Lumbees are the descendents of some of the more than 50 tribes that inhabited what is now Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina at the time of initial contact with Europeans. These tribes were divided into three linguistic groups: Siouan, Algonquian, and Iroquoian. The Algonquians of North Carolina, such as the Hatteras, Machapunga and Weapemoc were related to the powerful Powhatan confederacy that stretched from Virginia to New Jersey (Swanton 1952: 18). Iroquoian tribes such as the Meherrin, Nottoway and Tuscarora were related to the Mohawk, Oneida, Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga of the northeast, and the Cherokee to the west (Swanton 1952: 18-20). The Siouan Indians of the southeast comprise the third linguistic division (Mooney 1907: 23-97; Milling 1940: 18-64).
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| Pre-Contact Linguistic Map |
The fact that Siouans inhabited and continue to inhabit the southeast comes as a surprise to many students of American Indian history. After all, Siouans live on the great plains. They were once great horse riders and buffalo hunters. What would Siouans be doing in the swamps, rivers, and woodlands of the southeast? The fact is that Sioux or Siouans is a linguistic definition. The Sioux or Siouans are not one specific tribe, but are made up of many different tribes inhabiting vastly different areas of North America: from the woodlands and wetlands of the east to the vast plains that lie to the west.
The earliest documented origin traditions of the Siouan Cheraw, Catawba,
Waccamaw and Saponi of the eastern Carolinas state:
When you ask them whence their forefathers came, that first inhabited the country, they will point to the westward and say, where the sun sleeps our forefathers came thence. (Lawson 279)
The Indians now seated in these parts are none of those which the English removed from Virginia, but a people driven by an enemy from the Northwest, and invited to sit down here by an oracle about four-hundred years since for the ancient inhabitants of Virginia were far more rude and barbarous, feeding only upon raw flesh and fish, until these taught them to plant corn, and shewed them the use of it. (Lederer 3)
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| The Southeast in 1675 |
Recent research has concluded that Lumbees are primarily descended from the Cheraw tribe of Siouan Indians. Yet the history of Lumbee tribal ancestry is much more complex (Blu 1980; Dial 1996; McCulloch and Wilkins 1995). While popular notions hold that the numerous tribes of the southeast succumbed to warfare, disease, and removal, recent scholarship points to different factors that led to the "seeming" disappearance of many of these tribes, and helps explain how a tribe called the Cheraw would become the Lumbee 400 years later.
