Johnston County’s First People

By BENJAMIN SANDERFORD

They called themselves the Skarureh (“People of the Shirt”). Outsiders called them the Tuscarora. For hundreds of years, they cultivated the river valleys of the North Carolina coastal plain, growing corn for food and hemp for clothing. Hence their name.

The Tuscarora retained the hunting skills of their earliest ancestors, those who had crossed the Bering land bridge from Siberia thousands of years before, but they had long since become sedentary. No tepees for these people.

Instead, they lived in longhouses covered with bark. Each one was roughly a hundred feet long, big enough to shelter an entire clan. These clans were led by “clan mothers” who selected the members of the tribal council, representatives from the Tuscarora nation’s three tribes who met to discuss policy.

War was not common among the Tuscarora; they were not dominated by expansionist warlords.

They much preferred to trade with their neighbors. Thus, when they encountered the English around 1670, the Tuscarora sought to establish commercial ties with them.

The English were willing to trade, but many of them were dishonest in their dealings with the Tuscarora. The selling of whiskey to Tuscarora communities, a much more potent alcoholic drink than the rum that the “Indians” were used to, seems to have had an ulterior motive behind it.

The explorer John Lawson had a generally favorable opinion of the Tuscarora, despite referring to them as “Savages,” praising his hosts for making sure that their white guests were “arm’d against Hunger and Thirst.”

Lawson also had the presence of mind to acknowledge the injustice that the Tuscarora suffered from the newcomers. “We look upon them with Scorn and Disdain,” he commented, “and think them little better than Beasts in Humane Shape, though if well examined, we shall find that, for all our Religion and Education, we possess more Moral Deformities, and Evils than these Savages do.”

The widespread cheating of the Tuscarora by the English angered Lawson, but that was not the worst form of interaction between the two peoples. Since 1670, slavers regularly kidnapped Tuscarora men, women and children. The practice only ceased after slave merchants and plantation owners discovered that Africans were “safer” to enslave because they were unfamiliar with the North American landscape.

By 1710, the situation had become intolerable for many Tuscarora. Tribal leaders contacted the Pennsylvania government requesting that their people be allowed to live in Pennsylvania. They also asked the North Carolina government to provide a written guarantee of their good behavior.

The Pennsylvanians refused and the North Carolinians ignored the Tuscarora petition. All efforts to resolve the crisis had failed.

John Lawson died in 1711. In a bitter irony, he was killed by angry Tuscarora. Without his moderating influence, Chief Hancock, leader of the Tuscarora in the Neuse River basin, resolved on war. On Sept. 23, Hancock’s warbands launched coordinated attacks across east-central North Carolina, including the town of Bath.

They killed some 130 men, women and children within three days, a substantial chunk of the colonial population. However, if Hancock thought this ruthless attack would convince the English to make concessions, he was very much mistaken. The Tuscarora War had just begun.

After getting a draft bill for all men between 16 and 60 through the North Carolina legislature, Gov. Edward Hyde petitioned Virginia for military aid. The Virginians, however, demanded territorial concessions, so Hyde turned to South Carolina, whose government immediately sent an expeditionary force commanded by Col. John Barnwell.

Barnwell had 30 white officers with him and 500 native tribesmen of the Waxhaw, Pee Dee and Yamasee nations, among others. Chief Tom Blunt of the Tuscarora in modern Bertie County, meanwhile, stayed neutral.

After linking up with 50 North Carolina militiamen in January 1712, Barnwell attacked Hancock’s Tuscarora at Fort Narhontes, in present-day Greene County. The fort fell easily, the Tuscarora surrendered their prisoners and Barnwell withdrew back to South Carolina, but no one was satisfied.

The North Carolina government wanted nothing short of total victory, the South Carolina government wanted repayment, and the Tuscarora were angry that some of Barnwell’s officers had kept Tuscarora prisoners to be sold as slaves. The southern Tuscarora attacked North Carolina again that summer during a yellow fever epidemic that had already killed many colonists, including Hyde.

Thomas Pollock, the new governor, once again requested aid from South Carolina. December saw the arrival of Col. James Moore with 33 white officers and nearly 1,000 Native American auxiliaries. Moore won the decisive battle at Nooherooka, not far from Fort Narhontes, on March 20-23, 1713. With hundreds of their warriors dead, Tuscarora resistance collapsed.

The English recognized Tom Blunt as king of the Tuscarora after he captured Hancock and handed him over for trial and execution, but most of his people began migrating northward. In time, they would join the Iroquois Confederacy in New York and Canada. Even many who had pledged allegiance to King Blunt eventually left their ancestral homeland. Some joined the Lumbee. A few others moved to South Carolina after participating in a war against the Yamasee.

With the Tuscarora scattered to the winds, English and Welsh settlers were free to migrate up the Neuse unimpeded. By 1746, they had reached the westernmost of the old Tuscarora lands. In that year, the region was organized as Johnston County.

Benjamin Sanderford, a resident of Clayton, studied social science at UNC Greensboro. He can be reached at benwsanderford@gmail.com.