NC Tuscaroras endured removal
Although lands formerly belonging to Bladen County were carved out to establish Cumberland County in 1754, Highland Scots began settling along the Cape Fear River as early as the late 1720s.
The Cape Fear River, a convenient port of entry as it cut across the state, was primarily controlled and settled by the Tuscarora Nation prior to conflicts with European settlers.
The Tuscarora Wars pushed Tuscaroras and their neighbors north and south of their territories, causing some to join the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in New York.
Despite formal treaties acknowledging that the Tuscarora Nation occupied lands along the Cape Fear River and laws restricting settlement within 20 miles, the State Assembly incentivized settlers who established sawmills in the region.
The Tuscarora Nation of NC never consented to any land cessions made because of the Tuscarora Wars, and any transaction made in the name of the Tuscarora Nation has been historically done so under extreme duress.
The Scottish villages of Campbelltown and Cross Creek further influenced the removal of Tuscarora settlements from Cape Fear into Robeson County.
‘A mixt Crew, a lawless People’
As the region developed, the town of Hope Mills took the place of Rockfish Village, and Fayetteville was formed by combining Campbelltown and Cross Creek.
By the mid to late 18th century, the ancestors of the Tuscarora Nation of NC had already established a separate and sovereign Tuscarora community in Bladen County.
Records claiming that “50 families a mixt Crew, a lawless People” were living on the Drowning Creek in 1754 are directly associated with the appearance of a large group of Tuscarora families that migrated from the Indian Woods reservation to avoid encroachment and conflict with white settlers.
The first legal attempts to begin the process of disenfranchising the Tuscarora that remained in the state of their fundamental human rights was with the passage of a law in 1768 that formally prohibited Indians and Africans from being able to testify as witnesses in the Superior Courts in NC, except in cases against each other.
Laws passed by the NC General Assembly in 1766 and 1778 attempted to silence the claims of the Tuscarora families that did not remove to New York by extinguishing their interests in the Indian Woods reservation.
The Lowry War
Through illegal land sales, settlers could purchase thousands of Tuscarora treaty lands, further influencing Tuscarora citizens to migrate elsewhere. When the United States conducted the first census, ancestors of the Tuscarora Nation of NC lived in Robeson County.
The 1835 Constitution ratification by the State of NC followed up on the prior disenfranchisement law from 1768, which restricted the right to bear arms, self-identification as a member of a Native American Tribe, and testifying against whites in court. Records verify that the Lowry and Locklear families, two predominant Tuscarora kin groups, were targeted and abused by the Confederate Home Guard for escaping Fort Fisher.
The Lowry War, a response to the killings of Allen and William Lowry, forced the NC Legislature to end the disenfranchisement of Robeson County Tuscaroras and local minorities.
Hamilton McMillan, a Confederate soldier, was busy locating and removing ancient and historical Indian burial mounds from the surrounding areas during and after the chaos of the Wars.
Beginning in Cumberland and Robeson County, McMillan helped to locate numerous Indian burial mounds.
Wrong identification, with consequences
In early archaeological studies reflecting the whereabouts of these mounds, one large mound was documented by McMillan as being located 10 miles southwest of Fayetteville, near Rockfish Creek.
According to the Southwest Cumberland Land Use Plan completed in 2013, which included a brief history of Hope Mills, “It was first inhabited by the Tuscarora Indians near the Rockfish Creek area.”
In 1885, during his first term, McMillan helped pass a bill called the Croatan Act.
In the same year, Rep. McMillan appeared in newspapers such as the Fayetteville Observer, acknowledging the presence of Tuscarora families in Robeson County.
During conversations with federal agencies in the early 20th century concerning his theories, McMillan and Indian Agent O.M. McPherson confirmed that the name Croatan should be understood as that of a locality and not as the name of a particular tribe or group of Indians in Robeson County.
Despite his intentions, McMillan had wrongly identified Tuscarora tribal citizens as Croatan in state legislation and then promoted a separate school to assimilate these so-called Croatans into American society.
Census records from 1980 and 1990 explain that the Tuscarora Nation was the fourth most populous tribal nation in NC, with Tuscaroras mainly living in Robeson and Cumberland Counties.
McMillan’s efforts to erase the Tuscarora presence in Cumberland and Robeson Counties have yet to be fully recognized.
The Tuscarora Treaties demand that the Tuscarora Nation of NC receive equitable representation and resources for tribal citizens who survived Indian Removal and continue to reside in Cumberland and Robeson Counties.
Donnie Rahnàwakew McDowell is the public relations officer for the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina.