Arrival in the Land of the Native Americans in North Carolina
“Cherokee and Shawnee at Fort Dobbs Reconstructed” Photo by Robert Alvin Crum 2020. More images below.
Robert Alvin Crum copyright 30 March 2024
I previously wrote two articles about the Boone and Bryan families’ migration to the backcountry of the colony of North Carolina. The Bryan family, which included Daniel Boone’s future wife Rebecca Bryan, arrived around 1748, and the Boone family, which included a young Daniel Boone, arrived in 1750. Even though they found plenty of land upon which to settle, they were not alone.
The Native Americans or Indians had lived in North Carolina for thousands of years, and this article briefly summarizes when they lived in the backcountry of the colony of North Carolina. E. Lawrence Lee in The Indian Wars in North Carolina, 1663-1763 writes that, “When Europeans first arrived in North Carolina there were only three important tribes, or nations, in the region. In the order of their size, they were the Cherokee of the western mountains, the largest, the Catawba Nation of the Piedmont Plateau, and the Tuscarora of the Coastal Plain.”
The Boones and Bryans were among the first white settlers in the backcountry of North Carolina; however, the Spanish had explored the Carolinas two centuries earlier. In 1540, DeSoto and his army left what is now northwest Florida and marched through the southeast to the Mississippi River. They traveled through the Carolinas and were at a location called Xualla, which was a place between two rivers with the mountains in sight. They met with the Suara tribe, and this was probably the first contact in the area between Europeans and Indians. Twenty-six years later, another Spanish explorer, Juan Pardo, explored locations similar to DeSoto, and upon reaching Xualla (Joara), established a fort at that site. Explorations by the Spanish led to trade with the natives but no permanent settlements.
In the 1670’s, a German doctor, John Lederer, explored the Virginia and Carolina piedmont. As he descended from the Blue Ridge mountains and headed east, he wrote that he “descended broad savannahs, flowery meads, where herds of red deer were feeding. The grass which sprang from the limestone soil was so high. They could tie it across their saddles. Since the Indians burned their land over every autumn to make their game preserve, it was only lightly wooded with occasional groves of oak or maple.” In June 1670, he found the Suara Indians in the Yadkin River Valley and their camp on the Yadkin near the Trading Ford.
Subsequently, John Lawson traveled and extensively explored the Carolina backcountry in 1701. Lawson wrote that, “We reached the fertile and pleasant banks of the Sapona River…. This most pleasant river is beautiful with a numerous train of swans and other sorts of waterfowl, not common though extraordinary to the eye.” In his History of Rowan County North Carolina, Jethro Rumple writes that he believes that the Sapona River is actually the Yadkin River and that the Sapona town mentioned in other parts of Lawson’s accounts is an Indian village located near the Trading Ford.
Around 1703, the Sapona united with other tribes, left the Carolinas, and moved north into Virginia about ten miles north of the Roanoke River. After living there two or three decades, they returned to the Carolinas and lived among the Catawba.
When the Boones and Bryans moved into the North Carolina backcountry, Indians belonging to the Catawba Nation were those living closest to them. The Catawba towns were in the North and South Carolina Piedmont and were located along the Catawba and Wateree Rivers and Sugar and Twelve Mile Creeks. The land along the Yadkin settled by the Boones and Bryans was the hunting land of the Catawba Nation, and the Catawba frequently visited the settlers living along the Yadkin River and in the Bryan Settlement. There were times they even made camp near them and would barter and trade with the settlers.
In the early years, when the Boone and Bryans settled along the Yadkin, relations were usually peaceful, especially with the Catawba. However, there were times that violence erupted with the Indians. One example is when Christopher Gist returned to his home along the Yadkin River after his 1750 -1751 explorations of the Ohio Valley and the area that’s now Kentucky. He noted in his journal that on May 18, 1751, he arrived home and found his family gone. After learning Indians had killed five people nearby, he headed north and found his wife and family in Roanoke, Virginia.
Another incident was in July 1753, shortly after Rowan County was formed. A party of “Northern Indians” invaded and massacred sixteen whites and took ten captives at a settlement on Buffalo Creek in western North Carolina. The militia was called out and dispatched, and Catawba Indians assisted by searching for the raiding party, but without success.
