News Release

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UNC archaeological dig confirms principal Catawba Indian village

An archaeological dig conducted by faculty and students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has uncovered evidence of an important 18th-century Catawba Indian village near the Catawba River and Fort Mill, S.C.

The lost village, once known as Nassaw, is located on part of a 400-acre tract about seven miles south of Charlotte. The property is slated for development as a “green” community that will surround a new environmental history museum being developed by the Culture & Heritage Museum of York County.

The discovery sheds light on a critical turning point in the history of American Indians across the Piedmont, said R.P. Stephen Davis, associate director of UNC’s Research Laboratories of Archaeology and an adjunct professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

“This helps us better understand changes in the Catawba Nation that came with the coalescence of several Piedmont tribes that had been decimated by diseases,” said Davis. “By the mid-18th century, many native peoples sought with the Catawbas and formed separate villages among their hosts. Evidence from Nassaw helps us see how the Catawba Nation accommodated diverse groups before the community was devastated by smallpox in 1759.”

Nassaw was the most important of six Catawba communities mapped in 1756, Davis said. He and Brett Riggs, a UNC research archaeologist, had previously identified the locations of three of the villages: Charraw Town, Weyane and Weyapee. They have not yet confirmed the locations for two others known as Sucah Town and Noostee Town.

Davis, Riggs and their students have been exploring the region for the past five years. Like other researchers, they initially thought Nassaw was located several miles downriver from the museum property, Davis said.

“We began our survey and could not find evidence of the villages there,” Davis said. Several local people told them to contact Hugh White, a resident of Fort Mill, whose family had resided there since the late 18th century, Davis said.

Davis and Riggs showed White the mid-18th-century map they were using and the locations they had explored. “He told us we were wrong. Then he brought out a leather-bound ledger kept by an ancestor who had been a commissioner for the Catawba Nation,” Davis recalled.

“The ledger showed plats and payment schedules, all of which are extremely valuable for our research,” Davis continued. “He also showed us a copy of a plat of his land, took us out there and showed us where a major wagon road followed the Great Trading Path to Nation Ford. He knew what he was talking about.” The Great Trading Path was the ancient north-south trade route for American Indians that evolved into the Philadelphia Wagon Road used by Early European settlers to enter the Carolina Piedmont. The path crossed the Catawba River at Nation Ford, a stretch of the river used for fording.

Because maps and other documents indicated that the Catawba towns were located near the Great Trading Path, White’s information was key to finding the village sites. With this new information, Davis and Riggs concluded that the commonly held view about Nassaw’s location was incorrect. They began looking instead near White’s property.

“That’s when we found evidence of several villages,” Davis said. They started looking even more intensely at properties in the area and realized that Nassaw could have been located on the museum’s property.

Davis, Riggs and a group of students began digging at the site in mid-May. The field crew included nine undergraduates enrolled in the UNC archaeology program’s annual summer field school expedition, four UNC graduate students and two UNC alumni employed as field assistants. Another undergraduate from Louisiana State University participated as part of the UNC School of Education’s Summer Pre-Graduate Research Experience, and a rising sixth-grader from Rock Hill helped as a volunteer.

Among the numerous artifacts the group found were dozens of white clay pipe stems that could be reliably placed in the 1750s, using a proven archaeological procedure that dates these pipes based on the diameters of their stem openings.

“These pipes and other artifacts fit with our theory that this was Nassaw, which is documented on a 1756 map and which was abandoned following the smallpox epidemic of 1759,” Davis said.

During a survey this past spring, the researchers had found pottery shards and more than 1,000 metal objects in the area, suggesting a large community. They recovered brass kettle fragments, nails, knives and numerous parts from flintlock muskets – all dating back to the mid-18th century, Davis said.

Excavations revealed food scraps in the form of animal bones and charred plant remains, as well as ancient post holes in the soil, which indicated where houses may have been located.

The Culture & Heritage Museum’s supporting foundation has partnered with Cherokee Investment Partners, a private equity firm specializing in sustainable redevelopment, to create Kanawha, a mixed-use “green” community on the property near Fort Mill. The Kanawha management team plans to preserve the 2- to-3-acre archaeological site as a park to preserve and honor this historically significant landmark, Davis said.

The archaeological dig was supported in part by a gift to UNC from Cherokee. The Raleigh-based firm is headed by UNC alumnus Tom Darden. Darden received an undergraduate degree in anthropology and a master’s degree in city and regional planning from UNC, where he was a Morehead Scholar and now serves on boards for the Honors Program and the Institute for the Environment. Kanawha Development, LLC, is also headed by UNC alumnus and Morehead Scholar Brian Goray.

Research Laboratories of Archaeology contacts: Stephen Davis, (919) 962-3845; Brett Riggs, (919) 962-3843; director Vincas Steponaitis, (919) 962-3846.

College of Arts and Sciences contact: Dee Reid, (919) 843-6339
News Services contact: Susan Houston, (919) 962-8415 or susan_houston@unc.edu