Native American

The list of items below have been tagged as part of the Native American historical collection here at AccessGenealogy.

Catawba Indian History

A recent publication of the Smithsonian Institution (” Siouan Tribes of the East,” by James Mooney) asserts that the origin and meaning of the word Catawba are unknown. In 1881, the Bureau of Ethnology collected a vocabulary of 10,000 words from the tribe of Indians bearing this name, and, after critical examination by experts, their language was pronounced unmistakably of Siouan stock. The home of the Sioux family is believed to have been at one time in the upper Ohio valley, from whence one branch migrated east and the other west, and Mr. Mooney says that linguistic evidence indicates that … Read more

Catawba Indian Treaty of 1843

“A treaty entered into at the Nation Ford, Catawba, between the Chiefs and Headmen of the Catawba Indians of the one fart and the Commissioners appointed under a resolution of the Legislature, passed December, 1839, an acting under Commissions from his Excellency Patrick Noble, Esq., Governor of the State of South Carolina, of the other part; “ARTICLE FIRST. The Chiefs and Headmen of the Catawba Indians, for themselves and the entire nation, hereby agree to cede, sell, transfer, and convey to the State of South Carolina, all their right, title, and interest to their Boundary of Land lying on both … Read more

Catawba Indian Condition

Scarcely more than one hundred years ago the hoof prints of the buffalo became scarce in South Carolina, and it would, perhaps, have been well for the Catawba Indian had he followed him to the distant West; for the exterminating greed of the white man has almost driven him, too, from the boundless regions in which he used to roam, cruel legislation has allowed his lands to be sold and his money squandered, and, after all, he is in not much better condition morally, socially, or financially than when he was a savage in the woods, with God-given ability to … Read more

Catawba Indian Reservation

The reservation of the Catawba Indians was at one time in the remotest backwoods of South Carolina, but within the last twenty years the signs of civilization have been rapidly creeping toward it. Since the South began to draw Northern capital a few years ago, the development of this section of Carolina has been phenomenal. The nearest town of consequence to the reservation is Rock Hill, nine miles distant. Fifteen years ago there were scarcely half a dozen farm houses in the town today, Rock Hill is an important city with a number of cotton factories and a population of … Read more

Responsibility

Perhaps, after the Catawbas have become extinct, some one might ask who was responsible. Let us not wait until then to place the responsibility where it belongs. If it is South Carolina’s duty to cherish and guard with a fostering care the last vestige of her aboriginal inhabitants; if she owes anything to her earliest benefactors; if she owes anything to a disinterested people who have fought her battles a people who were courted when they were strong, but are now scorned because they are weak; if she owes anything to a people whose territory she has absorbed without due … Read more

Slave Narrative of Katie Rowe

Person Interviewed: Katie RoweLocation: Tulsa, OklahomaAge: 88 I can set on de gallery, what de sunlight shine bright, and sew a powerful fine seam when my grandchillun wants a special purty dress for de school doings, but I ain’t worth much for nothing else I reckon. These same old eyes seen powerful lot of tribulations in my time, and when I shets ’em now I can see lots of l’ll chillun jest lak my grand-chillun, toting hoes bigger dan dey is, and dey pore little black hands and legs bleeding whar dey scratched by de brambledy weeds, and whar dey … Read more

Slave Narrative of Harriett Robinson

Person Interviewed: Harriet Robinson Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Place of Birth: Bastrop, Texas Date of Birth: September 1, 1842 Age: 95 I was born close to Webbers Falls, in the Canadian District of the Cherokee Nation, in the same year that my pappy was blowed up and killed in the big boat accident that killed my old Master. I never did see my daddy excepting when I was a baby and I only know what my mammy told me about him. He come from across the water when he was a little boy, and was grown when old Master Joseph … Read more

Cattle Ranchers and Native Americans of Brown County, Nebraska

Cattle ranches were the first settlements made in northwest Nebraska. The surplus stock from these ranches was bought by the United States government at good prices, so the business was a profitable one for a few years. To the west of Brown county several large outfits were found very early, previous to 1880: Boiling Springs ranch owned by Carpenter and Morehead; the JP ranch on the Niobrara about twelve miles below Boiling Springs; the Newman ranch twenty-one miles west of Boiling Springs; and the Hunter ranch about due south of where Gordon is now located. The herds owned by these … Read more

