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Origins and legends
The first recorded attempt to posit Lumbee origins was made in 1885, when Hamilton McMillan theorized that the Lumbees were the descendants of England's "Lost Colony" who intermarried with the Hatteras, an Algonquian people.[2] A number of other authors subsequently repeated McMillan's speculation as fact. However, no extant evidence exists for "Lost Colony" origins. Of the many characteristically Lumbee names, few are shared with members of England's failed colony. While some modern day Lumbees continue to subscribe to this theory, the vast majority of Lumbees discredit the notion of "Lost Colony" origins. Anthropologists such as Gerald Sider and Karen Blu acknowledge Lumbees as Native American even though many historical documents record the original Lumbee ancestors as free people of color, black, and white. While Indian ancestry is plausible, there is very little genealogical evidence to prove it. In the first federal census of 1790, the ancestors of the Lumbee were enumerated as Free Persons of Color, as the U.S. Census did not have an "American Indian" category for non-tribal Indians until 1870, and up until that time, census enumerators often categorized individuals themselves, thereby determining the race of a particular individual. In Robeson County, Lumbee ancestors were only officially classified as Indian after Reconstruction in 1885. Prior to 1885, Lumbee ancestors on many occasions described themselves as "colored" or "free colored" in surviving records, but never as "Indian."
18th centuryIn 1754, a surveying party reported that Bladen County (which at that time contained what today is Robeson County) was "a frontier to the Indians." Bladen County abutted Anson County which at that time extended west into Cherokee territory. The same report also claimed that no Indians lived in Bladen County. Land patents and deeds filed with the colonial administrations of Virginia, North and South Carolina during this period reveal that Lumbee ancestors were migrating into southern North Carolina along the typical routes of colonial migration, and obtaining land deeds in the same manner as any other migrants. In 1885, Hamilton MacMillan wrote that Lumbee ancestor James Lowrie received sizeable land grants early in the century, and by 1738 possessed combined estates of more than two thousand acres (8 km²). McMillan also claimed that John Brooks established title to over one thousand acres (4 km²) in 1735, and Robert Lowrie gained possession of almost seven hundred acres (2.8 km²).[5] However, according to a state archvist, no land grants were issued during these years in North Carolina. The first land grants to documented Lumbee ancestors would not occur until more than a decade later.[6] The Lumbee petition for federal recognition backed away from McMillan's claims.[7] Land records show that beginning in the second half of the 18th century, ancestral Lumbees took titles to land described in relation to Drowning Creek, and prominent swamps such as Ashpole, Long, and Back Swamp. The Lumbee settlement with the longest continuous documentation from the mid-eighteenth century onward is Long Swamp, or present-day Prospect, North Carolina. Prospect is located within Pembroke and Smith townships. According to James Campisi, the anthropologist hired by the Lumbee tribe, this area "is located in the heart of the so-called old field of the Cheraw documented in land records between 1737 and 1739."[8] However, this appears to be pure conjecture on Campisi's part, as the Lumbee Siouan petition prepared by Lumbee River Legal Services in the 1980s clearly shows that the Cheraw old fields, which were sold to a Thomas Grooms in the year 1739, were actually located in South Carolina not far from the current day town of Cheraw, more than sixty miles from Pembroke. Pension records for veterans of the American Revolution list men with Lumbee surnames such as Samuel Bell, Jacob Locklear, John Brooks, Berry Hunt, Thomas Jacobs, Thomas Cummings, and Michael Revels. And in 1790, ancestral Lumbees such as Cumbo, "Revils" (Revels), Hammonds, Bullard, "Lockileer" (Locklear), Lowrie, Barnes, Hunt, "Chavers" (Chavis), Strickland, Wilkins, Oxendine, Brooks, Jacobs, Bell, and Brayboy are listed as inhabitants of the Fayetteville District, and enumerated as "Free Persons of Color" in the first federal census.[9] Antebellum historyThe year 1835 proved to be critical for Lumbee ancestors in North Carolina. The state passed amendments to its original constitution ratified in 1776 that abolished suffrage for "free people of color." Free people of color were stripped of various political and civil rights that they had enjoyed for almost two generations and thus could not vote, bear arms without a license, serve on juries, or serve in the state militia. Anthropologist Gerald Sider tells of "tied mule" incidents in which a white farmer had only to tie his mule to the post of a neighboring Indian's land or let his cattle graze on the Indian's land. The white farmer then filed a complaint for theft with the local authorities who promptly arrested the Native farmer. "Tied mule" incidents were resolved with the Indian agreeing to pay a fine, or in lieu of a fine, by giving up a portion of his land, or agreeing to a term of labor service with the "wronged" white farmer. Sider never documented the occurrence of such an incident, instead reporting stories he had been told in the late 1960s. Robeson County land records do show an appreciable loss of Indian title to land during the 19th century, but mostly due to failure to pay taxes and other more common reasons. No tied mule incident has yet been discovered in Robeson County records.