How To Register As A Native American Cherokee

First Immigrants: Native American Settlement of North Carolina

by Stephen R. Claggett
Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian. Spring 1995.
Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History

See as well:
American Indians Function II - Before European Contact
American Indians at European Contact

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Over iv hundred years agone, English language colonists trying to settle on Roanoke Island encountered many Native Americans forth the coast. At that fourth dimension more than thirty Native American tribes were living in present-day Due north Carolina. They spoke languages derived from three language groups, the Siouan, Iroquoian, and Algonquian.

None of the prehistoric Native Americans who lived in North America had developed any sort of written language. They relied instead on oral traditions, such equally storytelling, to keep records of their origins, myths, and histories. Our present cognition of prehistoric inhabitants of this state depends on rare early historical accounts and, peculiarly, on data gained through archaeology.

Prehistoric Native Americans

Archaeologists tin can trace the beginnings of Native Americans to at to the lowest degree twelve k years ago, to the time of the last Water ice Historic period in the Pleistocene epoch. During the Ice Age, ocean levels dropped and revealed state that had previously been under the Bering Sea. Native American ancestors walked on that land from nowadays-solar day Siberia to Alaska. Prove suggests that their population grew speedily and that they settled throughout Canada, the Great Plains, and the Eastern Woodlands, which included the North Carolina expanse.

The climate on the eastern seaboard was wetter and cooler twelve thousand years ago. Many species of animals roamed the forests and grasslands of our area, including now extinct examples of elephants (mastodons), wild horses, ground sloths, and behemothic bison. Other animals, now absent from the Southeast, included moose, caribou, elk, and porcupines.

Paleo-Indians, as archaeologists call those first people, hunted for these animals in groups using spears. They used the animals' meat, skins, and remaining parts for food, clothing, and other needs. They besides spent considerable time gathering wild plant foods and may have defenseless shellfish and fish. These first inhabitants of Due north Carolina were nomads, which means they moved frequently across the country in search of food and other resources.

Primitive people, similar their ancestors, were nomads. They traveled widely on foot to gather food, to obtain raw materials for making tools or shelters, and to visit and merchandise with neighbors. Some Archaic people may have used watercraft, specially canoes made by excavation out the centers of trees.

These Primitive Indians did not have 3 things that are commonly associated with prehistoric Indians—bows and arrows, pottery, or an agricultural economic system. In fact, the gradual introduction of these items and activities into North Carolina'south Archaic cultures marks the transition to the Woodland culture, which began effectually 2000 B.C.

Woodland Indians followed virtually of the subsistence practices of their Archaic ancestors. They hunted and fished and gathered food when deer, turkeys, shad, and acorns were plentiful. Merely they also began farming to brand certain they had enough food for the winter and early jump months, when natural food sources were not available. They cleared fields and planted and harvested crops like sunflowers, squash, gourds, beans, and maize.

The Woodland Indians likewise adult bow-and-arrow engineering. With a bow and arrow, Indians could hunt more than efficiently, using unmarried hunters instead of groups of hunters.

Archaeological show suggests that Woodland Indians were much more committed to settled hamlet life than their ancestors had been. Though remains of their settlements can exist found throughout N Carolina, these Indians tended to alive in semi permanent villages in stream valleys.

Prove also suggests that some Native Americans adopted religious and political ideas from a quaternary major prehistoric culture, called Mississippian. Ancestral Cherokee Indian groups in the Mountains adopted some of the Mississippian ways. In prehistoric times, the so-chosen Pee Dee Indians were Mississippian Indians. The Pee Dee built a major regional center at Boondocks Creek in present-solar day Montgomery County.

Mississippian Indians were more common in other parts of the Southeast and Midwest. They had a hierarchical society, with status determined past heredity or exploits in war. They were militarily aggressive and fought battles to gain and defend group prestige, territories, and favored merchandise and tribute networks. The surviving, often flamboyant artifacts from Mississippian Indian sites reflect the demand that those individuals felt to show their status and glorify themselves.

Measuring the involvement of historic North Carolina Indians with those big, powerful Mississippian groups is very hard. Some minor elements of Mississippian culture tin be found in various parts of our country, particularly in pottery types or religious or political ornaments. The Algonquian-speaking Indians met by the Roanoke Island colonists reflected some Mississippian influence, as did the later Cherokee.

Historic Native Americans

Most of the Indian groups met by early European explorers were practicing economic and settlement patterns of the Woodland culture. They grew crops of maize, tobacco, beans, and squash, spent considerable time hunting and angling, and lived in pocket-size villages. In 1550, before the inflow of the first permanent European settlers, more than 1 hundred thousand Native Americans were living in nowadays-day Due north Carolina. Past 1800 that number had fallen to about twenty thousand.

