Many texts have shown that our people originated in the Ohio Valley.  Long before the Lakota and Dakota Sioux became plains tribes, their range extended into Ohio and other states.

According to a legend told to Arvol Looking Horse, Keeper of the White Buffalo Pipe and Bundle, the Saponi were the people who "went hunting and did not return."  This aligns with the legend told to Lawson, and recounted by Mooney in Siouan Tribes of the East:

"In regard to the origin of these tribes, Lawson, speaking of tlie Indians of Virginia and Carolina, says that they claimed that their ancestors had come from the west, where the sun sleeps (Lawson, 1). The Catawba, as will be shown later on, had a tradition of a northern origin. All these statements and traditions concerning the eastern Siouan tribes, taken in connection with what we know of the history and traditions of the western tribes of the same stock, seem to indicate the upper region of the Ohio — the Alleghany, Monongahela, and Kanawha country — as their original home, from which one branch crossed the mountains to the waters of Virginia and Carolina while the other followed along the Ohio and the lakes toward the west. Linguistic evidence indicates that the eastern tribes of the Siouan family were established upon the Atlantic slope long before the western tribes of tliat stock had reached the plains."

Further legends state of a powerful enemy that drove our people from this homeland and into the Piedmont.  Historical evidence would show this enemy to have been the Iroquois - who would later adopt a portion of our people in the Great Council Fire of 1753.

Archeologically, there is a huge amount of evidence all over Ohio of tribal communities.  First Hunters: Ohio's Paleo-Indian Artifacts by Lar Hothem shows dozens of paleoindian sites and gives an accounting of the types of artifacts found at the sites.  We see sites especially in the Scioto river valley, such as:

• Mound City Group: A major ceremonial center.

• Hopeton Earthworks: Large geometric enclosures and mounds.

• Seip Earthworks: Massive enclosing walls and mounds.

• Hopewell Mound Group: A significant burial complex.

• High Bank Works & Spruce Hill Earthworks: Other major complexes within the park. 

• Serpent Mound: An iconic snake effigy mound, likely built by the Fort Ancient people (c. 1000 AD).

• Tremper Mound and Works: Famous for Hopewell effigy pipes found at this site near Portsmouth.

• Newark Earthworks: While further north, these are major Hopewell earthworks in Ohio (Great Circle & Octagon).

• SunWatch Indian Village: A reconstructed Fort Ancient village near Dayton.

• Flint Ridge State Memorial: An ancient quarry site for high-quality flint

While modern science has attributed these site to various "cultures" such as the Fort Ancient, Hopewell, and Adena - we understand these names to be labels that Europeans used to denote differences in the technological levels of the people who built these works,  NOT that they were somehow a "different" people than the Native People we know today.  On the contrary - these cultures are nothing other than a timeline of the evolution of the People from the very first people on Turtle Island, into the tribes we are presently familiar with.  North America was a closed system at this time, so these people were not "displaced" by the tribes - they became the tribes.