Indians Of North Carolina

In 1913 the State of North Carolina officially recognized Robeson County Indians as "Cherokees," a designation that went largely unnoticed by the Federal Government. When the same Indians petitioned for Federal recognition and assistance in 1915, the Senate tasked the Office of Indian Affairs to report on the "tribal rights and conditions" of those Robeson County Indians. Special Indian Agent Orlando McPherson, a Midwesterner who was in the final stages of a long career as a civil servant, was commissioned to investigate. The resulting federal report is essentially literature review in the guise of fact-finding. It relies heavily on Robeson county legislator Hamilton McMillan's musings on the relationship between Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony and the Indians around Robeson County. The report reaches many erroneous conclusions, in part because it was based in an anthropological framework of white supremacy, segregation-era politics, and assumptions about racial "purity." In fact, later researchers would establish that the Lumbees, as Malinda Lowery writes, "are survivors from the dozens of tribes in that territory who established homes with the Native people, as well as free European and enslaved African settlers, who lived in what became their core homeland: the low-lying swamplands along the border of North and South Carolina." Excavations would later establish the presence of Native people in that homeland since at least 1000 A.D. Ironically, McPherson's murky colonial history connecting Lumbees to early colonial settlers was used to legitimize them and to deflect their categorization as African-Americans. The McPherson report documents one important phase of an Indian people's long path to self-determination and political recognition, a path that would designate them variously as Croatan, Cherokee Indians of Robeson County, Siouan Indians of the Lumber River, and finally, Lumbee--the title of their own choosing and the one we use today. A DOCSOUTH BOOK. This collaboration between UNC Press and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library brings classic works from the digital library of Documenting the American South back into print. DocSouth Books uses the latest digital technologies to make these works available in paperback and e-book formats. Each book contains a short summary and is otherwise unaltered from the original publication. DocSouth Books provide affordable and easily accessible editions to a new generation of scholars, students, and general readers.

In Native Carolinians, Dr. Theda Perdue, Atlanta Distinguished Professor of Southern Culture at UNC at Chapel Hill, discusses the history, life-style, and culture of the native people of the region before the arrival of Europeans. She expands this discussion to include the interaction of the Indians with white settlers during the colonial period. In separate chapters, Perdue chronicles the experiences of the Cherokees and the Lumbees in the 19th and 20th centuries. She concludes this study with a discussion of Native Carolinians today and a detailed timeline of important dates and events in North Carolina Indian history.

The Croatan Indians of Sampson County, NC, written by George Edwin Butler (1868-1941) and composed only a year after Special Indian Agent Orlando McPherson's Indians of North Carolina report, was an appeal to the state of North Carolina to create schools for the "Croatans" of Sampson County just as it had for those designated as Croatans in, for example, Robeson County, North Carolina. Butler's report would prove to be important in an evolving system of southern racial apartheid that remained uncertain of the place of Native Americans. It documents a troubled history of cultural exchange and conflict between North Carolina's native peoples and the European colonists who came to call it home. The report reaches many erroneous conclusions, in part because it was based in an anthropological framework of white supremacy, segregation-era politics, and assumptions about racial "purity." Indeed, Butler's colonial history connecting Sampson County Indians to early colonial settlers was used to legitimize them and to deflect their categorization as African-Americans. In statements about the fitness of certain populations to coexist with European-American neighbors and in sympathetic descriptions of nearly-white "Indians," it reveals the racial and cultural sensibilities of white North Carolinians, the persistent tensions between tolerance and self-interest, and the extent of their willingness to accept indigenous "Others" as neighbors. A DOCSOUTH BOOK. This collaboration between UNC Press and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library brings classic works from the digital library of Documenting the American South back into print. DocSouth Books uses the latest digital technologies to make these works available in paperback and e-book formats. Each book contains a short summary and is otherwise unaltered from the original publication. DocSouth Books provide affordable and easily accessible editions to a new generation of scholars, students, and general readers.

Describes the history, way of life, and customs of North Carolina Indians with specific references to those surviving tribes.

With more than 50,000 enrolled members, North Carolina's Lumbee Indians are the largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi River. Malinda Maynor Lowery, a Lumbee herself, describes how, between Reconstruction and the 1950s, the Lumbee crafted and maintained a distinct identity in an era defined by racial segregation in the South and paternalistic policies for Indians throughout the nation. They did so against the backdrop of some of the central issues in American history, including race, class, politics, and citizenship. Lowery argues that "Indian" is a dynamic identity that, for outsiders, sometimes hinged on the presence of "Indian blood" (for federal New Deal policy makers) and sometimes on the absence of "black blood" (for southern white segregationists). Lumbee people themselves have constructed their identity in layers that tie together kin and place, race and class, tribe and nation; however, Indians have not always agreed on how to weave this fabric into a whole. Using photographs, letters, genealogy, federal and state records, and first-person family history, Lowery narrates this compelling conversation between insiders and outsiders, demonstrating how the Lumbee People challenged the boundaries of Indian, southern, and American identities.

Jamestown, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, and Plymouth Rock are central to America's mythic origin stories. Then, we are told, the main characters--the "friendly" Native Americans who met the settlers--disappeared. But the history of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina demands that we tell a different story. As the largest tribe east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the country, the Lumbees have survived in their original homelands, maintaining a distinct identity as Indians in a biracial South. In this passionately written, sweeping work of history, Malinda Maynor Lowery narrates the Lumbees' extraordinary story as never before. The Lumbees' journey as a people sheds new light on America's defining moments, from the first encounters with Europeans to the present day. How and why did the Lumbees both fight to establish the United States and resist the encroachments of its government? How have they not just survived, but thrived, through Civil War, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and the war on drugs, to ultimately establish their own constitutional government in the twenty-first century? Their fight for full federal acknowledgment continues to this day, while the Lumbee people's struggle for justice and self-determination continues to transform our view of the American experience. Readers of this book will never see Native American history the same way.

"More than forty years after the original publication of The American Indian in North Carolina, interest remains high in Douglas L. Rights's history of the relationship between two civilizations that traded, fought, and finally found an uneasy peace. The book begins with a chronological account of the dealings between Indians and Europeans--De Soto's probable contact with North Carolina tribes, the famous story of the Lost Colony, The Tuscarora War, the removal of the Cherokee. Excerpts from the journals of such men as John Lederer, John Lawson, and William Byrd lend the perspective of the explorers. Succeeding chapters provide the history of the various Indian tribes, including their relationships with neighboring tribes, their wars with settlers, and their reduced status after the white man's treaties. Discussion of Indian customs and folklore and a presentation of famous Indian leaders round out a well-balanced portrait of the meeting of two diverse civilizations in the state of North Carolina."--Provided by publisher.