Our Tuscarora Heritage
Special to the Daily Reflector by John R. M. Lawrence

        Terence Malik’s latest film, The New World, focuses upon the often explosive relationship of the Jamestown settlers and their Native American neighbors.  As the newcomers encroached upon the lands of the preceding population, the result was an inevitably violent conflict of cultures.  Over time, such scenes were played out repeatedly up and down the Atlantic coast.  Eastern North Carolina was no different. 

        Two hundred and ninety-four years ago this month, a war was raging from the Pamlico to the Neuse rivers.   For six months, the Tuscarora Indians, led by King Hancock, had been trying to destroy the new English settlements in areas that their people had been occupying for centuries.   Their surprise attack, launched on September 22, 1711, had nearly accomplished that goal.  Within hours, 130 settlers were killed, and many more were wounded or taken captive. 

        A few years before, in his volume A New Voyage to Carolina, John Lawson, an English naturalist turned land developer and surveyor, had described the Tuscaroras as having fifteen towns between the Neuse and Roanoke Rivers, with a fighting strength of more than 1,200 warriors.  Lawson also enumerated many of the Indians’ possible grievances, including loss of lands, interference with hunting, constant cheating in trade with English settlers, and the sale of alcohol among the natives. 

        In September 1711, Lawson would become the first victim of the conflict after the Tuscarora  captured Lawson and Baron Christopher Von Graffenried near the Neuse River while they were investigating the route for a new road to Virginia.  They were taken to Hancock’s Town, Catechna, along the Contentnea near modern Snow Hill.  As Graffenried relates in his Account of the Founding of New Bern, the Tuscarora chiefs initially acquitted the pair of any wrongdoing and prepared to let them go.  However, Lawson quarreled violently with the King of Cartouca, the site of New Bern.  Lawson was executed, and Graffenried was held prisoner until after the attacks were launched.  The miserable leader of the New Bern colonists saw many he recognized among the captives. 

        Unprepared for war, the colony sought help from Virginia and South Carolina.  John Barnwell led an army of mainly Indian allies to the relief of the beleaguered settlers, marching overland from Charleston.  Arriving late in January 1712, Barnwell found the Tuscaroras busy fortifying their towns with the help of an escaped slave.  After two months fighting, Barnwell destroyed two of the largest forts and established a shaky peace treaty with the belligerent tribes.  No sooner had Barnwell returned to South Carolina did the fighting erupt again.  Fortunately for the colonists, the northern Tuscarora towns under King Blunt had refused to join the attacks.  Eventually, after four more years of fighting, their aid would help the settlers gain the upper hand.  Once the settlers abandoned a policy of extermination against the belligerent tribes, a peace settlement was possible.  While many of the rebellious tribes removed to Pennsylvania and New York, others were settled in the Lake Mattamuskeet area.  The colony took special measures to protect the followers of King Blunt, and the Tuscarora remained numerous in the Roanoke River area for decades more. 

        Much information on the Tuscarora is available in the North Carolina Collection located on the third floor of East Carolina University’s Joyner Library.   Early accounts of both the conflict and the tribe are found in the Colonial Records of North Carolina.  Land records in Bertie and surrounding counties reflect the persistence of the Tuscarora in North Carolina up to the Revolution.  Recent archaeological studies have helped provide a window into their daily life before arrival of Europeans.  The Tuscarora-English/English Tuscarora Dictionary by Blair Rudes provides insight to both the living language and culture of the Tuscarora, as well as their past.  For more information call 328-6601 or visit the Web site at http://www.ecu.edu/cs-lib/ncc/index.cfm.

        John R.M. Lawrence is a librarian in the Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection