Indians

The Role of the Indian in North Carolina History

BY RUTH Y. WETMORE^*

[Vol. 56 (1979), 162-176]

A great deal has been written about the impact of European influence—usually unfavorable—on the Indian culture. The elements most often mentioned are firearms, liquor,¹ and unfamiliar diseases which decimated entire tribes.² In the same way, Indian contributions to colonial and contemporary American life and thought are many and are as diverse as food, place-names, child-raising practices, and political institutions.³ Southeastern Indian beliefs and practices survive most conspicuously today in southern food dishes and their preparations and to a lesser degree in southern folklore and folk medicine.⁴

It is far more difficult to itemize the specific ways in which Native Americans have directly shaped the course of North Carolina history. However, it would seem that the role of Indians in the state’s history has been a changing one.

The historic period in North Carolina spans some 450 years. In that time Indians have played at least four distinct roles in North Carolina history. These roles can be categorized as (1) Independent Nations; (2) Defeated Adversaries; (3) Invisible Men; and (4) Emerging Communities. This paper will consider these four roles and discuss the impact of each on North Carolina history.

The age of history dawned along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast in the sixteenth century. The earliest European explorers in the Carolinas found well-organized Indian societies functioning in separate “provinces.”⁵ A great deal of variation in size and governmental structure undoubtedly existed, ranging from units of one or a few villages (Cape Fear, Moratok, Eno, Shakori) to the Tuscarora, whose population was estimated at between 300 and 500 for each of their fifteen villages in 1710;⁶ or the Cherokee Nation, which occupied territory now divided among six southern states.⁷ The term “Independent Nations” is used in this paper to refer to these various autonomous groupings without getting sidetracked into the technical distinctions among bands, tribes, towns, chieftainships, and confederacies. By the eighteenth century the definition of an Indian nation hinged on two factors: a substantial population and land of its own.⁸

At first the Carolina natives were friendly to their light-skinned visitors. Giovanni da Verrazano reported that the Indians who witnessed his landing near the Cape Fear River in 1524 “showed us by sundry signs where we might most commodiously come a-land with our boat, offering us also of their victuals to eat.”⁹ While these Indians were probably members of a Siouan group, the same cordial reception awaited Verrazano from the Algonquian people in the vicinity of Cape Hatteras.¹⁰ Some sixty years later Captain Arthur Barlowe described the journey of his party to Roanoke Island:

We were entertained with all love and kindnesse, and with as much bountie (after their maner) as they could possibly devise. We found the people most gentle, loving, and faithfull, voide of all guile and treason, and such as live after the maner of the golden age.¹¹

While it is more difficult to reconstruct what the Carolina Indians thought of their visitors, their initial welcome and tolerance of the English was clearly based upon a lack of fear. Had they wished, the Indians easily could have destroyed the first colonists soon after their arrival. That they did not suggests three possible Indian attitudes.

One was surely the Indian tradition of hospitality. A considerable amount of visiting apparently took place between individuals and tribes, and communal meals and feasts were widely reported.¹² Lawson found in his travels through part of the colony in 1701 that visitors were housed and entertained at the cabin of the chief or headman in each town. Food was offered to guests on arrival, and the welcoming ceremony followed a set pattern.¹³ The offering of food to guests seems to have been universally practiced by the Carolina Indians.

Among the Cherokee it was considered an insult if strangers or visitors refused the offered food.¹⁴ It is intriguing to realize that the tradition of southern hospitality did not originate in the days of the great plantations but in a simpler time. The practice undoubtedly extends further back than the 450 years for which a written word exists.

That Indian hospitality survived despite failure of the settlers to reciprocate is shown by Lawson’s comment that

They are really better to us, than we are to them; they always give us Victuals at their Quarters, and take care we are arm’ d against Hunger and Thirst: We do not so by them (generally speaking) but let them walk by our Doors Hungry, and do not often relieve them.¹⁵

A second reason for friendliness may have been that, despite the novelty of their trade goods, the English probably did not impress the Indians greatly. The earliest explorers and colonists were often unable to cope with the unfamiliar environment of the New World. Ralph Lane declared that members of his expedition would have starved if the Indians had not provided them with food.¹⁶ That was just one of many instances where it was necessary for the Indians to feed the newcomers or teach them the skills necessary for survival.

