During the early 19th century, ancestral Haliwa-Saponi remained relatively isolated in the Meadows. They attempted to live peaceably alongside their neighbors. During the 1830s, when the United States enforced policies to remove all Indians living east of the Mississippi River, the federal government basically ignored most of the relatively landless and powerless small tribes settled in the southeastern Coastal Plain. Haliwa-Saponi tribal elders tell of several families who voluntarily migrated west to Indian Territory on their own, some merging into the general population, while others were adopted by one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes from the Southeast.