thumb|300px|In 1722, the Tuscarora, who had migrated north from the Carolinas to [[New York (state)|New York, became the sixth nation of the Iroquois Confederacy.]]

The Tuscarora () are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands in Canada and the United States. They are an Iroquoian people, recognized as a Native American tribe in the United States and as a First Nations people in Canada. The Tuscarora Nation, a federally recognized tribe, is based in New York, and Tuscarora people in Canada are part of the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in Ontario. They were forced to migrate from North Carolina following conflicts with British colonists.

Following their defeat in the 1711 to 1713 Tuscarora War at the hands of British colonists and their Indian allies, most surviving Tuscarora left North Carolina and migrated north to Pennsylvania and New York, over a 90-year period. They aligned with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) in New York, because of their ancestral linguistic and cultural connections. In 1722, sponsored by the Oneida, the Tuscarora were accepted as the sixth nation of the Iroquois Confederacy.

After the American Revolution, those Tuscarora who allied with the colonists shared reservation land with the Oneida before gaining their own. Today, the Tuscarora Nation of New York is a federally recognized tribe. Tuscarora who allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War resettled with other Haudenosaunee people to Ontario, where they became part of the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation.

Only the tribes in New York and Ontario have been recognized on a government-to-government basis by the respective national governments. After the migration was completed in the early 19th century, the Tuscarora in New York no longer considered those remaining in North Carolina as members of the tribal nation. Since the late 20th century, some North Carolina individuals claiming Tuscarora ancestry formed organizations self-identifying as tribes.

Name

The Tuscaroras' autonym, , may translate to "hemp gatherers" or "shirt-wearing people".

History

Precontact to 17th century

The Tuscarora people were a confederacy of three tribes, when first encountered by Europeans in North Carolina. These were the:

  • Katenuaka (people of the submerged pine trees), Kautanohakau
  • Akawenteaka (people of the water), Kawenteaka, Kauwetsaka, Kauwetseka Hodge, an early 19th-century historian, wrote that the Tuscarora in North Carolina traditionally were said to occupy the "country lying between the sea shores and the mountains, which divide the Atlantic states," in which they had 24 large towns and could muster about 6,000 warriors, probably meaning persons. In 1715, about 70 warriors of the southern Tuscarora went to South Carolina to assist colonists against the Yamasee. Those 70 warriors later asked permission to have their wives and children join them, and settled near Port Royal, South Carolina.

Under the leadership of Tom Blunt, the Tuscarora who remained in North Carolina signed a treaty with the colony in June 1718. It granted them a tract of land on the Roanoke River in what is now Bertie County. This was the area occupied by Chief Blunt and his people. The colonial governments of Virginia and North Carolina both recognized Tom Blunt, who had taken the last name Blount, as "King Tom Blount" of the Tuscarora. Both colonies agreed to consider as friendly only those Tuscarora who accepted Blount's leadership. The remaining southern Tuscarora were forced to remove from their villages on the Pamlico River and relocate to the villages of Ooneroy and Resootskeh in Bertie County. In 1722, the Bertie County Reservation, which would officially become known as Indian Woods, was chartered by the colony.

As colonial settlement surrounded Indian Woods, the Tuscarora suffered discrimination and other acts; they were overcharged or denied use of ferries, restricted in hunting, and cheated in trade; their timber was illegally logged, and their lands were continuously encroached upon by herders and squatters. Other Tuscarora bands sojourned in the Juniata River valley of Pennsylvania, before reaching New York.

The present area from Martinsburg, West Virginia, west to Berkeley Springs, has roads, creeks, and land still named after the Tuscarora people, including a development in Hedgesville called "The Woods", where the street names contain reference to the Tuscarora people, and which contains a burial mound adopted by the West Virginia Division of Culture as an archaeological site in 1998. A record circa 1763 indicates that some Tuscarora had not migrated to the Iroquois, and remained in the Panhandle, instead, and stayed and fought under Shawnee Chief Cornstalk.

During the American Revolutionary War, part of the Tuscarora and Oneida nations in New York allied with the rebel colonists. Most of the warriors of the other four Iroquois nations supported Great Britain, and many participated in battles throughout New York. They were the main forces that attacked frontier settlements of the central Mohawk and Cherry Valleys. Late in the war, the pro-British Tuscarora followed Chief Joseph Brant of the Mohawk, other British-allied tribes, and Loyalists north to Ontario, then called Upper Canada by the British. They took part in establishing the reserve of the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in what became Ontario, Canada.

In 1803, a final contingent of southern Tuscarora migrated to New York to join the reservation of their tribe in Niagara County. After that, the Tuscarora in New York no longer considered southern remnants as part of their nation. Some descendants of the southern remnants have continued to identify as Tuscarora and have organized some bands. Through the generations they had intermarried with neighbors, but identify culturally as Tuscarora.

During the War of 1812, British forces attacked Lewiston, New York on December 19, 1813. A band of Tuscarora living in a village on an escarpment just above the town assisted the town's residents as they fled the attacking force. The British force was accompanied by Mohawk warrior and some white colonists disguised as Mohawks. The American militia fled, leaving only the Tuscarora—outnumbered 30 to one—to fight a delaying action that allowed some townspeople to escape. The Tuscarora sent a party of warriors to blow horns along the escarpment and suggest a larger force, while another party attacked downhill with war whoops, to give an exaggerated impression of their numbers. The attacking force burned Lewiston, as well as the Tuscarora village, both of which undefended.

