Croatan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Croatan were a small

Native American group living
in the coastal areas of what is
now North Carolina. They may
have been a branch of the
larger Roanoke people or
allied with them.[1]

Croatan
Total population
Extinct as a tribe
Regions with signicant populations
North Carolina
Languages

Contents
1 History
1.1 Beliefs
1.2 European
colonization
1.3 The Lost
Colony
1.4 Speculation
of the fate of the
"Lost Colony"
2 Modern era and
legacy
3 See also
4 Notes
5 References

History

Carolina Algonquian
Religion
Tribal religion
Related ethnic groups
Roanoke

The village of Secoton in

Roanoke, painted by
Governor John White c.1585

The Croatoan lived in current Dare County,

an area encompassing the Alligator River,
Croatan Sound, Roanoke Island, and parts
of the Outer Banks, including Hatteras Island. Now extinct as a tribe, they
were one of the Carolina Algonquian peoples, numerous at the time of
English encounter in the 16th century. The Roanoke territory also extended
to the mainland, where they had their chief town on the western shore of
Croatan Sound. Scholars believe the Algonquians had a total population of
5,000 to 10,000.[1]
Croatan Indians were a part of the Carolina Algonquians, a southeastern
designation of the greater Algonquian source. Agriculture was the Native
Americans' primary food source, and the fact that they could feed the

colonists as well as themselves demonstrates very eectively the eciency

of their farming. The Native Americans regulated each persons position in
society by public marks. The chiefs or leaders, called werowances,
controlled between one and eighteen towns. The greatest were able to
muster seven or eight hundred ghting men. The English marveled at the
great awe in which these werowances were held, saying no people in the
world carried more respect towards their leaders. Werowance actually
means he who is rich. Chiefs and their families were held in great status
and with respect, but they had to convince followers that action or cause
was wise, they did not command. The role of the chief was to spread wealth
to his tribe, otherwise respect was lost. [1]

Beliefs
The Native Americans living in the Carolinas believed in the immortality of
the soul. Upon death, the soul either enters heaven to live with the gods or
goes to a place near the setting sun called Popogusso, to burn for eternity
in a huge pit. The concept of heaven and hell was used on the common
people to respect leaders and live a life that would be benecial to them in
the afterlife. Conjurors and Priests were distinctive spiritual leaders. Priests
were chosen for their knowledge and wisdom, and were leaders of the
organized religion. Conjurors on the other hand were chosen for their
magical abilities. Conjurors were thought to have powers from a personal
connection with a supernatural being (mostly spirits from the animal
world). [2]

European colonization
It is known that the coming of Europeans upset tribal relationships; some
tribes, such as the Algonquian people, advocated cooperation while others,
such as the Yamasee, Cherokee, and Chickasaw, resisted. The conict
between certain tribes and the English settlers later led to the Yamasee
War. Those tribes that did maintain contact with the settlers gained power
through their access to and control of European trade goods. While the
English may have held great military might over the Carolina Algonquians,
the Native Americans' control over food and natural resources was a much
more decisive factor in the conict with early settlers. Despite the varying
relationships among tribes, the Roanoke and Croatan were believed to have
been on good terms with English settlers of the Roanoke Colony.
Wanchese, the last leader of the Roanoke, accompanied the English on a
trip to England.[3]

The Lost Colony

It is possible that some of the survivors of the Lost Colony of Roanoke may
have joined the Croatan. Governor White nally reached Roanoke Island on
August 18, 1590, three years after he had last seen them in Virginia, but he
found his colony had been long deserted. The buildings had collapsed and

"the houses [were] taken down".[4] The

few clues about the colonists whereabouts
included the letters "CROATOAN" carved
into a tree.[4] Croatoan was the name of a
nearby island (likely modern-day Hatteras
Island) and a local tribe of Native
Americans. Roanoke Island was not
originally the planned location for the
Governor John White
colony and the idea of moving elsewhere
returned to Roanoke in 1590
had been discussed. Before the Governor's
to nd the words "croatoan"
departure, he and the colonists had agreed
carved on a tree.
that a message would be carved into a tree
if they had moved and would include an
image of a Maltese Cross if the decision was made by force.[4] White found
no such cross and was hopeful that his family was still alive. [4]
The Croatan, like other Carolina Algonquians, suered from epidemics of
infectious disease, such as smallpox in 1598. These greatly reduced the
tribe's numbers and left them subject to colonial pressure. They are
believed to have become extinct as a tribe by the early seventeenth
century.