Finally, judging from past experiences with other Europeans, Indians along the Atlantic coast probably did not expect the English to continue their settlements for any great length of time.¹⁷ Before the first permanent English settlement was established at Jamestown in 1607 explorers from at least three nations had touched the eastern and western fringes of the Carolinas, leaving us nearly a dozen accounts of explorations and attempted settlements.

Some of these names and dates are Verrazano (1524), Ayllón (1526), DeSoto (1540), Ribault (1562), Laudonnière (1564), Pardo (1566), Menéndez (1570), and the three Raleigh expeditions (1584-1587).¹⁸

There was much more activity along the Carolina coast than these few names and dates would suggest. Members of the first Raleigh expedition learned that twenty-six years before their arrival the Secotan Indians had befriended survivors of a shipwreck on the Outer Banks.¹⁹ The Carolina coast was the goal of slaving ships and a haven for pirates preying on Spanish treasure ships. Neither of these professions recorded their activities for the edification of future historians.

The original friendly host-guest relationship broke down when it became evident that the European visitors were coming in force and intended to stay. Pressure for more land, compounded by disputes over mistreatment of individuals, trade, and property destruction, made Indian-white disagreements more frequent and serious. The inevitable collision of two dissimilar cultures as occurred in North Carolina history was paralleled in other sections of the country as frontier settlement moved westward.

At this point, when the attitude of the Carolina Indian nations toward the European colonists changed from friendly to hostile, Native Americans had their most direct impact on the course of the colony’s history. One of the earliest Indian-white conflicts occurred along the Cape Fear River in the 1660s when colonists of Clarendon County kidnapped some Cape Fear Indian children. In retaliation, the Indians forced the colony to abandon the region. No other permanent white settlement was made along the lower Cape Fear for nearly half a century.²⁰ This is a case where a Carolina tribe—whose population, linguistic affiliation, and even its native tribal name remain unknown to us—had a clear and direct influence on the settlement patterns of the state. Lawson, writing in 1700, comments that

Throughout the seventeenth century many of North Carolina’s thirty tribal groups retained their position as independent nations despite losses and disruptions caused by the introduction of firearms, liquor, and diseases. As early as 1666 an Indian “invasion” in the Albemarle area was serious enough to halt governmental communications; and “from the common use of the term ‘enemy Indians’ it would seem that hostilities with the Indians were not infrequent.”²² A few years later, in 1675, Virginia Indians urged the Chowan tribe to drive the English colonists from the Albemarle settlements. This the Chowan attempted, but both sides were so evenly matched that the conflict dragged on for two years. The Chowan were defeated only when a ship loaded with arms and ammunition arrived to supply the colonists.²³

The real test of strength between the North Carolina Indians and the colonists came in 1711 with the outbreak of the Tuscarora War. This conflict marked the turning point in Indian-white relations. North Carolina was so weak and divided from internal dissensions at the time that the hostile Tuscarora and their allies very nearly destroyed the colony. The colony was in demoralized condition when the war erupted: the government had neither money nor credit; trade was at a standstill; food and ammunition were scarce; the Quakers refused to fight; and the militia deserted in large numbers.²⁴

Finding the colony unable to protect itself, Governor Edward Hyde appealed to the neighboring colonies of Virginia and South Carolina for assistance. Virginia was not very helpful, but South Carolina responded by sending troops— including many Indians who were traditional enemies of the tribes with which North Carolina was at war. Two campaigns were undertaken before the warring Tuscaroras and their allies were defeated.

Only about half of the Tuscarora villages took up arms against the North Carolinians. The hostile group consisted mainly of the “lower towns” along the Neuse River, while the northern or “upper towns” of the Tar and Pamlico rivers tended to be friendly or remain neutral.²⁵ Residents of at least five of the neutral Tuscarora towns fled from the war zone. A delegation sent out by the governor of Virginia found these fugitives

dispers’d in small parties upon the head of Roanoke [River], and about the Mountains in very miserable condition, without any habitation or provision of Corne for their Subsistence, but living like wild beasts on what ye Woods afforded, in dispair whether to return to their old Settlements in No. Carolina and run the risque of being knock’d in the head by the English and So. Carolina Indians or to submit themselves to ye Senecas, who had made them large offers of Assistance to revenge themselves on the English, upon condition of incorporating with them.²⁶

