The
Lumbee are a
Native American tribe of
North Carolina, though their origins are disputed. While Lumbees today identify ethnically as Indians, according to documentary sources they are in origin a mixture of
European American,
African-American, and
Native American. The name "Lumbee" derives from that of the
Lumber River (or Lumbee River) that winds through
Robeson County.
Ancestors of the present-day Lumbee were first recognized by the State of
North Carolina in
1885 as
Croatan Indians, and have been requesting benefits from the federal government since
1888. In 1956, the
United States House of Representatives passed a bill, HR 4656, better known as the Lumbee Act, which recognized the Lumbee as a Native American tribe. The Lumbee Act denied the federal aid that comes with full status as a federally recognized tribe. It should be noted, however, that the "Lumbee" are not eligible to re-apply for federal recognition, for a variety of reasons.
Origins and legends In
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 McMillan 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). Dial and Eliades 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).
18th century The 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. 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.
Antebellum history As 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 "Gibraltar 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.
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.
Civil War experiences Perhaps 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.
Education and state recognition When 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.
Attempts to gain federal recognition With 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 Indian New Deal The "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."
The Lumbee Act In 1987, the Lumbees petitioned the U.S. Department of the Interior for federal acknowledgment, seeking full access to federal monetary benefits reserved for Native Americans. The petition was denied due to language in the Lumbee Act of 1956. The group then introduced a Recognition bill which also failed due to opposition from the Department of Interior, as well as oposition from recognized tribes. The Lumbees do receive funds from some federal programs; however due to language in the 1956 Act, they do not have full access to the funds granted to other recognized Native American tribes. The Lumbees continue to seek federal recognition today.
Petitioning for federal acknowledgment Shortly 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.
Ku Klux Klan conflict A 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 of 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 Lowrie 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 by the United States as, "half or more Indian" 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 cite 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.
The Tuscarora Hypothesis Native Americans in the United States Timeline of Lumbee history List of famous Lumbees Genealogical DNA test Roanoke Colony See also Notes Primary sources Baker, Fred A.
Report on Siouan Tribe of Indians in Robeson County, North Carolina. [National Archives and Records Administration RG 75. Entry 121. File no. 36208-1935-310 General Services].
"Testimony of Dr. Jack Campisi Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on S. 420," September 17, 2003. Washington, DC:
http://www.lumbeetribe.com/hearings/s420.htm.
McPherson, O.M.
Report on Condition and Tribal Rights of the Indians of Robeson and Adjoining Counties of North Carolina. 63rd Cong., 3rd sess., 5 January 1915. S. Doc. 677. Complete text at:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/mcpherson/menu.html Merrell, James H. to Charlie Rose, 18 October 1989, in "U.S. Congress, House Committee on Natural Resources," ''Report Together with Dissenting Views to Accompany H.R. 334, 103rd Cong., 1st Sess., 14 October 1993, H. Rpt. 290.
Pierce, Julian, J. Hunt-Locklear, Jack Campisi, and Wesley White, ''The Lumbee Petition'', (Pembroke, NC: Lumbee River Legal Services, 1987).
Seltzer, Carl C. "A Report on the Racial Status of Certain People in Robeson County, North Carolina." 30 June 1936. [NARA. RG 75, Entry 616, Box 13-15, North Carolina].
Swanton, John R. "Probable Identity of the 'Croatan' Indians." [National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. MS 4126].
Recognition "Bad medicine for the Klan: North Carolina Indians break up Kluxers' anti-Indian meeting."
Life 44 (27 Jan. 1958): 26-28.
"Cole Says His Rights Violated."
Greensboro Daily News, 20 Jan. 1958: A1.
Craven, Charles. "The Robeson County Indian Uprising Against the KKK,"
The South Atlantic Quarterly LVII (1958): 433-442.
"Lumbee Indians put Klansmen to rout in 'uprising'."
The Amerindian [
American Indian Review] 6.3 (Jan.-Feb. 1958): [1]-2.
"The Lumbees Ride Again."
Greensboro Daily News, 20 Jan. 1958: 4A.
Morrison, Julian. "Sheriff Seeks Klan Leader's Indictment: Cole Accused of Inciting Riot Involving Indians and Ku Klux."
Greensboro Daily News, 20 Jan. 1958: A1-3.
"'The Law' Treads Lightly to Avert Maxton Violence."
Robesonian, 20 Jan. 1958: 1.
Ryan, Ethel. "Indians who crushed rally were mature tribesmen."
Greensboro Record, 21 Jan. 1958: A1.
Miscellaneous Anderson, Benedict .
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso; Revised edition, 1991.
Anderson, Ryan K. "Lumbee Kinship, Community, and the Success of the Red Banks Mutual Association,"
American Indian Quarterly 23 (Spring, 1999): 39-58.
Barth, Fredrik, ed.
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969.
Beaulieu, David L. "Curly Hair and Big Feet: Physical Anthropology and the Implementation of Land Allotment on the White Earth Chippewa Reservation."
American Indian Quarterly 7: 281-313.
Berry, Brewton.
Almost White: A Study of Certain Racial Hybrids in the Eastern United States. New York, NY: MacMillan Company, 1963.
Blu, Karen I. "Lumbee."
Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 14,
Southeast. Ed. Raymond D. Fogelson. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004. Pages 319-327.
______. "'Reading Back' to Find Community: Lumbee Ethnohistory." In
North American Indian Anthropology: Essays on Society and Culture, ed. by Raymond DeMallie and Alfonso Ortiz. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. 278-95.
