The Lost Tribes ol Carolina
Tlicro i.s more or less mystery about their
heritage, hut in the various parts of the
state where they reside they are recog¬
nized as fine citizens.
Pembroke. N. C. — Some 25.000
persons in North Carolina would
please like for you to tell them
who they are, where they came
from, and where they're going.
'1 hey arc the lost Indian tribes of
the South.
The largest remnant of these
people live here in Robeson County.
N. C.. but they spread out into ad¬
jacent areas. Their status ranges
from proclaimed and recognized
ethnological groups, to proclaimed
but unrecognized ditto.
The most interesting, because of
their numerical position, are the
Indians of Robeson County. Here
are perhaps 20,000 persons wi. •
obviously are of Indian blood, but
who are not recognized as a tribe
by the U. S. Bureau of Indian Af¬
fairs. who have no reservation and
no tribal community. Recognized
as a third race by the State of
North Carolina, they confront com¬
plicated living conditions. In near¬
by Lumber ton, for instance, there
is a 3-way Jim Crow observance,
and theatres have special sections
for Whites. Negroes. Indians. Here
in Pembroke, where there are
about 1,200 Indians to 300 whites,
no such distinctions apply as be¬
tween Indians and Whites.
Distinctions of Their Own
But if the Indian feels the sting
of discrimination and he does
— he is not averse to applying it
mercilessly himself. A few miles
away are a group of people known
as "the Brookses." who say they
arc Chcrokees, settled here after
a war party to the North, and who
feel they are apart from and su¬
perior to the other Indians. A few
miles to the south is a settlement
of families not accepted by the
By BILL SIIABI’L
larger group as Indians, and who
therefore feel the consequences of
a five-way Jim Crow. There are
other such settlements of "Lost
Tribes” throughout the State, but
in many instances the legal de¬
termination of their race — fur the
purpose of educational segregation
- is merely a matter of adminis¬
trative fiat. As a consequence.
Chief Standingdccr is no chief
at all. lint he is a bona tide member
of the Eastern Band of Chcrokees.
He has been photographed more
than a million times as Cherokee
type in his Great Smoky home at
Cherokee. N. C. (Photos by Hem-
mer.)
many Indians do not recognize the
Indianism of other groups who
might be Indians.
In Robeson County there can be
no doubt of the presence of a large
ethnological group, existing from
very early times, perhaps as early
as 1(550. A grant as early as 1732
was made to the ancestor of Indian
families now in that area, and it
has been assumed that these In¬
dians became trapped between
waves of Huguenots coming up
from Charleston and Scots coming
down from Fayetteville. Caught in
the then undesirable swamps of
the Lumber River, they seem to
have escaped pressure for 100
years. Until 1838. they were per¬
mitted to go to white schools: then
they were classified as people of
color, and most of them refused to
attend the Negro public schools,
with the result that the tribe large¬
ly became an illiterate people.
A romantic thing happened to
them in 1885. however, a thing
which still stirs many of them to
wistful dreaming. In that year a
legislator who had befriended
these people evolved the theory
that they were in fact descendants
of the Lost Colonists of Sir Walter
Raleigh, offering various theories,
among them being the fact that
they preserved several names of
families known to have been in the
Raleigh colony on Roanoke Island.
Since it is supposed the lx>st Col¬
onists lied to Hattcras. occupied
by a tribe known as Croatans. Rep¬
resentative Hamilton McMullan
asked that these Robeson Indians
be officially designated as Croatan
Indians, and so they were, by law
But discrimination being what it
is. this novel nobility did not last
for long. Heretofore, the Indians
з
THE STATE. APRIL 23. 1949