[10] In 1853, the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of North Carolina's ban on firearms with the conviction of Noel Locklear in the State v. Locklear for the illegal possession of firearms.[11] But, in 1857, William Chavers, another Lumbee ancestor from Robeson County was arrested and charged as a "free person of color" with carrying a shotgun. Chavers, like Locklear, was convicted. Chavers promptly appealed, arguing that the law only restricted "free Negroes," not "persons of color." The appeals court reversed the lower court, finding that "free persons of color may be, then, for all we can see, persons colored by Indian blood, or persons descended from Negro ancestors beyond the fourth degree." Two years later, in another case involving a Lumbee ancestor from Robeson County, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that forcing an individual to display himself before a jury was the same as forcing him to provide evidence against himself. Most of the charges were brought by other members of the proto-Lumbee community, who used the racist laws to settle petty disputes amongst themselves. Overall however, the ambivalent legal and political status of Robeson County's free people of color only increased in the years leading up to and during the Civil War. Civil War experiencesAs the war progressed and the Confederacy began to experience increasing labor shortages, the Confederate South began to rely on conscription labor. A yellow fever epidemic in 1862-1863 killed many slaves working on the construction of Fort Fisher near Wilmington, North Carolina, then considered to be the "Gibralter of the South." North Carolina's slave owners resisted sending more enslaved African-Americans to Fort Fisher. Robeson County began to conscript young free men of color. A few were shot for attempting to evade conscription, and others attempted to escape from work at Fort Fisher. Others succumbed to starvation, disease and despair.[12][13][14] Some Lumbee ancestors served in the Confederate army. Others tried to avoid coerced labor by hiding in the swamps. While hiding in the swamps, some Robesonians operated as guerillas for the Union, sabotaging the efforts of the Confederacy, and sought retribution against their Confederate neighbors. The Lowrie Gang WarPerhaps the most famous Lumbee ancestor is Henry Berry Lowrie, who organized an outlaw group. Most of the gang members were related, including two of Henry Lowrie's brothers, six cousins (two of whom were also his brothers-in-law), the brother-in-law of two of his cousins, in addition to a few others who were not related through kinship. The Lowrie gang included not only formerly free men of color, but also freed slaves and whites. The gang committed two murders during the Civil War, and were suspected of a number of thefts and robberies. After an interrogation and informal trial, Robeson County's Home Guard killed Henry Berry Lowrie's father and brother as Union General Sherman's army entered Robeson County.[15][16] Shortly thereafter, Henry Berry Lowrie and his band stole a large stockpile of rifles intended for use by the local militia from the Lumberton courthouse. Image:Lumbee.jpeg Lumbee Jamie Oxendine and U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur during the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian. Lowrie's gang avenged the deaths of his father and brother by killing several of the men responsible, one of whom was the sheriff of the county. The band stole two safes (one of which belonged to the sheriff), plundered the plantation storage bins and smokehouses of local elites, and gave the spoils to the poor Robesonians who had suffered at the hands of local elites. In 1868, Lowrie and his band were outlawed and the reward for his capture climbed to $12,000, second only to that offered for Jefferson Davis.[17] Robeson's elites and the governor of North Carolina requested the aid of Federal troops and federal detectives in the attempt to apprehend North Carolina's most famous outlaw. These efforts proved useless. Lowrie enjoyed wide support and he and members of his band were seen at public events. Reports of the Lowrie band's derring-do received national coverage; their exploits were featured in the New York Times and in Harper's Magazine. Lowrie's last-known feat occurred on February 16, 1872 when he and his band stole $20,000 worth of goods from a Lumberton, North Carolina store. They also managed to take the store's safe which contained approximately $22,000 in cash.[18] Most observers believe that Henry Berry Lowrie accidentally killed himself while cleaning his gun. Some members of the community, however, claimed to have seen Lowrie in various town locales long after news of his death was broadcast. The true cause of his death remains controversial, and thus a popular subject among local historians, gossips, and conspiracy theorists, to this day. All the members of the Lowrie band, save one, suffered violent deaths. One cousin and member of the gang, Henderson Oxendine, was publicly executed by the state of North Carolina] The war that Lowrie gang waged against the white supremacists in North Carolina had far-reaching consequences: the mulatto community developed a sense of itself as unique, possessed with a unique identity and history, while Henry Berry Lowrie became a culture hero to the Lumbee people.