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| Robeson County in 1871, and in 1998 |
The ambivalence of Lumbee status in the Antebellum South increased in the years leading up to and during the Civil War, and in typical fashion, Lumbees exercised forethought in handling these intrusions into our communities. These hostilities would be given vent toward the end of the war when the Confederate Army, undergoing severe labor shortages, began relying on slave and conscripted Indian labor. Those who were forced to labor in the mines and labor camps of the Confederacy oftentimes succumbed to starvation and disease (Dial and Eliades 1996:46). These attempts at enforced labor were met with Lumbee males' flight into the swamps for safety. They were joined by poor white males avoiding conscription, as well as escaped Union soldiers from Florence, South Carolina's prison camp. Contact with Union soldiers, the inability to work and support their starving families, and their rage at having to exist under an oppressive government, garnered an increasing Union sentiment on the part of Lumbees.
In 1864, a minor Confederate official, wealthy white planter and neighbor of Allen Lowrie's accused Lowrie's sons of stealing and butchering two of his hogs. Allen Lowrie was a highly esteemed and respected member of the Lumbee community. He was a descendent of the James Lowrie who had filed a title for an enormous estate of two thousand acres in the previous century. His family had continued to prosper, were wealthy farmers, and had also owned slaves (Evans 1995:10). Unfortunately for Allen Lowrie, the Home Guard detachment that had been sent out to investigate the matter uncovered a small cache of firearms on his property. Allen and his sons Calvin and William were promptly arrested. Mary Cumba Lowrie, Allen's wife, was physically assaulted along with their daughters. William attempted to escape, was recaptured, and finally executed alongside his father (Evans 1995:14). One of Allen and Mary Cumba Lowrie's many sons, Henry Berry, was not home at the time. However, he swore revenge for the assault and murder of his family. The false claim of theft, the hiding of firearms and the murder and assault of Indians in our own homes reflected the growing racial tensions that marked Robeson County.
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| Henry Berry Lowry's cabin |
Less than a week after the murder of Allen and William Lowrie, William Tecumseh Sherman and his Union forces attempted to cross the Lumbee River. With this historic crossing also came a great deal of material and psychological destruction, for Sherman left with the goods and human chattel once owned by a defeated white South. Once Sherman and his army departed, embittered whites vented their anger on the groups that had always borne the brunt of their frustrations: non-whites. White-on-Black and Indian violence during the Civil War period set the tone for race relations during Reconstruction. Amidst these tensions, Henry Berry Lowrie embarked on a seven-year campaign of murder and larceny that was often referred to as the "Lowrie War." Most of the men who would be killed by Lowrie and his gang had somehow been involved in the death of Allen and William Lowrie, and the violence associated with this period can be directly attributed to these 1865 murders (Evans 1995).
Once North Carolina became aware of the escalating tensions in Robeson as evidenced by revenge killings, robberies of wealthy planter families, and distribution of stolen goods among the Lumbee, black and poor white communities (Townsend 1872: 55), the state placed a $10,000 price on Lowrie's head. Yet, Henry Berry was often seen in public places, and his "gang" was comprised of Lumbees (three Lowrie brothers and three cousins), the black brother-in-law of two cousins, and one poor white, known in the area as a "buckskin" (Evans 1995; Maynor 1994; McLean 1942; Wilkins 1996). The Lowrie gang used the refuge of the swamps, and the highly developed network of familial relationships, to slip from their potential captors' grasp.
Much like other non-white revolutionary leaders such as Denmark Vesey, David Walker, and Nat Turner, Henry Berry and his gang appropriated white Revolutionary doctrine to gain rights and freedoms that were being denied them (Townsend 1872). Indian perceptions of Reconstruction violence solidified the racial boundaries that had begun to take shape and harden during the Civil War era. The Lowry gang received considerable support from the Indian community, as well as that of poor blacks and whites, as Lowrie was perceived as representing their interests to the white world. One black woman was quoted as saying,
Oh, dis was a hard country, and Henry Berry Lowery's (sic) jess a payin' 'em back. He's only a payin' 'em back! It's better days for de brack people now. Massta, he's jess de king o' dis country (Townsend 1872: 27).
Indian support of the gang also served as an impetus for the Indian community at large to overtly acknowledge and rearticulate the importance of our homeland, enabling us to realize the multi-layered significance of the protective swamps' sustenance. This development of a defined, separate territory bounded by the web of the swamps and wetlands of Robeson County along with an elaborate network of kinship ties was instrumental in the revitalized expression of Indian community. Furthermore, white incursions into Indian territory, in an attempt to capture the elusive Lowrie gang, further highlighted the existence of a territorial and cultural borderland. Lowrie would become a cultural hero, representing those cultural boundaries that marked Lumbees as a community of Indian people.