The war was costly to both Indians and colonists. To the sufferings of the colonists and neutral Indians must be added those of the hostile tribes. At the end of the first campaign a number of Tuscaroras were seized by the South Carolina forces (under a flag of truce) and sold into slavery. When the last Tuscarora stronghold fell in 1713, the commander of the colonial forces reported 166 enemies killed outside the fort, 200 killed and burned within the fort, and the taking of 392 prisoners and 192 scalps. His own losses were 22 white men and 35 Indians killed and 82 men wounded.²⁷

These military losses do not tell the entire story. A number of the smaller Indian nations were effectively destroyed as a result of the war. Over a period of ninety years the remaining Tuscarora migrated northward to join their kinsmen and become the Sixth Nation of the Iroquois. The colony of North Carolina continued, but by a close margin of survival:

The effect of all this in retarding the growth of the country was very great, both in driving old settlers away and in preventing new ones from coming in; so much so that for years after the massacre there was scarcely any perceptible increase in the population. A settlement in which the government was impotent and the Indians hostile, cruel and barbarous, was not an inviting place to stay in or to move to. But for the timely aid the people received from South Carolina the settlement on the Albemarle might have been blotted out as effectually as that at Roanoke, one hundred and twenty-five years before. Certainly for years, even with help from abroad, the colony withered and shrunk under the blighting influence of that horrible massacre and the war that followed.²⁸

It is difficult to untangle the shifting series of alliances which characterized Indian-Indian and Indian-white relationships in the eighteenth century. Yet, these changing alliances were of major importance as Indians moved from the role of Independent Nations to that of Defeated Adversaries.

Certainly there are indications in official North Carolina correspondence that colonial administrators did not hesitate to use a “divide and conquer” policy when dealing with Indians. A letter from Governor George Burrington in 1732 acknowledged that

tho’ there happens small acts of Hostility now and then in hunting on the upper parts of Cape Fear River between our Indians and the Cataubes of South Carolina, which we look upon to be for our advantage, thinking Indians love and will be doing a little mischief, therefore had rather they should act it upon their own tawny race than the English ....²⁹

This does not mean that Indians were pawns manipulated by the North Carolina government. There is just as much evidence that the “friendly” Indians who allied themselves with the English colonists to fight other Indian nations did so willingly. The first Raleigh expedition had been on the Atlantic coast for only a few weeks when the Secotan Indians tried to enlist its help against traditional enemies, the Pamlico and Neuse River Indians.³⁰ The Catawba, Cheraw, and smaller Siouan nations—traditional enemies of the Iroquoian Tuscarora—came to the assistance of the beleaguered North Carolina colonists during the Tuscarora War. A few years later when the Yamassee War broke out, the Tuscarora tribesmen still living in North Carolina were quick to assist the Carolina militia and take revenge on these same Siouan tribes.

Given this background of long-standing intertribal feuds, colonial officials did not need to exert themselves to incite Indians to fight other Indians. More difficult to comprehend is the apparently casual way in which Indian allies fell on each other. At the close of the Tuscarora War a part of the Tuscarora under treaty with the English agreed to destroy the Pamlico. This small tribe is not heard from after that time, and the Pamlico were probably incorporated by the Tuscarora as slaves.³¹ The same thing happened after the Yamassee War. Making peace with the colonists, the Catawba then turned on their former allies, killing many of the Waxhaw and Waccamaw and scattering or enslaving the rest.³²

The end of the Tuscarora War marked the end of Independent Indian Nations in eastern North Carolina.³³ Yet, even as Defeated Adversaries, Indians continued to be a concern of the government. In 1731 Governor Burrington reported:

Of late years they [the Indians here] are much diminished, there are six Nations amongst us, they all live within the English Settlements having Land assigned them, and chuseing the Places most secure from the attacks of Forreign Indians that delight in slaughtering one another, the names of our Indian People are the Hatteras, the Maremuskeets, the Pottaskites, the Chowans, the Tuscarora, and the Meherrins[.] [N]ot one of these Nations exceed 20 Familys excepting the Tuscarora Indians who were formerly very powerfull [;] most of these were destroyed and drove away in the late Warr...³⁴ Friendly Indians were valued as a protection against unfriendly ones, who were thought to be incited against the English settlements by the French or Spanish colonial powers.³⁵ The creation of a Commission on Indian Trade in 1732³⁶ and the establishment of certain western forts—Old Fort, Fort Dobbs, and Fort Loudon³⁷—were manifestations of this policy of aid and mutual defense.