What happened to the Native Americans? Dissimilar Europeans, Native Americans had no resistance, or immunity, to diseases that the Europeans brought with them. These diseases, such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, killed thousands of natives throughout the state.

Settlement by European Americans likewise pushed many Native Americans off their land. Some made treaties with the Whites, giving upwards country and moving farther west. Others fought dorsum in battle but lost and were forced to give up their lands. These battles, as well every bit state of war with other Native American tribes, likewise killed many.

The fates of the three largest Native American tribes—the Tuscarora, the Catawba, and the Cherokee—are examples of the fates of the other tribes in North Carolina.

Tuscarora

In the Coastal Plainly Region, most of the smaller Algonquian-speaking tribes moved west in the face of growing numbers of white settlers. Merely the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora stayed, living in villages along the Pamlico and Neuse Rivers.

Tensions between White settlers and the Tuscarora increased as White settlements in the Coastal Plain grew. European settlers would non let the Tuscarora hunt near their farms, which reduced the Tuscarora'south hunting lands. Some White traders cheated the Tuscarora. Some settlers even captured and sold Tuscarora into slavery.

The settlement of New Bern in 1710 took up even more of the Tuscarora state and may have provoked the Tuscarora Indian War (1711–1714). In 1711 the Tuscarora attacked White settlements along the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers. They were defeated in 1712 by an army led by Colonel John Barnwell of South Carolina. Later in 1712 the Tuscarora agreed to a peace treaty. According to terms in that treaty they were to move out of the surface area betwixt the Neuse and Cape Fright Rivers.

After this peace, the North Carolina Assembly refused to advantage Barnwell and his Due south Carolina troops. The Associates felt the army had not completely destroyed the Tuscarora's power. As a event, while returning to South Carolina, Barnwell's troops killed some Tuscarora, captured almost ii hundred Tuscarora women and children, and sold them into slavery for the money. The Tuscarora retaliated by attacking more than towns. The Tuscarora were defeated in a 1713 boxing at Fort Noherooka (in nowadays-day Greene Canton). Upward to one g iv hundred Tuscarora had been killed in the war. Some other one thousand had been captured and sold into slavery. Many of the surviving Tuscarora left North Carolina and settled in New York and Canada.

Catawba

In the Piedmont Region, the Siouan-speaking Catawba Indians were friendly to the settlers. Simply illness, specially smallpox, killed many. State of war with neighboring tribes also reduced their number. Of the five m Catawba estimated to have been living in the Carolinas in the early 1600s, fewer than three hundred remained in 1784.

Cherokee

In the Mountain Region lived the Cherokee. At the start of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), they joined the British and the colonists in fighting the French. But when some Cherokee were killed by Virginia settlers, the Cherokee began attacking White settlements along the Yadkin and Catawba Rivers. They were defeated and fabricated peace in 1761.

In return for this peace, the British promised that no White settlements would be allowed west of the Appalachian Mountains. Only land-hungry Whites ignored this promise and connected to settle on Cherokee land.

During the American Revolution (1775–1783), the Cherokee sided with the British. They thought that if the British won, the British government would protect their land from further settlement. They likewise hoped to proceeds dorsum some of the lands they had lost to the Whites. During the war, Cherokee and Creek Indians attacked White settlements. Colonists sent troops that defeated the Indians. In a 1777 treaty, the Cherokee gave upwardly all lands east of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Conflicts continued into the 1790s. A 1792 treaty created a boundary between Cherokee and White settlers. The United states regime promised to protect the Cherokee land from further settlement. Only as White settlement continued, the federal regime began thinking almost removing the Cherokee and other Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River. In 1838 President Martin Van Buren acted on a policy established earlier by Andrew Jackson and sent federal troops to forcibly remove the Cherokee to the newly established Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. About twenty thousand Cherokee were forced to go out. The path they took has been called the Trail of Tears because so many died on this journey due west.

Some Cherokee avoided the troops and stayed behind in North Carolina. They joined the Oconaluftee Cherokee Indians, who, because of an 1819 treaty, were allowed to stay in North Carolina. Together, their descendants make upward the Eastern Ring of the Cherokee and now live in the Qualla Boundary, a reservation in five different counties in western Due north Carolina. Several other modernistic Native American groups, such every bit the Lumbee, the Haliwa-Saponi, and the Coharie, live in North Carolina. They are direct descendants of prehistoric and early historic inhabitants.

one Jan 1995 | Claggett, Stephen R.

Source: https://www.ncpedia.org/history/early/native-settlement

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