Speculation of the fate of the "Lost Colony"

Based on legend, some people said that the Lumbee tribe, based in North
Carolina, were descendants of the Croatoan and survivors of the Lost
Colony of Roanoke Island. For over a hundred years, historians and other
scholars have been examining the question of Lumbee origin. Although
there have been many explanations and conjectures, two theories persist.
In 1885, Hamilton McMillan, a local historian and state legislator, proposed
the Lost Colony theory. Based upon oral tradition among the Lumbees
and what he deemed as strong circumstantial evidence, McMillan posited a
connection between the Lumbees and the early English colonists who
settled on Roanoke Island in 1587 and the Algonquian tribes (Croatan
included) who inhabited coastal North Carolina at the same time. According
to historical accounts, the colonists mysteriously disappeared soon after
they settled, leaving little evidence of their destination or fate. McMillan's
hypothesis, which was also supported by the historian Stephen Weeks,
contends that the colonists migrated with the Indians toward the interior of
North Carolina, and by 1650 had settled along the banks of the Lumber. It
is suggested the present-day Lumbees are the descendants of these two
groups. [5]
Other scholars believe the Lumbees to be descended from an eastern
Siouan group called the Cheraws. During the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries a number of Siouan-speaking tribes occupied southeastern North
Carolina. John R. Swanton, a pioneering ethnologist at the Smithsonian
Institution, wrote in 1938 that the Lumbees were probably of Cheraw
descent but were also genealogically inuenced by other Siouan tribes in

the area. Contemporary historians such as James Merrell and William

Sturtevant conrm this theory by suggesting that the Cheraws, along with
survivors of other tribes whose populations had been devastated by
warfare and disease, found refuge from both aggressive settlers and hostile
tribes in the Robeson County swamps in eastern North Carolina.[6]
Late twentieth-century research has demonstrated that among surnames
established as Lumbee ancestors were numerous mixed-race African
Americans free in Virginia before the American Revolution, and their
descendants who migrated to the Virginia and North Carolina frontiers in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These "free people of
color" were mostly descendants of white women and African men, who
worked and lived together in colonial Virginia. These connections have
been traced for numerous individuals and families through court records,
land deeds and other existing historical documents.[7][8] In Robeson
County, they may have intermarried with Native American survivors and
acculturated as Indian.

Modern era and legacy

The Lost Colony Center for Science and Research has excavated English
artifacts within the territory of the former Croatan tribe. The artifacts may
also be evidence of trade with the tribe, or of Indians' nding them at the
former colony site. The Center is conducting a DNA study to try to
determine if there are European lines among Croatan descendants.
A historical marker placed by the state of Georgia states "In 1870 a group
of Croatan Indians migrated from their homes in Robeson County North
Carolina, following the turpentine industry to southeast Georgia. Eventually
many of the Croatans became tenant farmers for the Adabelle Trading
Company, growing cotton and tobacco. The Croatan community
established the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Adabelle, as well as a school and
a nearby cemetery. After the collapse of the Adabelle Trading Company, the
Croatans faced both economic hardship and social injustice. As a result,
most members of the community returned to North Carolina by 1920 [9]
The University of Bristol, UK have also been running excavations down on
Hatteras Island in conjunction with the Croatoan Archaeological Society.
Hateras Island is the main locus for the settlement of the Croatoan tribe,
and to date they have discovered a large contact/pre-contact period
settlement, midden deposits and fascinating European trade items.

See also
Algonquian languages
Algonquian peoples
Aquascogoc
Carolina Algonquian

Dasamongueponke
Roanoke tribe
Secotan

Notes
1. "Indian Towns and Buildings of Eastern North Carolina"
(http://www.nps.gov/fora/forteachers/indian-towns-and-buildingsof-eastern-north-carolina.htm), Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, National
Park Service, 2008, accessed 24 Apr 2010
2. Blu (2004). Handbook of North American Indians. Sturtevant and Fogelson.
pp. 323-326.
3. Kupperman (1984). Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony. Rowman and
Allanheld. pp. 4565.
4. Milton, Giles (2000). Big Chief Elizabeth - How England's Adventurers
Gambled and Won the New World. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
pp. 265266. ISBN 978-0-340-74881-7.
5. Blu (2004). Handbook of North American Indians. Sturtevant and Fogelson.
pp. 155.
6. Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Houghton Miin
(http://www.credoreference.com/entry/hmenai/lumbee)
7. Heinegg, Paul. "Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Maryland and Delaware" (http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/).
Paul Heinegg. Retrieved 15 February 2009.
8. Stilling, Glenn Ellen Starr. "Lumbee origins: The Weyanoke-Kearsey
connection" (http://linux.library.appstate.edu/lumbee/16/WOOD007.html).
The Lumbee Indians: An Annotated Bibliography. Glenn Ellen Starr Stilling.
Retrieved 30 July 2008.
9. http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/topics/historical_markers/county
/bulloch/croatan-indian-community

References
K.I. Blu: "Lumbee", Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 14:
278-295, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004
T. Hariot, J. White, J. Lawson: A vocabulary of Roanoke, vol. 13,
Merchantville: Evolution Publishing, 1999
Th. Ross: American Indians in North Carolina, South Pines, NC: Karo
Hollow Press, 1999
G.M. Sider: Lumbee Indian histories, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993
S.B. Weeks: The lost colony of Roanoke, its fate and survival, New
York: Knickbocker Press, 1891
J.R. Swanton: "Probable Identity of the Croatan Indians." U.S. Dept. of
the Interior, Oce of Indian Aairs, 1933
J. Henderson: "The Croatan Indians of Robeson County, North

Carolina", U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Oce of Indian Aairs, 1923

K.O. Kupperman: "Roanoke, the Abandoned Colony", Rowman and
Littleeld, 1984
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Categories: Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands
Algonquian peoples Native American history of North Carolina
Native American tribes in North Carolina Algonquian ethnonyms
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