One further thing needs to be said about Indians in the role of Defeated Adversaries. Willingness of some Indian nations to side with the settlers against other Indians hastened the end of the Independent Nations and their autonomous political and cultural existence. Yet, refusal to serve as allies with the English would probably have done little to change the final outcome. When Charles Hudson describes the Southeastern Indians as a conquered people³⁸ he correctly emphasizes the fact that this conquest was only partially a military one. Less easily resisted than military actions were the economic forces which resulted in dependence on European trade goods or legal conquest by legislative agreements and treaties.³⁹

Defeat and loss of independence came even to groups which had not been in direct conflict with the whites. In 1700 Lawson found five small Piedmont tribes (the Occaneechi, Saponi, Tutelo, Eno, and Keyauwee) in the process of moving eastward toward the English settlements for greater protection against the “northern” Indians, probably the Seneca.⁴⁰ Although consistently friendly with the English and strengthened by the remnants of several fragmented tribes, the Catawba repeatedly petitioned the governments of North Carolina and South Carolina for aid and protection against their many Indian enemies.⁴¹ The governors of South Carolina and New York were instrumental in persuading the Catawba and the Iroquois, respectively, to end their warfare by signing the treaty of Albany in 1751.⁴²

The third role which can be assigned to the North Carolina Indians deals with the period of some 200 years in which Indians were, for want of a better term, basically Invisible Men. This stage in North Carolina history has not been adequately explored, yet there are great possibilities for further work.

As it now stands, the historic record is not terribly helpful in explaining what did happen to many Indian nations. A roll call of the nearly thirty Carolina tribes of the early colonial period shows that some, such as the Chowan and Coree, presumably dwindled to extinction. Remnants of the Cheraw, Sugeree, and Wateree became part of the Catawba Nation, while the phrase “probably joined the Catawba”, is the somewhat dubious epitaph for the Cape Fear, Eno, Keyauwee, Sissipahaw, Waccamaw, and Woccon. Similarly, “probably joined the Tuscarora” is Swanton’s verdict on the Meherrin, Neuse River, and Pamlico Indians.⁴³ The last contemporary references to some of the smaller nations are as follows: Shakori, 1701; Wateree, 1744; Waccamaw, 1755; Keyauwee, 1761; Hatteras, 1763; and Cheraw, 1768.⁴⁴

From our contemporary viewpoint it is obvious that by no means all of the North Carolina Indians died out or left the state when their nation status or traditional culture ceased to exist. But this was not so evident in the eighteenth century. The migration of the Tuscarora from North Carolina, which lasted from 1713 until 1802; the settlement of the Catawba in South Carolina in 1762; and the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from the Southeast in the 1830s gave the impression that the day of the Indian was over.

In most southern histories (and this is not limited to southern histories) the Indian serves merely as a kind of prologue, with the main portion of history beginning only after his destruction or removal.⁴⁵ North Carolina history, like that of the South in general, was written primarily in terms of English-speaking European settlers and their descendants. Also, Indian history itself has been primarily concerned with the historical experience of the Indian nations, and the Indian individuals remaining in the state after Indian removals are ignored.⁴⁶

Upon the disintegration of his traditional native society, the Indian had a choice of joining with a still functioning Indian group elsewhere or becoming acculturated with the conventions and associations of either the white or black man’s way of life. The many tribal remnants which joined the Catawba or Tuscarora took the first path.