[19] Education and state recognitionNorth Carolina established its public education system in 1868. The following year, the state legislature approved a measure that provided separate schools for whites and blacks. Many Lumbee ancestors complied with the legislation and sent their children to Freedman's Bureau schools. Other formerly free people of color refused to enroll their children in schools for freed slaves. In Robeson County, this racialized impasse came to a halt when, in 1885, North Carolina formally recognized the formerly free people of color in Robeson County as "Croatan Indians." With state recognition, the Croatan Indians were able to petition for a school system for the exclusive use of tribal members where tribal members could exercise control over enrollment. That same year, the North Carolina General Assembly approved legislation which authorized a public school system for Indians. Within the year, each Croatan Indian settlement in the county established a school "blood committee" that determined students' racial eligibility. Moreover, in 1887, tribal members petitioned the state legislature once again, this time requesting the establishment of a normal school to train Indian teachers for the county's tribal schools. North Carolina granted permission, and tribal members raised the requisite funds, along with some state assistance that proved woefully inadequate. Several tribal leaders donated money and privately-held land to the tribe on which to build their schools. In 1899, the first bill was introduced in Congress to appropriate funds to educate the Indian children of Robeson County. Another bill was introduced a decade later, H.R.19036, 61st Cong., 2d Sess., and yet another in 1911, S.3258, 62nd Cong., 1st Sess. In 1913, the House of Representatives Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing on S.3258 where the Senate sponsor of the bill reviewed the history of the Lumbee and concluded that they had "maintained their race integrity and their tribal characteristics."[20] Robeson County's Indian normal school eventually evolved into Pembroke State University and later still, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. By century's end, the Indians of Robeson County established schools in eleven of their principle Indian settlements.[21] Attempts to gain federal recognitionWhen the Croatan Indians petitioned Congress for educational assistance, their request was sent to the House Committee on Indian Affairs. It took two years for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, T.J. Morgan, to respond to the Croatan Indians of Robeson County, telling them that, "so long as the immediate wards of the Government are so insufficiently provided for, I do not see how I can consistently render any assistance to the Croatans or any other civilized tribes." The government's rejection of assistance to the ancestors of the Lumbee was based solely on economic considerations. For Commissioner T.J. Morgan, services would have been readily extended to "civilized" tribes like the Croatan were it not for the Commission's unhappy insufficiency of funds. By the first decade of the twentieth century, congressional legislation was introduced to change the Croatan name and to establish "a school for the Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina." Charles F. Pierce, Supervisor of Indian Schools, investigated the tribe's congressional petition, reporting favorably that "a large majority [were] at least three-fourths Indian" as well as law abiding, industrious, and "crazy on the subject of education." Pierce also believed that federal educational assistance would be beneficial, but opposed any such legislation since, in his words, "[a]t the present time it is the avowed policy of the government to require states having an Indian population to assume the burden and responsibility for their education, so far as is possible.[22] A later committee report undertaken in 1932 explicitly acknowledged that the federal bill of 1913 was intended to extend federal recognition on the same terms as the amended state law. Moreover, while the bill passed the Senate, but not the House, the chairman of the House committee also abrogated any assumption of direct educational responsibility to the Indians of Robeson County by the federal government since he felt that they were already eligible to attend Indian boarding schools; that the federal government was already meeting its responsibility to the Indians of Robeson County through Indian boarding schools such as Carlisle Indian Industrial School.[23] The next year, Special Indian Agent, O.M. McPherson, who investigated the tribe under the auspices of the U.S. Senate found that the Indians of Robeson County had already developed an extensive system of schools and a complex political organization to represent their interests. While he, like Pierce before him, noted that Robeson's Indians were eligible to attend federal Indian schools, he also doubted that these schools could meet their needs. Despite McPherson's recommendations, Congress decided not to act on the matter.[24] The Indian New DealWith passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, the Indians of Robeson County redoubled their interrelated efforts at access to better education and federal recognition. