Tuscarora

During much of the colonial period the Tuscarora Indians inhabited the region of western North Carolina known as the Piedmont. Linguistically, they were distantly related to the Five Nation Iroquois of upstate New York. At some point in the pre-Columbian period they had separated from them and relocated in the South, where they engaged in a mixed economy of hunting, gathering, and agriculture. The Five Nations (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk) occupied a very powerful position in the East, and the Tuscarora maintained an alliance with them through much of the colonial period. The Iroquois frequently traveled to the South on raids against their joint enemies, the Catawba. The Tusca-rora, speaking an Iroquoian language and knowledge-able about the Piedmont region, were a valuable ally to the Five Nations.

During the colonial period the Tuscarora became heavily involved in trade with the British. By the 1700s Indian nations were jockeying for position with the Europeans to receive the best and highest quantity of trade goods. This issue, as well as British encroachment on Tuscarora lands, made the Piedmont a tremendously volatile place. Furthermore, British colonists seeking Indian slaves paid the Tuscarora’s enemies handsomely to raid their villages and capture them. In retaliation for this and other offenses, the Tuscarora killed an English trader and attacked the English settlers’ plantations in an event known as the TuscARORA War (1711-13).

The North Carolina colonists received help from South Carolina, which sent troops to defend the colony. The joint force from the Carolinas routed the Tuscarora, driving them into the interior. After suffering hundreds of casualties, the Tuscaroras assessed their situation and arranged to move northward to join their allies among the Five Nations Iroquois. Although the Tuscarora had been negotiating with the Five Nations before the war, their recent losses made their situation desperate, and they moved into the region occupied by the Oneida. In the early 1720s the Iroquois officially accepted the Tuscarora as the Sixth Nation, giving them the right to speak in the confederacy’s councils. After the 1720s the Iroquois as a whole suffered from a gradual loss of autonomy. With the Tuscarora’s fortune tied to the confederacy, they suffered when the Seven Years’ War ended with the French departure from North America. Without the need for an Indian ally against their French and Indian foes, the British took greater license in encroaching upon Iroquois lands in upstate New York.

Further reading: Daniel Richter, The Ordeal of the Long-house: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).

—Thomas J. Lappas