A letter from Douglas Rights, which is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution archives, sheds some light on the acculturation process as it likely occurred in North Carolina:

A correspondent from Madison, North Carolina in Rockingham County has written me at some length describing the mixed-blood settlement in that county.... He states that the names of the principal members are Harris, Goins and Hickman. Harris is one of the most familiar surviving Catawba family names and I suppose it is common also with the Robeson County group. One of the Harris clan told the correspondent that his people have drifted off in two directions, the lighter color drifting out and associating with the whites, and the darker taking their places in Negro society. Such has been the case with Catawbas and the Robeson people.⁴⁷

Living as many Indians did on the margins of the predominantly white society, often owning no land, their geographic and cultural isolation tended to exclude them from more than passing notice. An exception to this general anonymity was the effort of the people in Robeson County, known today as the Lumbee, to maintain their separate identity.⁴⁸

In their role as Invisible Men, the North Carolina Indians exerted only a negligible impact on the state’s history. Yet this period of Indian history may hold the key to many of the questions raised by contemporary North Carolina Indian communities. A very interesting research project was undertaken a few years ago by one of the state archaeologists, using previously unpublished documents from the North Carolina state archives.⁴⁹

Reversing the normal methodology used in ethnohistorical research, he began with the historical Mattamuskeet Indians and traced them forward through this “Invisible” period to contemporary descendants who have no group identity. This study demonstrated the possibility of extracting certain kinds of social data (kinship, leadership, social change, settlement patterns) from documents that were not designed to reflect that type of information.⁵⁰ Using similar methods, other researchers might well provide valuable insights into and information concerning a period of the state’s Indian history which is at present very incompletely known.

By the mid-nineteenth century the idea of the Indian as a “Vanishing American” was accepted not only by the general public but also by scholars. The Carolina Indians—namely, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the only tribe remaining within the state, and the Catawba in nearby South Carolina—seemed to be of interest mainly to those anthropologists determined to save any surviving portions of aboriginal culture before they were lost forever.

Frank Speck, who began working on the Catawba language in 1913, admitted that he did not realize at the time how close the language was to extinction. When he saw the almost unique importance of the ethnological information that could be secured, only four of the 270 Catawba were “in any degree capable of furnishing information on their cultural past through the medium of the Catawba language.”⁵¹ What Speck attempted to do for the Catawba was paralleled by James Mooney’s work with the Cherokee and J. N. B. Hewitt’s work with fellow Tuscarora descendants on the New York and Canadian reservations.

The fourth—and current—role which Native Americans are playing in North Carolina history is that of Emerging Communities. This phase began in the 1950s, and it is still too soon to gauge the impact of this development on the state’s history. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians do not belong in this category. Language, beliefs, and a sense of tribal unity have provided them with a thread of continuity from colonial times to the present.

Instead, Emerging Communities are identified with the new names on the North Carolina Indian map: Lumbee, Haliwa, Coharie, and Waccamaw-Siouan. Although state recognition of these Indian groups was briefly repealed in 1977 as a result of a legislative mishap,⁵² North Carolina Indians today are highly visible, articulate, and organized.

The first event signaling increased Indian awareness and activity in North Carolina was the campaign in the 1950s by the Indians living in Robeson County to change their name once again. The present name of Lumbee,⁵³ bestowed by the North Carolina legislature in 1953, is the fourth one which North Carolina has ratified for this group since the original recognition of them as Croatan Indians in 1885. In between, their name was changed to “Indians of Robeson County” in 1911, and from that to “Cherokee Indians of Robeson County” in 1913.⁵⁴ Efforts in 1934-1935 to be named “Siouan Indians of the Lumber River” were not successful.⁵⁵

It is likely that the successful adoption of the generalized Indian name “Lumbee”⁵⁶ and subsequent recognition by the United States Congress in 1956⁵⁷ encouraged other mixed-blood groups to seek recognition as Indians. The next people to do so were the Haliwa. Emerging from one more or less isolate group which had existed in northeastern North Carolina from the earliest days of the nineteenth century, a segment of this population declared itself Indian and established its own school in 1957.⁵⁸ In 1965 these Indians successfully petitioned the state legislature for their name: Haliwa, a combination of Halifax and Warren, counties where most of them live.⁵⁹

The Waccamaw-Siouans of Columbus County made an unsuccessful bid for state recognition in 1950⁶⁰ and were not officially identified by their present name until the 1971 General Assembly session.⁶¹ In the same year the Coharie Indians of Sampson County were also confirmed by the state.⁶²