King Hagler (circa 1700-1763) became Chief of the Catawba in 1750 and was very astute and adept at negotiating with the white settlers and other tribal nations. However, several tragedies plagued the Catawba Nation. One devastating event was a smallpox epidemic in 1759 where half of the Catawba Nation died. King Hagler was forced into treaty negotiations to preserve the ancient lands of his nation, and in 1756, he negotiated a defense treaty with the colony of Virginia. He worked to maintain the location of Cofitachique and his home at Pine Tree Hill. In 1760 he began the three-year negotiations for the Treaty of Pine Tree Hill. He was willing to move his home and the Catawba Nation north seventy miles and give up his land base of 55,000 squire miles, since he knew it was already lost to illegal white settlement in North and South Carolina. By doing this, he retained much of his ancestral land which was a two million tract of land centered at the Old Waxhaw Fields.
Legend has it that the Shawnees living to the north invaded the Catawba towns, and in 1763, they killed their honored chief, Hagler. This occurred only a couple months before Chief Hagler was to attend the Treaty of Augusta in Georgia. With Hagler out of the way, the Carolina colonies had a much easier time negotiating in Augusta. After brief negotiations, the Catawba land base was cut down to fifteen square miles.
The Cherokee Nation was the most powerful tribe in the South. Their towns were in the mountains just to the west of the Boone and Bryan settlements. The land under their control roughly included what is now western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, northwestern South Carolina, and northern Georgia.
The English quickly dominated coastal Carolina tribes. However, authors in Native Carolinians: The Indians of North Carolina write that the Cherokee maintained their independence from the British during the colonial period for two reasons. First, they were a large population who lived in a remote and defensible area of the mountains. Secondly, the Cherokee also traded with the Spanish in Florida and the French to the west of their Nation, so they did not have to rely on trade goods from the British. In the early years, the Cherokee were able to play one European power against another.
One problem that resulted from exposure to white settlers was decimation by disease. In 1738, the Cherokee suffered from a smallpox epidemic that killed half their population.
An alliance was formed between the Cherokee and British from 1730 to 1753. In doing so, the Cherokee hoped to gain protection from Indians allied with the French, and the British wanted to monopolize the Cherokee deer hide trade. The Cherokee eventually became dependent on the trade goods such as metal tools and guns and ammunition provided by the British. Simultaneously, the European demand for deer hides continued to accelerate. Traders increased the price of their goods, so the Cherokee had to provide more skins which meant they had to abandon their attitude toward killing deer and could no longer keep their world in balance. In Theda Perdue’s book The Cherokee, she writes that the Cherokee sold 50,000 deer skins to traders in 1708. That number increased dramatically in 1735 when the Cherokee sold 1,000,000 hides to traders.
Initially, the Catawba and Cherokee established good relationships with white settlers and even became their allies during times of war. However, this would change with the Cherokee due to incitement by the whites, and this topic will be addressed in a future article. The conflicts that arose in this land that initially appeared peaceful to the Boones and Bryans erupted into conflict that included the French & Indian War (1754-1763), the Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761), the American Revolution (1775-1783), and the Cherokee War of 1776.
Sources:
Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman C. Draper, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1998.
Blumer, Thomas J., Catawba Nation: Treasures in History, The History Press, Charleston, South Carolina, 2007.
Brawley, James S., The Rowan Story 1753-1953, Rowan Printing Company, Salisbury, North Carolina, 1953.
Colonial and State Records of North Carolina.
Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.
Harris, Frances Latham, Lawson’s History of North Carolina, Garrett & Massie, Inc., Richmond, Virginia, 1952.
Johnson, J. Stoddard, First Explorations of Kentucky, John P. Morgan, Louisville, Kentucky, 1898.
Lee, E. Lawrence, Indian Wars in North Carolina 1663-1763, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1968.
Perdue, Theda, The Cherokee, Series: Indians of North America, Chelsea House Publishers, New York & Philadelphia, 1989.
Perdue, Theda and Oakley, Christopher Arris, Native Carolinians: The Indians of North Carolina, North Carolina Department of Public Resources, Offices of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina, 2010.
Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1964.
Rights, Douglas L., The American Indian in North Carolina, John F. Blair, Publisher, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1957.
Rumple, Rev. Jethro, A History of Rowan County, North Carolina: Containing Sketches of Prominent Families and Distinguished Men, Published by J.J. Bruner, Salisbury, North Carolina, 1881.
