Theories of origins
Lost Colony of Roanoke
In 1885, the Democratic politician Hamilton MacMillan proposed a fanciful theory that the mixed-race inhabitants of Robeson County were descendants of England's "
Lost Colony of Roanoke", who intermarried with what he described as the "Croatan Indians."
[48] The Roanoke colony disappeared during a difficult winter, but the colonists reportedly left the word "Croatan" carved into a tree, hence the name MacMillan gave the proto Lumbee.
MacMillan's theory was part of a Reconstruction era effort to woo the proto Lumbee to the Democratic Party by creating an "Indian" school system that would free these new "Croatan Indians" from sending their children to school with the children of the recently emancipated slaves.
By the early 1900s, Roberson County whites used "Cro" as a racial epithet to describe their "Indian" neighbors. The Lumbee abandoned the Lost Colony theory of origins in 1911, dropping "Croatan" from their tribal name, calling themselves the generic "Indians of Robeson County."[
citation needed]
Mulatto descent
Genealogists Dr. Paul Heinegg and Dr. Virginia E. Demarce have conducted extensive research of African-American families who were free before the American Revolutionary War, and their descendants in the Upper South. Their research on these and other families consulted historic documents, primary source records such as court proceedings, published state records and many types of civil records. They suggest that the Lumbee are a politically invented tribe, and descend mainly from the mixed-race unions of free white women and free, indentured or enslaved African or African-American men. Their children were sometimes referred to as
mulatto. In his book
Free African Americans of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, Heinegg tracs the migration of some of the ancestors of the people now calling themselves Lumbee, to Robeson County from the Tidewater area of Virginia as individual colonists. DeMarce also published an article about these people, affirming their origin as free people of color in Virginia.
An article in the February 1872,
New York Herald, entitled "The Mulatto Capitol" lists Robeson County, Scuffletown, (Pembroke) North Carolina as the "Mulatto Capitol" and as an "Immemorial Free Negro Settlement". "A Homogenous free Negro settlement". Kings Colonial census count surveys list the residents of Robeson/Bladen county as "is all Mulatto and Negro, No Indians".[
citation needed]
Cherokee descent
The proto Lumbee first began identifying as Cherokee Indians in 1915, when they changed their name to the "Cherokee Indians of Robeson County." Four years earlier, they had changed their name from the "Croatan Indians" to the generic "Indians of Robeson County." But the Cherokee occupied much further to the west and in the mountains during the colonial era.
In his unpublished 1934 master's thesis, graduate student Clifton Oxendine theorized that the Lumbee descended from
Iroquoian-speaking
Cherokee. Citing "oral traditions," Oxendine suggested that the Lumbee were the descendants of Cherokee warriors who fought with the British under Colonel
John Barnwell of
South Carolina in the Tuscarora campaign of 1711-13. He said the Cherokee settled in the swamps of Robeson County when the campaign ended, along with some Tuscarora captives.
[49]
The Oxendine theory of Cherokee origin has been uniformly rejected by mainstream scholars. First, no Cherokee warriors are listed in the record of Barnwell's company.
[50] Second, the Lumbee do not speak Cherokee or any other Indian language. Third, Oxendine's claims of oral traditions are completely unsubstantiated; no such oral traditions survive or are documented by any other scholar.
The Lumbee have abandoned this theory in their documentation supporting their effort to obtain federal tribal recognition. The federally recognized
Cherokee Nation categorically rejects any connection to the Lumbee, dismissing the Oxendine claims as "absurd" and disputing even that the Lumbee qualify as Native American.[
citation needed]
Cheraw descent
Shortly after abandoning the Croatan label and changing their name to the generic 'Indians of Robeson County,' the proto Lumbee seized on the speculations of Indian agent McPherson that they may be related to the defunct Cheraw, a band of Siouan-speaking Indians that had been reduced by war and disease to 50 or 60 individuals by 1768.
