, in Virginia and North Carolina, in close alliance with the cognate Saponi (q.v.). They were first visited in 1670 by the German traveler John Lederer, who calls them Nahyssan. They were already well acquainted with the Vir ginia, traders, but had then been for ten years at war with the whites. They were visited again the next year by all exploring expedition under Thomas Batts. We hear little of them after this until 1701, when Lawson found them in what is now eentral North Carolina, preparing to move to the settlements for protection against the Iroquois, who had driven them from their former villages on the Roanoke. They were then so much reduced in number as to be unable any longer to make defense against their enemies.
The refugee tribes were soon afterwards settled by Governor Spotswood of Virginia near Fort Christanna, in what is now Brunswick County, Va., where they remained until about 1740, when, peace having at last been made with the Iroquois. they removed to the north, together with the Saponi, and settled on the Susquehanna at Shamokin, now Sunbury, Pa. Later they were adopted by the Cayuga, thus becoming a com ponent part of the Iroquois League. Their vil lage near Cayuga Lake being destroyed by Sulli van in 1779, they tied with the Cayuga to Canada and found their final home with the Iroquois on the Grand River Reservation, in Ontario, locat ing on Tutelo Heights, near Brantford. Suceess sive visitations of cholera in 1832 and 1848 ex terminated the remnant, and in 1870 there sur vived but one fullblood.