NATIVE AMERICANS IN EARLY NORTH AMERICAN HISTORY The United States is a nation of immigrants, 99 percent of the population can theoretically trace their ancestral roots to another nation. So what about the 1 percent? What is their story? Their story starts long before European settlement, long before Europeans virtually erased the natives from the map. Pee Dee, Saponi, Tuscarora, Cheraw, and Keyauwee tribes all resided in Stanly County. Archaeological sites in Stanly County, such as the Hardaway, Doerschuk, and Rocky River sites have material dating back 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Radio Carbon dating at the Hardaway site determined that the Hardaway and Hardaway-Dalton points date back to 8500 B.C. to 7900 B.C. These elements of material culture provide evidence of early Native American lifestyles where natives lived off the land in small bands of hunter and gatherers.
EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT The earliest permanent English settlement came in 1607 with the Virginia Company at Jamestown. Jamestown represents how the early Native Americans in the United States now had to negotiate, lobby and fight for political rights in their own native land. Settlement in North Carolina remained much the same with the earliest settlers of Scotts Irish decent quickly developing trading relationships with native tribes along the coast and the piedmont region. The Natives experienced a period of cultural antagonism where Native Americans wanted to keep their own culture while Europeans wanted to impress their culture upon the Indians. However, compatible relationships existed in many instances in the Piedmont region, along trading routes of the Yadkin, Pee Dee and Catawba rivers to the West. Oil Painting Depicting Native Americans from the Archaic Period (accessed from NPS)