The 1915
McPherson Report said in reference to the
Cheraw (quoting the
Handbook of American Indians, 1906):
“Their numbers in 1715, according to Rivers, was 510, but this estimate probably included the Keyauwee. Being still subject to attack by the
Iroquois, they finally—between 1726 and 1739—became incorporated with the
Catawba…. They are mentioned as with the Catawba but speaking their own distinct dialect as late as 1743 (Adair). The last notice of them in 1768, when their remnant, reduced by war and disease to 50 or 60, were still living with the Catawba.”
[51]
The
Catawba are a federally recognized tribe. The McPherson Report does not explain how or when the remaining four or five dozen Cheraw identified in 1768 separated from the Catawba and became the ancestors of the Lumbee.
Siouan descent
After repeated rejections under the Croatan, Cherokee and Cheraw labels, the proto Lumbee petitioned the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1924 for recognition as "Siouan" Indians. This petition was rejected largely on the grounds that Siouan was a language, not a tribe. Moreover, there was no record of the Lumbee or their ancestors having ever spoken the Siouan or any other Indian language.
Keyauwee descent
In 1933, John Swanton wrote that the Siouan-speaking Keyauwee and Cheraw of the
Carolina Piedmont were the most likely Indian ancestors of the people known from 1885 to 1912 as Croatan Indians and later as the Indians of Robeson County.
[52] He suggested that surviving descendants of the
Waccamaw and the Woccon likely lived in the central coastal region of North Carolina. In the 21st century, these tribes are extinct as groups, except for a small band of Waccamaw that live on Lake Waccamaw and have been recognized by the state.
[52]
Swanton traced the migration of Southeast tribes.
[53] In addition to the Keyauwee, Cheraw, Bear River, Waccamaw, and Woccon already mentioned, he noted that the
Eno and
Waxhaw migrated from
Piedmont, South Carolina northeast to the north-central part of North Carolina, then back south again to a point on the
Pee Dee River just south of the border of the two Carolinas.
According to Blu, by the 1770s remnant Indians, from the once distinct tribal communities of the Cheraw, Keyauwee, Hatteras, Waxhaw, Sugaree, Eno, and Shakori, gathered along the Lumbee River, near the border that now divides North and South Carolina.[
citation needed] Some of these Indians moved further southward to join with the few surviving Catawba, but the majority settled near the pines, web of wetlands, and river that bear the name of the Lumbee. Over time in a process of
ethnogenesis, they identified as a common people.
[54]
Tuscarora descent
Several "Indian" families of Robeson County have oral traditions first recorded in the 1870s that they are descended from the
Tuscarora, an Iroquoian-speaking tribe that migrated from the Great Lakes area and established themselves in present day North Carolina near the Roanoke and Neuse rivers prior to the period of European colonization. The proto Lumbee never applied for tribal recognition as Tuscarora. Those Robeson County Indians claiming Tuscora descent dispute the Indian origins of their Lumbee neighbors.[
citation needed]
The Robeson County Tuscora have not gained state or federal recognition. In the 1920s, they made contact seeking to join the
Mohawk Nation. When rebuffed, they organized the Tuscarora Indians of North Carolina.[
citation needed] Robeson County residents claiming descent from the Tuscarora dispute the Indian origin of the Lumbee and criticize the Lumbee for attempting to hijack their Tuscarora identity. The Tuscarora claimants believe their attempt to achieve recognition have been hurt by the Lumbee and their fluctuating theories of Indian origin.
The historic Tuscarora were defeated by British colonists and their Indian allies in the
Tuscarora War of 1713. Most of those who survived migrated north to
New York. By 1722, they had been accepted by the
Iroquois League as its sixth nation. Tuscarora tribal leaders in New York declared that the migration was "complete" by 1802 and that any Tuscarora stragglers remaining in North Carolina were separate and not under the "same council fire."[
citation needed]
Descent from "seven different Indian tribes"
In 1955, when petitioning the United States Congress for recognition as "Lumbee Indians," Robeson County community leader D.F. Lowry testified that the Lumbee were descended from "an admixture of seven different tribes, including the Cherokee, Tuscarora, Hatteras, Pamlico and Croatan." The name "Lumbee" is drawn from the principal waterway traversing Robeson County, the Lumber River, and was chosen in a tribal referendum.
Lumbee - Wikipedia
...
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Some of these comments were hurtful though like (f-ck you).