In the early 18th century, Lumbee ancestors perceived a need to exert control over a land and culture which were increasingly circumscribed by the bounds of European- and African-American cultures. Gaelic speaking Scotch-Irish immigrants to Robeson County encountered
[O]n the waters of the Lumber River, a large tribe of Indians, speaking English, tilling the soil, owning slaves and practicing many of the arts of civilized life. . . They held their lands in common and land titles only became known on the approach of white men." (McMillan 1898:10).
|
|
| The Southeast in 1715 |
Documents of this period indicate that Lumbee ancestors had already learned how to negotiate directly with representatives of George II of England in receiving grants for lands that for all intents and purposes had been theirs for generations (Barton 1967: 45; McMillan 1898: 10; McPherson, 1914). These documents indicate great foresight, the ability to discern which way the political winds were blowing, a definite legal astuteness, and a strong relation to the defining features of the surrounding landscape. James Lowrie and Henry Berry both received huge land grants, and by 1738 possessed combined estates of more than two thousand acres. John Brooks established title to over one thousand acres in 1735, and Robert Lowrie gained possession of almost seven hundred acres. Our ancestors took titles to land invariably described in relation to the Lumbee River, or to prominent swamps such as Ashpole, Long, or Back Swamp (Smith 1990: 3). Pension records for veterans of the American Revolution list a Samuel Bell, Jacob Locklear, John Brooks, Berry Hunt, Thomas Jacobs, Thomas Cummings, and Michael Revels. When the recently founded Federal government enumerated its first census in 1790, one can note for the Fayette District of present-day Robeson County the following Lumbee names: Cumbo, Revil, Hammonds, Bullard, Lockileer, Lowrie, Barnes, Hunt, Chavers, Strickland, Wilkins, Locklear, Oxendine, Brooks, and Braveboy.
All of these names, save two, suggest a northern European ancestry, but this proves to be an erroneous assumption. Just as the filing of land deeds for lands already in the care of tribal peoples reflects a far-looking legal acuity, the adoption of English names evidences a similar practical outlook. There can be no mistaking what belongs to whom if the name used for the deed is comprehensible to those overseeing the administration and surveying of lands listed in title deeds. Furthermore, a number of different names used to address one particular individual in a lifetime was commonplace among hundreds of Native American tribes. The adoption of "outside" names could serve any number of practical uses in negotiating and appropriating things of vital importance such as title deeds and pensions. Concomitantly, the adoption of these names in no way obscured family relationships. These names served very well in defining familial and clan relationships. In present-day Robeson County, they still do.
Ultimately, such practical efforts reflect a perceived need to maintain as much control as possible in an increasingly racialized society wherein tribal lands and culture existent within the bounds of the "former colonies" had become incorporated into the body and governance of an outside culture and political structure. Tribal groups, Indian, African, and Scottish, would become defined by terms alien to its members. For the Indians of Robeson County, those who were enumerated in the 1790 census were listed as "Free Persons Not White." This census would prove a crucial yet discrete marker in the psyche of ethnic Europeans in how they began to officially define both "others" and themselves.
The racial terms "white," "black" and "red," are ascriptive terms, by definition meant to act as an ordering agent of a created social hierarchy. All three terms act as opposites, and in opposition to one another. By ordering early American society along racialized lines, the U.S. attempted to decide the terms with which the ancestors of the Lumbee, other southeastern Indian tribes, those of African descent, and later still, immigrants from other continents would negotiate definitions of ethnicity and race. This racialized system of classification would continue to permeate the consciousness and political landscape of an expanding United States and indelibly stamp the ways in which Lumbees would respond to non-Lumbees (Williamson 1984; Morgan 1975; Forbes 1990; Jordan 1968; others).
