When Hernán de Soto's Spanish explorers arrived in the Southeast, they brought Catholicism with them. Every Spanish exploration team brought priests and immediately set about trying to convert indigenous people. None of these missions were successful, however, until Joao Pardo and his Portuguese troops arrived in 1566 and settled near Cheraw territory. Father Sebastian Montero moved to coastal South Carolina, and maintained a Catholic mission among the Wateree from 1556 to 1572. 17th-century priests in Spanish Florida most often preached in the Native language of their parishioners, and it is possible that Montero did the same, making Catholicism a matter of intellectual and spiritual exchange for his congregation. Given Montero's separation from Pardo's core group, it also seems likely that he may have had soldiers with him, exposing the Wateree to not only different religious attitudes but to the materials of European society (Hill, ed. 1984: 336-337). Montero's mission did not survive, but the impact of his work must have been significant beyond the Wateree, particularly considering their subsequent movement inland towards the Lumbee River (see 1675 map, 1715 map).
Other than this mission, there is no documented evidence of religious interaction between the Portuguese and indigenous peoples in the area, and after the Cheraw burned Pardo's fort in 1567, the Portuguese soldiers are lost to the written record. They may have died in the attack, but they may also have been taken captive by the Cheraw or escaped to neighboring Indian groups. Once language barriers were broken, not difficult in a world increasingly populated by foreigners, the conversion process likely began over a conversation, perhaps between captor and captive, perhaps between two friends.
Largely because of the hostility of tribes like the Cheraw, and because European diseases introduced by the missionaries themselves decimated so many indigenous people, Spanish missions grew very slowly in the Southeast. They did not gain any significant foothold until the late 16th century, when they moved into Florida. During the 17th century the Spanish converted as many as 30,000 Indians to Catholicism, using a variety of techniques suited to indigenous practices. However, the mission system fell apart by the end of the century, due to warfare begun with the British, as well as revolts by several Florida tribes. These revolts particularly reveal the difficult road to conversion for many Southeastern Indians.
Catholicism was unpalatable for many Natives, perhaps not so much because of Catholic doctrine itself, but because of the mission system established by the priests. For example, the church expected the converts to supply their priests and mission soldiers with food and labor, and resistance to this policy or violation of religious practices was often punished by whippings, or worse. Furthermore, the centralized authority of the priests meant that many indigenous customs such as polygamy were banned outright, and there was little significant opportunity for converts to blend their traditional customs with the practices of the church. Because there were fewer priests than could fill the apparent demand for their services, Catholic priests were often itinerant in Florida, a circumstance which did not fit smoothly with the church's notions of centralized governing power. Such circumstances reveal Catholicism's lack of success in the Southeast, where the variance in systems of tribal government and custom did not allow for the perpetuation of centralized authority (Hill, ed. 1984:337-339; Quinn 1985:209).
Understanding Florida Natives' experience with Catholicism illuminates the story of Christianity in other parts of the Southeast. Like the Catholic church, the Anglican church had some initial success in North Carolina. Within two weeks of the John White expedition's arrival on the Roanoke shores in 1587, they baptized Manteo, a Croatan Indian. Roanoke historian David Beers Quinn characterizes Manteo as "no mean diplomat and statesman" and indicates that his baptism was perhaps more a reflection of Manteo's trusted standing with the English than a wholehearted acceptance of a new religion. Prior to the 1587 expedition, Manteo had spent nine months in England as a guest of Sir Walter Raleigh and the court, absorbing much to take back to his mother, who governed their small community near Roanoke Island (Quinn 1985:232-233). Quinn discusses the close relationship that developed between Manteo and Thomas Harriot, author of A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, published in 1588, suggesting that Manteo himself contributed a good deal to that influential publication. Quinn writes:
In view of [Manteo's] later baptism, we are entitled to conclude that he concerned himself - to some extent at least - with understanding the tenets of English Protestant Christianity, and received some instruction in elementary theology. He gives every indication of having had intellectual leanings and his discussions with Harriot on cosmology, and with his spiritual mentor on theology (whoever he was), would have shed light on the differences between the Native American outlook on the natural and supernatural worlds and that of the Renaissance Englishman (Quinn 1985:233).
Quinn goes on to assert that Manteo was indispensable to John White's expedition in 1587, indicating the high degree of cultural interchange in which Manteo and his English counterparts engaged as equals. It is certainly significant, furthermore, that Manteo waited to return home before he was baptized into the Church of England; he could have easily accomplished this on his visit. His decision to wait possibly reflects a desire to demonstrate to his kin the impending power and influence of the English; it may also demonstrate Manteo's desire to enact his spiritual awakening in the context of his own customs, his own people, and in his own place, his home. This enactment is a metaphor for the ways in which Lumbees actualize our own spiritual experiences, finding ways to combine an intellectually and spiritually compelling Christian doctrine with an experience of "home" that reflects thousands of years of determination of religious practice.
Other than this brief success, the Anglican church, similar to Catholic church in organizing structure, seemed to gain few converts on the North Carolina frontier. The Church of England depended on significant structural support from civil governments, where laws were often passed giving the Church of England official status (Hill, ed. 1984: 31, 339). S. Charles Bolton writes, "By nature, Anglicanism was a national religion, one that identified with the interests of the society it served" (Hill, ed. 1984: 32). This tendency did not always fit well with the somewhat chaotic nature of North Carolina government in the 17th and 18th centuries, a government that often could not agree on what its "interests" were as a group (Leaming 1995; Byrd 1967; others). The border disputes in which the loosely organized government of North Carolina engaged with the highly stratified governments of Virginia and South Carolina left border areas such as present-day Robeson County "ungoverned." The ancestors of the Lumbee established their own form of civil government that was considered to be "lawless" according to the standards of civil and church governments in Virginia and South Carolina.
In 1761, Governor Glen of South Carolina wrote:
The Northern boundary of South Carolina is not so well agreed upon as might be expected, which is owing to the dishonest intentions of many lawless people, settled in those parts without legal titles. . . . [T]hese people, by keeping up a dispute about the boundaries of North and South Carolina, evade paying quit-rents for their lands (Gregg 1965: 38-39).
Governor Glen writes that the denizens of the dividing line had established an elaborate system by which to avoid government, implying a system of government in and of itself, apart from the customs and requirements of civil governments in the other colonies. Unfortunately for the Anglican church, this unorthodox government could not function as a support system for the church's own hierarchy. Despite the close cultural and economic relationship to European Anglican settlements on the Cape Fear River and on the coast of North Carolina, the ancestors of the Lumbee on the North Carolina frontier could not abide by the rules of government that the Anglican church required.
By the time our ancestors arrived at the river that would become our home, many had significant exposure to Christianity and other religions, and were perhaps incorporating those practices into their spiritual lives. Migration, warfare with other tribes and with the British government, and disease created such instability in their daily survival that these groups may have been actively searching for a physical and spiritual place in which to rest. They found Robeson County, a landscape whose swamps and streams provided (and still provide) physical and spiritual sustenance. As a group they settled on a Protestant Christianity which allowed for a direct relationship to God and to the earth, coinciding with the informal, decentralized nature of their kinship relations, governmental structure, and established religious customs.