Prior to state recognition in 1885, Indian people were labeled “black,” “white,” “colored,” or “mulatto” (see Lumbee History for more information on this). You won't find much about “Indians” in the public record if you’re looking for that racial designation. The first extant federal census listing the indigenous people of Robeson County as “Indians” is the one for 1900, and thus a relatively late listing.
So how do you know who is an Indian and who is not? Familiarize yourself with Lumbee surnames and kinship networks. Lumbees ourselves often get the most accurate information about our history, because we know the full range of kinship connections within the community and can deduce a lot of information that would otherwise be obscured by the “powers-that-be,” the ones doing the recording.
There is evidence that one hundred years after first contact, many of the native peoples of the East adopted the European tradition of using surnames and passing the name on to their children. Among the Pamunkey of Virginia, names like Bright, Gibson and West appear in the early 1700s. The Cherokee adopted names such as Adair, Hicks, Locust (Lucas), Starr, Vann, and Ward. Among the ancestors of the Lumbee, names such as Bell, Berry, Brooks, Cummings, Locklear, Lowrie and Oxendine appear by the mid-eighteenth century. While these names do not seem “Indian” to researchers today, they are nonetheless “traditional” Indian names, because they represent large networks of family and clan relationships that form the glue of our community.