______.
The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
______. '"Where Do You Stay At?" Home Place and Community Among the Lumbee." In
Senses of Place, ed. by Steven Feld and Keith Basso. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996. 197-227.
Boyce, Douglas W. "Iroquoian Tribes of the Virginia-North Carolina Coastal Plain," in
Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, vol. 15. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. 282-89.
Brownwell, Margo S. "Note: Who Is An Indian? Searching For An Answer To the Question at the Core of Federal Indian Law."
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 34 (Fall-Winter 2001-2002): 275-320.
Davis, Dave D. "A Case of Identity: Ethnogenesis of the New Houma Indians,"
Ethnohistory 48 (Summer 2001): 473-94.
DeMarce, Virginia E. "Looking at Legends - Lumbee and Melungeon: Applied Genealogy and the Origins of Tri-Racial Isolate Settlements."
National Genealogical Society Quarterly 81 (March 1993): 24-45.
______. "Verry Slitly Mixt': Tri-racial Isolate Families of the Upper South- A Genealogical Study,"
National Genealogical Society Quarterly 80 (March 1992): 5-35.
Dial, Adolph L. ''The Lumbee (Indians of North America book series).'' New York, NY: Chelsea House Publications, 1993.
Dial, Adolph L. and David K. Eliades.
The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee Indians. San Francisco, CA: Indian Historian Press, 1975.
Dominguez, Virginia.
White By Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.
Evans, William McKee.
To Die Game: The Story of the Lowry Band: Indian Guerillas of Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971.
Feest, Christian F. "North Carolina Algonquians," in
Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, vol. 15. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Insititution, 1978: 277-78,.
Forbes, Jack D.
Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Galloway, Patricia K.
Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Garoutte, Eva M.
Real Indian: Identity and the Survival of Native America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Hauptman, Lawrence M. "River Pilots and Swamp Guerillas: Pamunkee and Lumbee Unionists." In
Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1995.
Heinegg, Paul.
Free African Americans oF Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina: From the Colonial Period to about 1820. Baltimore, MD: Clearfield, 2001. Available in its entirety at:
freeafricanamericans.com Hobsbawm, Eric.
Bandits. New York: Delacorte Press, 1969.
Hudson, Charles M.
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Maynor, Malinda, "Native American Identity in the Segregated South: The Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina, 1872-1956," ''PhD Dissertation''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2005.
McCulloch, Anne M. and David E. Wilkins. '"Constructing' Nations Within States: The Quest for Federal Recognition by the Catawba and Lumbee Tribes."
American Indian Quarterly 19 (Summer 1995): 361-89.
McKinnon, Henry A. Jr.
Historical Sketches of Robeson County. N.P.: Historic Robeson, Inc., 2001.
Merrell, James H.
The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
Miller, Bruce G.
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Nagel, Joane. "American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Politics and the Resurgence of Identity."
American Sociological Review 60 (December 1995): 947-65.
Norment, Mary C.
The Lowrie History, As Acted in Part by Henry Berry Lowrie, the Great North Carolina Bandit. Weldon, NC: Harrell's Printing House, 1895.
"North Carolina: Indian raid."
Newsweek 51 (27 Jan. 1958): 27.
Pascoe, Peggy. "Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America."
Journal of American History 83 (June 1996): 44-69.
Perdue, Theda.
"Mixed Blood" Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003.
Price, Edward T. "A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States."
The Association of American Geographers. Annals 43 (June 1953): 138-155.
______. "Mixed-blood Populations of Eastern United States as to Origins, Localization and Persistence. (Ph.D. diss.) University of California, Berkeley, 1950.
"Raid by 500 Indians balks North Carolina Klan rally."
New York Times, January 19, 1958, p. 1.
Redding, Kent.
Making Race, Making Power: North Carolina's Road to Disenfranchisement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
Ross, Thomas.
American Indians in North Carolina. Southern Pines: Karo Hollow Press, 1999.
______. "The Lumbees: Population Growth of a Non-reservation Indian Tribe," in
Cultural Geography of North American Indians, eds. Thomas E. Ross and T.G. Moore. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987: 297-309.
Saunt, Claudio.
A New Order of Things : Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816. New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 1999.
______.
Black, White, and Indian : Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Seib, Rebecca S.
Settlement Pattern Study of the Indians of Robeson County, NC, 1735-1787. Pembroke, NC: Lumbee Regional Development Association, 1983.
Sider, Gerald M.
Living Indian histories: Lumbee and Tuscarora people in North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
______.
Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity, and Indian Identity in the Southern United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
______. "Lumbee Indian Cultural Nationalism and Ethnogenesis,"
Dialectical Anthropology 1 (January 1975): 161 - 172.
______. "The walls came tumbling up: The production of culture, class and Native American societies."
Australian journal of anthropology 17.3 (December 2006): 276-90.
Smith, Martin T.
Archeology of Aboriginal Culture Change in the Interior Southeast: Depopulation During the Early Historic Period. Gainesville, FLA: University of Florida Press, 1987.
Stilling, Glenn Ellen Starr. "Lumbee Indians."
Encyclopedia of North Carolina. Ed. William S. Powell. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pages 699-703. Complete text at
http://linux.library.appstate.edu/lumbee/2/STIL007.htm Torbert, Benjamin. "Tracing Native American Language History through Consonant Cluster Reduction: The Case of Lumbee English"
American Speech 76 (Winter 2001): 361-87.
Usner, Daniel H. Jr.
American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
______.
Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy : The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Wilkins, David E. "Breaking Into the Intergovernmental Matrix: The Lumbee Tribe's Efforts to Secure Federal Acknowledgment."
Publius 23 (Fall 1993): 123-42. Complete text at
http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/23/4/123
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