Slave Narrative of Betty Robertson

Person Interviewed: Betty Robertson Location: Fort Gibson, Oklahoma Age: 93 I was born close to Webbers Falls, in the Canadian District of the Cherokee Nation, in the same year that my pappy was blowed up and killed in the big boat accident that killed my old Master. I never did see my daddy excepting when I was a baby and I only know what my mammy told me about him. He come from across the water when he was a little boy, and was grown when old Master Joseph Vann bought him, so he never did learn to talk much … Read more

Slave Narrative of Phoebe Banks

Person Interviewed: Phoebe Banks Location: Muskogee, Oklahoma Date of Birth: October 17, 1860 Age: 78 In 1860, there was a little Creek Indian town of Sodom on the north bank of the Arkansas River, in a section the Indians called Chocka Bottoms, where Hose Perryman had a big farm or ranch for a long time before the Civil War. That same year, on October 17, I was born on the Perryman place, which was northwest of where I lived now in Muskogee; only in them days Fort Gibson and Okmulgee was the biggest towns around and Muskogee hadn’t shaped up … Read more

Slave Narrative of Martha Allen

Interviewer: Mary A. Hicks Person Interviewed: Martha Allen Location: 1318 South Person Street, Raleigh, North Carolina Place of Birth: Craven County NC Age: 78 Ex-Slave Story An interview with Martha Allen, 78, of 1318 South Person Street, Raleigh. I wuz borned in Craven County seventy eight years ago. My pappa wuz named Andrew Bryant an’ my mammy wuz named Harriet. My brothers wuz John Franklin, Alfred, an’ Andrew. I ain’t had no sisters. I reckon dat we is what yo’ call a general mixture case I am part Injun, part white, an’ part nigger. My mammy belonged ter Tom Edward … Read more

Slave Narrative of Harriet Ann Daves

Interviewer: T. Pat Matthews Person Interviewed: Harriet Ann Daves Location: 601 E. Cabarrus Street, Raleigh, North Carolina Date of Birth: June 6, 1856 My full name is Harriet Ann Daves, I like to be called Harriet Ann. If my mother called me when she was living, I didn’t want to answer her unless she called me Harriet Ann. I was born June 6, 1856. Milton Waddell, my mother’s marster was my father, and he never denied me to anybody. My mother was a slave but she was white. I do not know who my mother’s father was. My mother was … Read more

Early Explorers in the Interior Coastal Region

La Roche Ferriére is our primary candidate for making direct contact with the gold-mining Indians of northern Georgia. The native peoples on the coast specifically told de Laudonniére that the most valuable export products from the mountains (to them) were the polished stone wedges used for splitting trees.  Greenstone does not exist in either Florida or southern Georgia. A small party that de Laudonniére trusted sailed up the Georgia coast to the province of King Oueda. Oueda still thought fondly of the Frenchmen.  He sent them food supplies and invited them to relocate their colony in his province. Pierre Gambie, … Read more

Gold, Silver, Copper and Greenstone

In many sections of his book, René Goulaine de Laudonniére discussed being given or seeing gold chains, gold sheets, gold nuggets, slabs of silver and silver ore.  The valuable metals were always in the possession of the provincial leaders or town chiefs.  Both at Charlesfort and Fort Caroline, the former owners of the gold and silver consistently stated that these precious commodities came from the mountains to the north.   This is exactly what the Natives in the Florida Panhandle told members of the de Soto Expedition and South Carolina Natives told Spanish Captain Juan Pardo in 1567. By late 1564 … Read more

Ethnicity and Political Divisions of Coastal Tribes

Ribault - Jacques le Moyne

In recent years, several anthropologists have criticized the paintings of French Huguenot artist Jacques le Moyne because “the Indians look like they are from Brazil.”  That is exactly what the indigenous linguistics recorded by René de Laudonniére on the South Atlantic Coast suggest.  Most of these ethnic groups were not Muskogeans.  Most used a political title for king associated with the Moche culture; parcusi or paracusa.  Some worshiped a sun god named Toya like the Calusas.  Others spoke languages that contained Arawak elements.  South American anthropologists currently believe that the Arawaks originated in either the northern Amazon Basin or the … Read more

Agriculture of the Coastal Native Americans

Anthropological literature from Florida is awash with statements that presume the coastal peoples of Georgia and South Carolina were primarily fishermen, hunters and gatherers.  This may have been the case for many ethnic groups in the coastal regions of the Florida Peninsula, but was not true for many areas of the Georgia and South Carolina coast. The primary reason listed by René Goulaine de Laudonniére for not placing a French colony on the coast of the Florida Peninsula was that the soil was infertile and the climate, hot.  On the first voyage he had noticed that the coast was sparsely … Read more