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Croatan

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Croatan
Total population
extinct as a tribe
Regions with significant populations
North Carolina
Languages
Carolina Algonquian
Religion
Indigenous religion
Related ethnic groups
Roanoke, Hatteras

The Croatan were a small Native American ethnic group living in the coastal areas of what is now North Carolina. They might have been a branch of the larger Roanoke people or allied with them.[1] The Croatan lived in current Dare County, an area encompassing the Alligator River, Croatan Sound, Roanoke Island, Ocracoke Island, and parts of the Outer Banks, including Hatteras Island.

Their leaders, called Werowances ("he who is rich"), each controlled up to 18 towns. The greatest were able to muster 700 or 800 fighting men.[citation needed] Weroances and their families were held in great status and received respect, but they were not all-powerful. To pursue a collective goal, Weroances had to convince their followers that the action would be in the nation's best interest. The Weroance was responsible for spreading wealth, and, if unable to do so, he received less respect. [1]

Phillip W. Evans, a linguist, suggested the word Croatan means "council town" or "talk town", which likely indicates the residence of an important leader and a place where councils were held.[2]

The state-recognized tribes claiming descent from the Croatan people have members who live predominantly in Cumberland, Sampson, and Harnett counties.[3][4]

Beliefs

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According to Thomas Harriot, the Native Americans living in coastal North Carolina believed there was "one only chief and great God, which has been from all eternity" and which made petty gods "to be used in the creation and government to follow."[5] They 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 of fire. The concepts of heaven and hell[clarification needed] were impressed upon the common people to encourage them to respect leaders and live a life that would produce rewards in the afterlife. [citation needed]

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).[6]

European colonization

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It is known that the arrival of English settlers upset some pre-existing relationships. The Algonquian people advocated cooperation, while others (the Yamasee, Cherokee and Chickasaw, for example) resisted this approach. Later, this conflict between locals and settlers would lead to the Yamasee War. Nations that maintained mutually beneficial contact with the settlers gained power through their access to and control of European trade goods. While the English may have held great military superiority over the local Tidewater nations, the Native Americans' control over food and natural resources was a much more decisive factor in the conflict with early settlers. Despite the varying relationships, the Roanoke and Croatan were believed to have been on good terms with English colonists of the Roanoke Colony. Wanchese, the last leader of the Roanoke, accompanied the English on a trip to England, although he was distrustful of the English.[7] In 1586, Wanchese finally severed his former good relations with the English, leaving Weroance Manteo as the colonists' sole native ally.[8] Some documentation indicates they migrated to an area west of Lake Ontario by 1891.[9]

The Lost Colony

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Governor John White returned to Roanoke in 1590 to find the word "Croatoan" carved on a palisade.

Some of the survivors of the Lost Colony of Roanoke may have joined the Croatan. Governor White finally reached Roanoke Island on August 18, 1590, three years after he had last seen them there, but he found his colony had been long deserted. The buildings had collapsed and "the houses [were] taken down." The few clues about the colonists' whereabouts included the letters "CROATOAN" carved into a palisade. Croatoan was the name of a nearby island (likely modern-day Hatteras Island) in addition to the local tribe of Native Americans. Roanoke Island was not originally the planned location for the colony and the idea of moving elsewhere had been discussed. Before the Governor's departure, he and the colonists had agreed 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. White found no such cross and was hopeful that his family was still alive.[10]

Speculation of the fate of the "Lost Colony"

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In 1709, English explorer John Lawson wrote A New Voyage to Carolina, in which he recounts the history of North Carolina. He describes the remains of an English fort on Roanoke Island, and then conjectures that the "Hatteras Indians" were descended from the settlers at Roanoke, stating "A farther Confirmation of this we have from the Hatteras Indians, who either then lived on Ronoak-Island, or much frequented it. These tell us, that several of their Ancestors were white People, and could talk in a Book, as we do; the Truth of which is confirm’d by gray Eyes being found frequently amongst these Indians, and no others."[11]

Research

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Researchers from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, have also been excavating on Hatteras Island in conjunction with the Croatoan Archaeological Society.[12]

Roberta Estes founded the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research which excavated English artifacts within the territory of the former Croatan tribe. The artifacts may also be evidence of trade with the tribe or of Natives finding them at the former colony site. The center conducted the Lost Colony DNA Project to try to determine if there are European lines among Croatan descendants. However, no bones from the Lost Colony have been found to sequence DNA, and, as of 2019, the project had not identified any living descendants.[13]

Modern claimants

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Origins of theories of descent