The North Carolina State Commission of Indian Affairs, created in 1971, is composed of representatives from the four groups mentioned above as well as the following organizations: the Cumberland County Association for Indian People; the Guilford Native American Association; and the Metrolina Native American Association.⁶³

Other Indian groups in the state with some form of organization include the Harnett County Coharie Tribal Association; Chadbourne Area Association of Indians; Eastern Carolina Indian Association; Person County Indians; Smilings Siouan; and Tuscarora Eastern Carolina Indian Organization.⁶⁴

The problem of federal and state recognition of Indian groups is a complicated one, with many social, political, and financial ramifications. To date, no one, including the federal government, state governments, or various Indian organizations, has come up with a mutually satisfactory definition of who is an Indian. This very question was considered last year by the American Indian Policy Review Commission. It reported that

The Federal Government, State governments and the Census Bureau all have different criteria for defining “Indians” for statistical purposes, and even Federal criteria are not consistent among Federal agencies....

If Federal criteria are inconsistent, State guidelines for deciding who is or is not an Indian are even more chaotic.... Two States accept the individual’s own determination. Four accept individuals as Indian if they were “recognized in the community” as Native Americans. Five use residence on a reservation as a criteria [sic]. One requires One-quarter Indian blood and still another uses the Census Bureau definition that Indians are those who say they are.⁶⁵

In 1970 the state of North Carolina ranked fifth in the nation with respect to its total Indian population.⁶⁶ One factor contributing to this large Indian population was undoubtedly the policy of the United States Bureau of Census of depending on self-identification in its enumerations.⁶⁷ Not only have many modern North Carolina Indians successfully sued state officials to have drivers’ licenses and birth certificates changed to read “Indian,”⁶⁸ but the directions for making this change have been publicized in the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs newsletter, Indian Time.⁶⁹

The average North Carolina citizen has probably never thought about these matters of identity, self-definition, or the increasing number of Indian groups. To Indian people throughout the country, however, they are matters of great concern.

In summary, the role of the Indian in North Carolina history has been a changing one. When the earliest contacts with Europeans were made in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the Carolina Indians flourished as fully Independent Nations. This period ended in the eastern part of the state with the Tuscarora War of 1711-1713 and in the western part of the state after the Revolutionary War in 1781. For a time subsequent to this war period, Indians remaining within the boundaries of North Carolina were largely treated as Defeated Adversaries. Although the disintegration of some tribal groups made them Invisible Men even before 1713, this role predominated in the 200-year period between 1750 and 1950. The fourth and current role of Carolina Indians is that of Emerging Communities. Although problems of recognition and legal status remain, North Carolina Indians today are enjoying an interest and respect from their fellow citizens too often denied in the past.

Footnotes

^* Mrs Wetmore, former curator of the Indian Museum of the Carolinas at Laurinburg and author of First on the Land: The North Carolina Indians (Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 1975), is presently a consultant with the Native American Resource Center, Pembroke State University. Her address was presented at the morning meeting of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.

¹ John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina, edited by Hugh Talmage Lefler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), 18, 211-212, 232, hereinafter cited as Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina; Chapman T. Milling, Red Carolinians (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940), 252, hereinafter cited as Milling, Red Carolinians.

² Douglas Summers Brown, The Catawba Indians: The People of the River (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1966), 180-182, hereinafter cited as Brown, The Catawba Indians; Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (New York: Dover Publications, 1972 [reprint of complete 1590 Theodor de Bry edition], 28, hereinafter cited as Harriot, A Briefe and True Report.

³ Harold E. Driver, Indians of North America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, second edition, revised, 1969), 556-564; Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., The Indian Heritage of America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 32-35.

⁴ Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976), 498-501, hereinafter cited as Hudson, The Southeastern Indians.

⁵ “Captain Arthur Barlowe’s Narrative of the First Voyage to the Coasts of America” in Henry S. Burrage (ed.), Early English and French Voyages, Chiefly from Hakluyt, 1534-1608 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1906), 238-239, hereinafter cited as Barlowe, “The First Voyage”; the volume will be hereinafter cited as Burrage, Early English and French Voyages; Hudson, The Southeastern Indians, 109-112; “[Ralph] Lane’s Account of the Englishmen Left in Virginia” in Burrage, Early English and French Voyages, 247-248, hereinafter cited as Lane, “Account of the Englishmen Left in Virginia.”

