Catawba

In 1585 the Catawba Indians were one of many tribes who inhabited the Piedmont region of the American Southeast in the present-day states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Related groups, such as the Saponi, Sugaree, Shuteree, Pedee, Waxhaw, and Wateree, occupied the region between the coastal plain and the Appalachian Mountains. Like many other Native Americans, these groups suffered tremendous losses from European diseases in the late 17th and 18th centuries. As once independent tribes and villages lost massive portions of their populations, they became more susceptible to attacks by enemies. Economic life became difficult, as both male and female providers succumbed to disease. Men were unable to hunt; women were unable to farm.

In addition to decimation by disease, the Catawba also suffered from a growing dependence on English trade goods like guns, metal cooking implements, and metal tips for arrows. Such objects not only made daily life easier but made them more effective in warfare against their enemies, primarily the Iroquois Indians to the north and the neighboring Tuscarora. To acquire these metal objects, the Catawba and other southern Indians engaged in the deerskin trade. The new dynamics of trade altered traditional subsistence patterns for the Catawba, who now ranged farther from home villages for longer periods than in the era before contact with Europeans. Furthermore, their new economic position in the trade made them more vulnerable to changes in the British market. These new realities affected many of the tribes in the South, causing great movement and consolidation among them. Because the Catawba had secured a position as “middlemen” in the deerskin trade and gained a reputation among the English settlers as adept and fierce warriors, they remained somewhat protected from the fiercest of frontier violence with the colonists. Many of their neighbors were not so lucky. Decimated by disease and warfare and threatened economically, remnants of smaller tribes sought refuge among the Catawba, who adopted them into the tribe to replenish their own losses.

By the 1750s Catawba villages contained a generation of refugees from surrounding tribes who all went under the name Catawba, according to British sources. The mid-18th century was a time of hardship as well for the Catawbas, who suffered great losses again from smallpox epidemics in the 1740s and 1750s. Coupled with a declining deerskin trade, these events undermined the Catawba strength in the Southeast. In the 1760s (and to the present) the Catawba continued to exist as a nation, albeit one that had been replenished by many nearby tribes.

Further reading: James Merrell, The Indians’ New World: The Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (New York: Norton, 1989).

—Thomas J. Lappas

Catesby, Mark (1 682-1 749) naturalist, traveler Mark Catesby was a naturalist, illustrator, the author of the first major illustrated work on the natural history of the British colonies in the Americas, and one of the first artists to illustrate birds and animals in their natural surroundings. He was born in Essex, England. Catesby developed an interest in botany as a child and in his young adulthood developed relationships with other collectors and botanists. Catesby accompanied his sister to Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1712; there he became acquainted with a number of prominent residents interested in horticulture, including Governor William Byrd III. Between 1712 and 1714 Catesby traveled to the Appalachians, the Bahamas, and Jamaica, collecting plant specimens and observing birds and animals. He became interested in the interrelationships between animals and their environment. Catesby went back to England in 1719 but returned to the New World in 1722, backed by a group of British plant collectors and enthusiasts including Samuel Dale and William Sherard, physician Sir Hans Sloane, and Francis Nicholson, the new governor of South Carolina. Catesby traveled in South Carolina and Georgia between 1723 and 1725, returning to the Bahamas in 1725. Already known as a watercolor painter of merit, Catesby learned to etch his own plates for the engravings for his subscription-supported Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, published between 1731 and 1743, with an appendix in 1747. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1733. A notable figure in the international scientific community, Catesby corresponded with a wide circle of European and colonial artists and collectors. His Natural History remained an important reference book well into the 18th century.

Further reading: Amy R. W. Meyers and Margaret Beck Pritchard, eds., Empire’s Nature: Mark Catesby’s New

World Vision (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

—Monique Bourque

Champlain, Samuel de (1567-1635) explorer of Canada

Perhaps more than any other individual, Samuel de Champlain was responsible for the establishment of permanent French settlement in New France, modern-day Canada. Faced with the competing interests of fur traders, religious leaders, government officials, and, of course, various Native American groups, Champlain remained a tireless advocate for the French colony. Often celebrated in heroic histories as the “Father of New France,” Champlain’s legacy was somewhat more ambiguous, particularly his relationship with the Native peoples he encountered.

Champlain began his career as an explorer in 1599, when he joined an expedition to the West Indies. In 1603 Champlain served as the cartographer on a voyage to New France and the following year began his long association with the effort to colonize the New World. After a series of exploratory missions during which he produced several extraordinarily accurate maps of the region as far south as Cape Cod, Champlain established Quebec as the base for French colonial endeavors. By 1613 he was named a vice regal official in New France and was given the authority to administer the colony as he saw fit. Champlain believed this power to extend over the Native Americans living in lands claimed by the French, and he made numerous attempts to interfere in the affairs of the nearby Monta-gnais Indians. These efforts only served to exacerbate the relationship between the French and the Native peoples, especially as competition in the fUR trade intensified preexisting animosities among various Native groups.

In 1617 Champlain presented his plan for colonization to the Chamber of Commerce in Paris. Like many such plans, Champlain’s was a rather optimistic appraisal of the potential for a mixed economy based on the exploitation of fish, timber, agriculture, and livestock, as well as the already established fur trade. His report also emphasized that a strong colony in New France was necessary to prevent competing European interests, such as the English and Dutch, from overtaking the lands. Despite the reluctance of some merchants to get involved in any activities that might detract from the lucrative fur trade, Champlain eventually was confirmed as commander of New France and returned in 1620.

Convinced that a sedentary lifestyle based primarily on agriculture was a key component of “civilized” living, Champlain attempted to convince the Montagnais to abandon their culture, convert to Christianity, speak French, and adopt a new way of life as farmers, much to the dis-

Charleston 63

The defeat of the Iroquois at Lake Champlain. A facsimile of an engraving by Samuel de Champlain from his 1613 edition of Les

Voyages de la Nouvelle France (The New York Public Library)

May of Europeans interested in the fur trade. In 1629 the English captured Quebec and held the settlement until 1632. In the intervening years Champlain continued to act as chief advocate for French colonization, publishing his most ambitious work, Les voyages de la Nouvelle France, just after the English returned the colony to France. Champlain returned to the colony and acted as chief administrator until his death there in 1635.

Further reading: William J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983).

—Melanie Perreault