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In 1885, State Representative Hamilton McMillan proposed a connection between the ancestors of the Lumbee and Tennessee Melungeons, with the early English colonists who settled on Roanoke Island in 1587 and the tribes who inhabited coastal North Carolina at the same time. Based on this, some Lumbee, based in North Carolina, self-identified as descendants of the Croatan and survivors of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.[9] McMillan's hypothesis contended that the colonists migrated with the Indians inland.[14][15] In 1914, Special Indian Agent O. M. McPherson published a list of names of the Lost Colony, claiming names on the list were typical Indian names in the North Carolina counties of Robeson and Sampson, due to their intermarriage with other settlers, claiming many of the surnames included were those of Croatan Indians.[16][3][15]

Criticism

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Historian Karen Blu states that connections between the Lumbee and specific earlier tribes cannot be traced in the historical record, and that many repeat the theory, often adding more broken evidence.[17][18] Sociolinguist Walt Wolfram suggests that identifying with the prestige of Roanoke settler origin served to elevate their sense of privilege though association with European rather than African lineage, while simultaneously maintaining a Native American claim to identity.[19] Lumbee historian Malinda Maynor Lowery is "highly skeptical" of the theory of descent from the Lost Colony.[20] Croatan is noted to be an identity adopted by groups labelled "triracial isolates".[9]

History of identification

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Newspaper excerpt discussing the self-identified Croatan Indians, 1910.[21]

Lowery wrote that, in 1890, a group of about 100 people who self-identified as Croatan descendants, or Lumbees, left Robeson County, North Carolina, for southern Georgia. They headed back to Bulloch County where they could keep their people together as "Indians", using Jim Crow South segregation to develop themselves as a community.[22] Later on, the self-identified Croatans faced both economic hardship and social injustice, and migrated back to North Carolina by 1920.[23]

In 1910, the North Carolina state legislature renamed the Croatan Indians in North Carolina to "Cherokee".[24] The North Carolina state legislature recognized the Croatan Indians of Robeson County and the Croatan Indians of Sampson County in 1911.[25] The General Assembly ruled "That said Indians and their descendants shall have separate schools for their children, school committees of their own race and color, and shall be allowed to select teachers of their own choice".[26] Today, these two groups are state-recognized tribes, known as the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and the Coharie Intra-tribal Council, Inc., respectively.[4] The Texas Lumbee also identify with Croatan descent.[9]

The Haliwa-Saponi tribe previously identified as the Haliwarnash Croatan Indian Club in the 1940s, but dropped the reference to the historic Croatan a few years later.[27] The predecessors of the Waccamaw Siouan Indians repeatedly attempted to have themselves referred to as Croatan Indians in order to obtain state funded segregated schools. While they had switched to a Cherokee identity by 1913, they continued to apply as Croatans until officially applying as Cherokee in 1927.[28]

The Croatan Indian Tribe of South Carolina, an unrecognized organization, claims to descend from Croatan people.[29][9] The South Carolina recognition committee stated the tribe had no documented history in the state. Committee member Ven Thompson stated Croatan was historically used as a racial term similarly to "mulatto", and did not necessarily denote a Native American.[30]

Notable people

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  • Manteo, ambassador and mediator; disappeared after 1587.