⁶ Douglas W. Boyce, “Did a Tuscarora Confederacy Exist?” Indian Historian, 6 (1973), 3, 34-40.

⁷ John R. Swanton, The Indian Tribes of North America, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 145 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1952), 216, hereinafter cited as Swanton, Indian Tribes of North America.

⁸ Brown, The Catawba Indians, 2; Charles M. Hudson, The Catawba Nation (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1970), 47.

⁹ Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 289, hereinafter cited as Morison, The European Discovery of America.

¹⁰ Morison, The European Discovery of America, 292.

¹¹ Barlowe, “The First Voyage,” 236.

¹² Harriot, A Briefe and True Report, 64, 68; Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina, 184; Ernest Lewis, “The Sara Indians, 1540-1768: An Ethno-Archaeological Study” (master’s thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1951), 155.

¹³ Lawson A New Voyage to Carolina, 34, 43.

¹⁴ Jack Frederick Kilpatrick (ed.), “The Wahnenuahi Manuscript: Historical Sketches of the Cherokees together with Some of Their Customs, Traditions, and Superstitions, Anthropological Papers, No. 77, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 196 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966), 192.

¹⁵ Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina, 243.

¹⁶ Lane, “Account of the Englishmen Left in Virginia,” 259.

¹⁷ Dwight W. Hoover, The Red and the Black (Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Company, 1976), 18.

¹⁸ Brief accounts of these early explorations can be found in Hudson, The Southeastern Indians, 99-118, and in John R. Swanton, The Indians of the Southeastern United States, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 137 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), 33-81. Two very readable commentaries are Morison, The European Discovery of America, and Carl Ortwin Sauer, Sixteenth Century North America: The Land and the People as Seen by the Europeans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).

¹⁹ Barlowe, “The First Voyage,” 237.

²⁰ Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, North Carolina: The History of a Southern State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, third edition, 1973), 72, hereinafter cited as Lefler and Newsome, North Carolina.

²¹ Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina, 79-80.

²² William L. Saunders (ed.), The Colonial Records of North Carolina (Raleigh: State of North Carolina, 10 volumes, 1886-1890), II, xiii, xiv, hereinafter cited as Saunders, Colonial Records.

²³ E. Lawrence Lee, Indian Wars in North Carolina, 1663-1763 (Raleigh: Carolina Charter Tercentenary Commission, 1963; State Department of Archives and History, 1968), 16, hereinafter cited as Lee, Indian Wars.

²⁴ Lefler and Newsome, North Carolina, 56-59.

²⁵ R. A. Brock (ed.), The Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood, Virginia Historical Society Collections, N.S. 1-2, II, 42, quoted in Boyce, “Did a Tuscarora Confederacy Exist?” 36, hereinafter cited as Brock, Letters of Alexander Spotswood.

²⁶ Brock, Letters of Alexander Spotswood, II, 42, quoted in Boyce, “Did a Tuscarora Confederacy Exist?” 33-34.

²⁷ Saunders, Colonial Records, II, 27.

²⁸ Saunders, Colonial Records, II, xiv.

²⁹ Saunders, Colonial Records, III, 369.

³⁰ Barlowe, “The First Voyage,” 239.

³¹ Swanton, The Indian Tribes of North America, 83.

³² Brown, The Catawba Indians, 157; Milling, Red Carolinians, 150.

³³ The Catawba and Cherokee, located west of the then-settled area, continued as independent Indian nations until the time of the Revolutionary War. See Lee, Indian Wars, 54, 59; Brown, The Catawba Indians, 262-273.

³⁴ Saunders, Colonial Records, III, 153.

³⁵ Brown, The Catawba Indians, 124-129; Saunders, Colonial Records, IV, 472.

³⁶ Lee, Indian Wars, 49; Saunders, Colonial Records, III, 414.

³⁷ Brown, The Catawba Indians, 234-238; Milling, Red Carolinians, 285; Douglas L. Rights, The American Indian in North Carolina (Winston Salem: John F. Blair, 1957), 160; Saunders, Colonial Records, V, 585, 606, 742, 970-971.

³⁸ Hudson, The Southeastern Indians, 428.

³⁹ Brown, The Catawba Indians, 101-102; Hudson, The Southeastern Indians, 428.

