In moving further southeast, the Cheraw encountered other Siouan tribes such as the Keyauwee, Sugaree, and Waxhaw Indians. These tribes were also experiencing population displacement, population decline due to disease, and increasing warfare with other tribal groups and European settlers. In attempting to mitigate the disruptive effects of disease and warfare, tribes like the Keyauwee, Sugaree and Waxhaw merged with the stronger Cheraw to form a united community. Swanton writes:
In the Jeffreys atlas of 1761 their town of (Keyauwee) appears close to the boundary line between the two Carolinas. They do not reappear in any of the historical records but probably united ultimately in part with the Catawba, while some of their descendents are represented among the Robeson County Indians, often miscalled Croatan (Swanton 1934).
By the 1770s, the Indians that were once distinct tribal communities called Cheraw, Keyauwee, Hatteras, Waxhaw, Sugaree, Eno, Shakori, etc., found themselves on the Lumbee River, near the border that now divides North and South Carolina. Some of these Indians calling themselves Cheraw, Saura, or Sara, moved further southward to join with the Catawba, but the majority of this Indian group settled near the pines, web of wetlands, and river that bears the name we now call ourselves (Blu 1980:36).
Across this well-traversed landscape rolled a continuous wave of newcomers from other continents. Men like de Soto and Pardo had come from the south, but archaeological investigations into the exact route that de Soto took have proved to be inconclusive (Swanton 1939; Hudson, et al. 1984: 65). The English entered the Carolinas from the north, and from a land they called Virginia. They also documented their incursions beyond the boundaries of their southernmost coastal colonial settlement. It has been popularly supposed that by the 17th century the Spanish and Portuguese presence was no longer a factor in the European colonization of the Southeast. Yet John Lederer and others document their belief in and Indian knowledge of a definite Spanish/Portuguese presence in the western portion of the Carolinas. In 1670, John Lederer, upon arriving at the Catawba River, halted his progress because he,
thought it not safe to venture my self amongst the Spaniards, lest taking me for a Spy, they would either make me away, or condemn me to a perpetual Slavery in their Mines (Swanton 1946; Lederer 1966).
N. Brent Kennedy has even suggested that this surviving Mediterranean presence is seemingly deceptive in a surprising way. It is more than likely that any remnants of Spanish garrisons were not necessarily Spanish or Portuguese.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, national identities did not exist as we understand them today. Moreover, the soldiers who comprised much of the expeditionary armies sent by the burgeoning modern nations of Spain and Portugal, were recruits from southern Spain, and thus, members of what we would now consider to be ethnic minorities. Spain had only recently annexed Southern Spain with the fall of the Moors in 1492. It is very likely that these soldiers were "conversos," namely recent converts to Christianity from Islam or so-called "pagan" religions; or "marranos," namely, Jewish converts to Christianity. They would also likely have been of mixed Berber (North African), and Basque heritage (Simmons 1991).
Concomitantly, in 1568, one year after the Spanish established their colony of Santa Elena on the North Carolina coast, the Spanish redoubled their efforts in their Inquisition against the Moors (Kennedy 1994:106). Clearly, the opportunity for a better life, a less harassed life, or simply a living life, was a viable consideration for families who opted to traverse the seas and settle in the "New World." There is the possibility that many of these people would have been better able to appreciate tribal cultures and value them, given their recent immigration from small towns in Europe which at that time were organized along familial and clan lines.
By 1670, while colonial Spain no longer figured as an active presence, Spanish recruits and their descendents did. It is also very likely that in settling in the mountains of western North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, they intermarried, and/ or settled with established Native communities. Thus, they are perhaps some of the ancestors of the modern Melungeons, Lumbees, and other Native and/or Native descent communities of the Southeast. Among Melungeons, names one only finds in Portugal, such as Elvas or Elvis, Navarro or Navarrh, and Canara, are still popular (Kennedy 1994:107). In fact, Elvis Presley, who hails from Tennessee, was most likely of Melungeon descendent. Among Lumbees, the common tribal name Chavis would originally have been pronounced and spelled Chavéz in Spanish, or Chaves in Portuguese. It is this latter spelling that is still in common use by Lumbees today. During the course of 300 years, considerable mixing between these two related, yet distinct communities, along with others, also occurred.
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By the early 1700s, England held a long established colony in Virginia, and solidified its hold in the Carolinas by extending large land grants in the hopes of establishing a stable planter class in what is now South Carolina. North Carolina's history however, reflects far different aims among its earliest European settlers who came from various ethnic European communities.