See also

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Notes

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  1. 1 2 "Indian Towns and Buildings of Eastern North Carolina". Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. National Park Service. 2015-04-14. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
  2. ↑ Evans, Phillip W. (2006). "Croatoan Indians". NCpedia. Retrieved 2020-12-10.
  3. 1 2 Butler, George (1916). The Croatan Indians of Sampson County, North Carolina. Their Origin and Racial Status. A Plea for Separate Schools. Durham, North Carolina: The Seeman Printery.
  4. 1 2 "State Recognized Tribes". National Conference of State Legislatures. Archived from the original on 25 October 2022. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  5. ↑ David Stick: Indian Religion, National Park Service.
  6. ↑ Blu (2004). Handbook of North American Indians. Sturtevant and Fogelson. pp. 323–326.
  7. ↑ Kupperman (1984). Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony. Rowman and Allanheld. pp. 45–65.
  8. ↑ Milton, p.150
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Bartl, Renate (2021). American Tri-Racials: African-Native Contact, Multi-Ethnic Native American Nations, and the Ethnogenesis of Tri-Racial Groups in North America (PDF) (PhD thesis). Munich: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. pp. 76–77, 100, 166, 359, 432. doi:10.5282/edoc.26874 – via Electronic Theses of LMU Munich.
  10. ↑ Milton, Giles (2000). Big Chief Elizabeth - How England's Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World. London: Hodder & Stoughton. pp. 265–266. ISBN 978-0-340-74881-7.
  11. ↑ Whitford, Sara (2012-01-06). "John Lawson on the 'Lost Colony' of Roanoke". Coastal Carolina Indian Center. Retrieved 2025-04-02.
  12. ↑ "Croatoan Archaeological Project". Croatoan Archaeological Society, Inc. Retrieved 1 May 2024.
  13. ↑ Lawler, Andrew (2018). The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke. New York: Doubleday. pp. 311–14. ISBN 978-0385542012.
  14. ↑ Gross, Ariela (2007). "'Of Portuguese Origin': Litigating Identity and Citizenship among the 'Little Races' in Nineteenth-Century America". Law and History Review. 25 (3). American Society for Legal History: 499. doi:10.1017/S0738248000004259. JSTOR 27641498.
  15. 1 2 Heinegg, Paul (2021). Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to About 1820. Sixth Edition. Vol. I - Families Abel to Drew. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company. p. 24–25. ISBN 9780806359298.
  16. ↑ Butler, George E. (1941). The Croatan Indians of Sampson County, North Carolina: their origin and racial status: a plea for separate schools. pp. 23–25.
  17. ↑ Blu (2004). Handbook of North American Indians. Sturtevant and Fogelson. pp. 155, 320. Waccamaws moved into the Lumber River area between 1718 and 1725, but they were among the Catawba in 1727 and in 1755 (Taukchiray 1983:454A, 463B). The Hatteras Indians, sometimes claimed as Lumbee ancestors under the name Croatan, continued to live in their town on the Outer Banks until at least 1788 (vol. 15:272, 280). The Cheraw Indians were absorbed into the Catawbas ('Catawba and Neighboring Groups', this vol.). The histories of the other Indian peoples of coastal North Carolina and South Carolina (S. South 1972:26, 29, 31-32, 33-34, 36; Taukchiray 1983:426A—463E) also do not appear to lead to the Lumbee.
  18. ↑ Blu, Karen I. (1980). The Lumbee problem: the making of an American Indian people. Cambridge University Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-521-22525-0. OL 4409557M. Retrieved 21 December 2025. Many others have taken up this theory and have added to the broken bits of evidence, or simply repeated its assertions
  19. ↑ Wolfram, Walt; Dannenberg, Clare. "Dialect Identity in a Tri-Ethnic Context: The Case of Lumbee American Indian English". English World-Wide. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 188–189. doi:10.1075/eww.20.2.01w. Retrieved 18 December 2025. A sense of privilege in this society would most naturally be achieved through an association with a European rather than Native American or African lineage. The Lost Colony lore serves to connect Lumbee status with an authenticating group while maintaining Native American identity with a specific coastal tribe. If nothing else, the perpetuation of lore connecting the Lumbee with both a distinct Native American group and a mysterious but prestigious British group shows how mythmaking may function in the construction of ethnic identity.
  20. ↑ Steelman, Ben (October 20, 2018). "'The Lumbee Indians' – black, white and shades of red". Wilmington Star-News. Retrieved December 30, 2024.
  21. ↑ "Croatan". The Robesonian. Vol. XL, no. 96. Lumberton, NC: W.S. McDiamid. 24 January 1910. p. 4. Retrieved 8 July 2026.
  22. ↑ Maynor, Malinda (2005). "People and Place: Croatan Indians in Jim Crow Georgia, 1890–1920". American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 29 (1): 37–63. doi:10.17953/aicr.29.1.w18126107jh11566. ISSN 0161-6463.
  23. ↑ "Croatan Indian Community historical marker". Digital Library of Georgia. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
  24. ↑ McPherson, Orlando M. (1914-06-30). "Indians of North Carolina: Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, Transmitting, in Response to a Senate Resolution of June 30, 1914, a Report on the Condition and Tribal Rights of the Indians of Robeson and Adjoining Counties of North Carolina". University of North Carolina. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
  25. ↑ Blue, Karen I. (2001). The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln. p. 174. ISBN 9780803261976.
  26. ↑ Johnson, Guy B. (1939). "Personality in a White-Indian-Negro Community". American Sociological Review. 4 (4): 516–523. doi:10.2307/2084322. ISSN 0003-1224. JSTOR 2084322.
  27. ↑ Oakley, Christopher Arris (2005). Keeping the Circle: American Indian Identity in Eastern North Carolina, 1885-2004. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-803250697. Retrieved 6 June 2026.
  28. ↑ Lerch, Patricia Barker (1992). "State-Recognized Indians of North Carolina, Including a History of the Waccamaw Sioux". In Paredes, J. Anthony (ed.). Indians of the Southeastern United States in the Late 20th Century. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. pp. 59–61. ISBN 0-8173-0534-3. Retrieved 6 July 2026.
  29. ↑ South Carolina Commission for Minority Affairs. "SC tribes and groups" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-01-02.
  30. ↑ Pounds, Keith A. (13 June 2006). "'Not a tribal community'". The Times and Democrat. Orangeburg, SC. Retrieved 17 May 2026.

References

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  • 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: Knickerbocker Press, 1891
  • J.R. Swanton: "Probable Identity of the Croatan Indians." U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, 1933
  • J. Henderson: "The Croatan Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina", U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, 1923
  • K.O. Kupperman: "Roanoke, the Abandoned Colony", Rowman and Littlefield, 1984
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