⁴⁰ Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina, 53, 242.

⁴¹ Brown, The Catawba Indians, 234-238.

⁴² Brown, The Catawba Indians, 172-177.

⁴³ Swanton, The Indian Tribes of North America, 82-83.

⁴⁴ James Mooney, The Siouan Tribes of the East, Bureau of [American] Ethnology Bulletin 22 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894), 53-78 passim; Swanton, The Indian Tribes of North America, 74-104 passim.

⁴⁵ John H. Peterson, Jr., “The Indians in the Old South,” in Charles M. Hudson (ed.), Red, White, and Black: Symposium on Indians in the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971), 118, hereinafter cited as Peterson, “Indians in the Old South.”

⁴⁶ Peterson, “Indians in the Old South,” 130.

⁴⁷ Douglas L. Rights to John R. Swanton, April 16, 1934, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C., Mss. No. 4126.

⁴⁸ Adolph L. Dial and David K. Eliades, The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee Indians (San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1975), passim, hereinafter cited as Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know.

⁴⁹ Patrick H. Garrow, The Mattamuskeet Documents: A Study in Social History (Raleigh: Archaeology Section, Division of Archives and History, Department of Cultural Resources, 1975), hereinafter cited as Garrow, The Mattamuskeet Documents.

⁵⁰ Garrow, The Mattamuskeet Documents, 2.

⁵¹ Frank G. Speck, “Catawba Hunting, Trapping, and Fishing,” Philadelphia Anthropological Society Monograph, No. 2 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia University Museum, 1946), 1.

⁵² G.S. 71-1 through G.S. 71-20 was inadvertently repealed by the 1977 General Assembly. N. C. Session Laws, 1977, c. 849, s. 1. The 1978 legislature rewrote G.S. 71-1 through G.S. 71-6 when it enacted “An Act to Reenact and Revise the Laws Relating to Indian Tribes Inadvertently Repealed by the 1977 Session of the General Assembly.” N. C. Session Laws, 1977, Second Session, 1978, c. 1193.

⁵³ Guy B. Johnson traces the history and implications involved in the selection of a “good name” by this mixed-blood group in “What’s in a Name: The Case of the Lumbee Indians,” a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society, Athens, Georgia, April 9, 1970, hereinafter cited as Johnson, “What’s in a Name.”

⁵⁴ The statutory authorization for these name changes are found in Public Laws of North Carolina, 1911, c. 215, and Public Laws of North Carolina, 1913, c. 123. The text is quoted in Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, 185-186.

⁵⁵ Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, 18-19.

⁵⁶ Johnson, “What’s in a Name,” 6.

⁵⁷ 70 Stat. 375. The text is quoted in Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, 185-187.

⁵⁸ William S. Pollitzer, “The Physical Anthropology and Genetics of Marginal People of the Southeastern United States,” American Anthropologist, 74 (1972), 3, 728.

⁵⁹ J. K. Dane and B. Eugene Griessman, “The Collective Identity of Marginal Peoples: The North Carolina Experience,” American Anthropologist, 74 (1972), 3, 701, hereinafter cited as Dane and Griessman, “The Collective Identity.”

⁶⁰ Brewton Berry, Almost White (New York: Macmillan Company, 1963), 159.

⁶¹ G.S. 71-16.

⁶² G.S. 71-16.

⁶³ G.S. 143B-404 to 143B-411.

⁶⁴ Indian Tribes and Organizations of North Carolina (Raleigh: North Carolina State Commission of Indian Affairs [mimeographed list], n.d.); American Indian Policy Review Commission, Final Report, Submitted to Congress May 17, 1977 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2 volumes, 1977), I, 472, hereinafter cited as American Indian Policy Review Commission, Final Report.

⁶⁵ American Indian Policy Review Commission, Final Report, I, 89.

⁶⁶ In order to put this oft-quoted statistic in proper perspective, the 1970 United States census figures also showed that Indians constituted less than 1 percent of the total North Carolina population.

⁶⁷ 1970 Census of Population, Subject Report, American Indians (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1973), ix.

⁶⁸ Dane and Griessman, “The Collective Identity,” 701.

⁶⁹ Indian Time, I (September, 1976), 1, 3.