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| The Southeast in 1560 |
For many southeastern tribes and others across North America, migration and change became the norm, rather than tumultuous interruptions that contributed to the demise of life and culture. The frontier of what is now called North Carolina was highly mobile and consistently reinvented itself, according to the various cultures that occupied it (White 1991; Merrell 1989). The Spanish under Hernán de Soto were the first Europeans to make contact with the Cheraw. The Spanish called them Xuala, Xualla, Joara, and Juada. At the time, they were settled in the northeast corner of what is now South Carolina. In 1566, they were visited again by Joao Pardo, a Portuguese working for the Spanish (Gallegos 1997). Pardo built a fort at the site and left thirty soldiers behind, but one year later it was destroyed by the Cheraw (Hollingsworth 1935:5). Later still, the Cheraw migrated north to what is now Asheville. By 1670, John Lawson found them ensconced on the Yadkin River, and in 1673, a Cheraw community is found still further east, between the Cape Fear and the Yadkin (Swanton 1946:109-110).
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Lawson also met the Hatteras Indians who lived on Roanoke Island located between Pamlico and Albermarle sounds. Lawson noted that what was most unusual about the Hatteras Indians was their familiarity with European customs and their appreciation of written language. These Indians also claimed that some of their ancestors had been English and had settled with them more than 100 years earlier.
[They] tell us that several of their ancestors were white people and could talk in a book as we do. . . . we may reasonably suppose that the English were forced to cohabit with them for relief and conservation; and that in process of time they conformed themselves to the manners of their Indian relations. (Weeks 1891:34)
Lawson concluded that these Indians were none other than the descendants of the lost John White expedition, or "Lost Colony of Roanoke." However, due to the pressures of increasing European settlement and hostilities, the Hatteras were forced to migrate further south (McMillan 1898: 47). In 1710, possibly due to conflict with the Cherokee to the west and Tuscaroras to the north, the Cheraw also moved southward toward the Peedee River. It is possible that at this point, the Hatteras and Cheraw tribes were absorbed, one into the other (McPherson 1914).