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) sent the eminent anthropologist from the Bureau of American Ethnology, John R. Swanton, and Indian Agent Fred Baker to determine the origins and authenticity of the Indians of Robeson County. Swanton speculated that Robeson's Indians were of Cheraw and other eastern Siouan tribal descent. At this point, the Lumbee population factionalized into two groups. One group supported the Cheraw theory of ancestry. The other faction believed that they were descended from the Cherokee tribe. North Carolina's white politicians threw up their hands, and abandoned the recognition effort until the two factions agreed on an identity. The Lumbee ActThe "Lumbee Act," or HR 4656, which recognized the Lumbee as a tribe of Native Americans was passed by the U.S. Senate on May 21, 1956, by the House on May 24, 1956, and signed by President Dwight David Eisenhower on June 7, 1956. With ratification of the Lumbee Act, Congress designated the Indians of Robeson, Hoke, Scotland, and Cumberland counties as the "Lumbee Indians of North Carolina." HR 4656 also stipulated that "[n]othing in this Act shall make such Indians eligible for any services performed by the United States for Indians because of their status as Indians." Ku Klux Klan conflictShortly after the Lumbee Act was passed, the Ku Klux Klan sought to wage a campaign of terror throughout the American South. The Klan primarily targeted African-Americans, but in 1957, Klan Wizard James W. "Catfish" Cole of South Carolina began a campaign of harassment against the Lumbee whom he felt had overstepped their place in the segregated Jim Crow South. Declaring the Lumbee to be "mongrels," a group of Klansmen burned a cross on the lawn of a Lumbee woman in the town of St. Pauls, North Carolina. The Klan issued their tell-tale "warning" because the woman was dating a white man. For two weeks, the Ku Klux Klan continued to attack the Lumbee community by burning crosses while Cole planned a massive Klan rally to be held on January 18, 1958, near the small town of Maxton, North Carolina. Cole predicted that 5,000 rallying Klansmen would remind the Lumbee of "their place." However, Cole's rhetorical attacks against the Lumbee and now, the plan to hold a Klan rally within the Lumbee homeland finally provoked enough anger in the Lumbee that they decided to meet the Klan. Known today in Robeson County as the "Battle of Hayes Pond," or "the Klan Rout," the rally wherein 50 Klansmen (not the planned 5,000) were forced to flee the tribal homeland of 500 armed Lumbees made national news. Before Cole had a chance to begin the Klan rally, the Lumbee suddenly appeared, fanned out across the highway, encircled the Klansmen, and opened fire. Four Klansmen were wounded in the first volley – none seriously – while the remaining Klansmen panicked and fled. Cole reportedly escaped through a nearby swamp, but was later apprehended, charged, and convicted for inciting to riot for which he served a sentence of two years.[25] The Tuscarora HypothesisA significant minority of the Robeson County people today claim descent from the Tuscarora tribe. In the early 18th century, the Tuscarora tribe lived in what is today northeastern North Carolina. After the Tuscarora tribe lost a major war with the colonial forces in 1713, the Tuscaroras began an emigration north to New York, where they joined the Iroquois League. By 1802, the northern Tuscarora leaders felt that the emigration was complete, and that while some of their relatives had stayed behind, those people had intermarried with other races and ethnicities and were no longer tribal members. The position of the federally-recognized Tuscarora Nation since then has been that there are no Tuscaroras remaining in North Carolina, although it acknowledges that there may be some people of Tuscarora descent still living in the state. There are several pieces evidence showing that there are Tuscarora descendants among the Robeson county population. First, the migration trail of some of the Robeson families passed through counties in which the Tuscaroras had lived. This makes intermarriage with Tuscarora stragglers a possibility. Second, while the Henry Berry Lowrie gang was operating during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, several observers labeled the Lowry family as being of partial Tuscarora descent. One local observer extended this label to additional unnamed families. By the 1920s, some Robeson Indians who would later be recognized under the Indian Reorganization Act, had made contact with individual members of the Mohawk tribe, which is politically related to the Tuscarora tribe. A rural faction of the Robeson Indians began to express a Tuscarora identity. This faction split off from the Lumbee political entity, and strongly objected to the Lumbee name and to the Cheraw theory of ancestry. Various Tuscarora groups have formed, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs has declined to evaluate their petitions for federal recognition, on the grounds that the Lumbee Act precludes them from processing any petition from local Indian groups, regardless of their Tribal claims. By the early 1970s, the last eight living individuals recognized in the 1930s, began the attempt of finalizing what had begun 40 years earlier, which was to form the nucleus of a "recognized tribe". This is when the BIA began to use the Lumbee Act as reason to deny their requests, which caused the "22" to file a federal lawsuit. After two years, and an initial dismissal by the U.S. District court in Washington D.C., the "22" won in the Court of Appeals, what is now known as Maynor v. Morton . Since then, the government has once again taken it's "pre" Maynor stance, and has once again disallowed any Tuscarora petitions to be reviewed. See also
Notes
ReferencesPrimary sourcesRecognition
Conflict with Klan
Miscellaneous
Secondary sources
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