The Tuscarora Nation has continued to struggle to protect its land in New York. In the mid-20th century, New York City commissioner Robert Moses generated controversy by negotiating with the Tuscarora Sachem council and purchasing of the Tuscarora reservation for the reservoir of the new hydroelectric project along the Niagara River, downriver from Niagara Falls. (At the time of first power generation in February 1962, it was the largest project in the world.) The plant continues to generate electricity for households located from the Niagara area to as far away as New York City.

Language

Skarure, the Tuscarora language, belongs to the northern branch of the Iroquoian languages. Linguists and historians have both tried to determine when the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin and Nottoway tribes separated from the Tuscarora. Before initial contact (1650), English colonists, based on reports from Algonquian natives, thought the three tribes were one people, as the Algonquian speakers referred to them by the exonym Mangoag. Following encounters between the English with the Tuscarora and other tribes, the former noted they used the same interpreters to translate with each of the peoples, which meant their languages were closely related.

Although the Nottoway language went extinct in the early 1900s, linguists have been able to determine that it was distinct, although closely related to Tuscarora. In addition, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Tribe has been working to revitalize the Nottoway Language in recent times. In historic times, the three tribes always identified as distinct and independent peoples.

Recognized Tuscarora nations

  • Tuscarora Nation at Lewiston, New York
  • Tuscarora First Nation at Six Nations of the Grand River, Ontario

Tuscarora descendants in Oklahoma

Some Tuscarora descendants are part of the Seneca–Cayuga Nation headquartered in Oklahoma. They are primarily descendants of Tuscarora groups absorbed in the early decades of the 19th century in Ohio by Senecas and Cayugas who also lived in the region. They became known to Europeans as Mingos, while in the Midwest, coalescing as a single group in Ohio after isolation from the League due to Sullivan's Expedition. They were later forced in Indian removals to Indian Territory in present-day Kansas, and lastly, in Oklahoma. In 1937, descendants reorganized and were federally recognized as the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma. The nation occupies territory in the northeast corner of the former Indian Territory.

Unrecognized groups in North Carolina

Numerous unrecognized tribes in North Carolina claim Tuscarora descent. Beginning in the late 20th century, they have organized and reformed in various configurations. None have state recognition or federal recognition.

They have included:

  1. Cape Fear Band of Skarure Woccon (located mainly in Brunswick, Bladen, Columbus, and Pender Counties and also South Carolina)
  2. Skaroreh Katenuaka Tuscarora Nation of Indians, Windsor, NC
  3. Southern Band Tuscarora Indian Tribe, Windsor, NC
  4. Tosneoc Tuscarora Community, Wilson County, NC
  5. Tuscarora Indian Tribe, Drowning Creek Reservation, Maxton, NC
  6. Tuscarora Nation East of the Mountains, Bowland, NC
  7. Tuscarora Nation One Fire Council, Robeson County, NC (formed in 2010 from several bands in Robeson County)
  8. Tuscarora Nation of Indians of the Carolinas, Charlotte, NC
  9. Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, Maxton, NC.
  10. Tuscarora Tribe of Indians Maxton, NC, (1979) effective date per Sec. of State NC, 08/20/1990

Tuscarora Nation officials in New York dispute claims that anyone in North Carolina has continuity as a tribe with the Tuscarora. In the spring of 1973 students from NC State University and members of the local Tuscarora people staged a protest seeking "federal and state recognition of the autonomous bands of the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, the right to run their own school systems, and better job opportunities for Native American communities." The protest involved a walk from Pembroke, North Carolina to the State Capitol in Raleigh.

Notable historical Tuscarora

<!--Please list 21st-century people under their specific tribal or First Nation article-->

  • Wallace "Mad Bear" Anderson (Tuscarora Nation, 1927–1985), Native activist
  • David Cusick (Tuscarora Nation, circa 1780–1840), artist and author
  • Dennis Cusick (Tuscarora Nation, circa 1800–1824), painter
  • John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt (1859–1937), linguist and ethnographer
  • Henry Berry Lowrie, led a resistance in North Carolina during and after the American Civil War.
  • Frank Mount Pleasant (Tuscarora Nation, 1884–1937), athlete
  • Clinton Rickard (Tuscarora Nation, 1882–1971), Native activist
  • Alicia Elliott (Six Nations Tuscarora, born 1987 or 1988), author

Iroquoian-speaking peoples

  • Cherokee
  • Coree (possibly)
  • Erie
  • Wyandot
  • Haudenosaunee
  • Cayuga
  • Mohawk
  • Oneida
  • Onondaga
  • Seneca
  • Tuscarora
  • Meherrin
  • Neusiok (possibly)
  • Nottoway
  • Susquehannock (Conestoga)

See also

  • Federal Power Commission v. Tuscarora Indian Nation
  • Christoph von Graffenried
  • Tuscarora First Nation

References

Further reading

  • Patrick Keith, Through Colonialism and Imperialism: The Struggle for Tuscarora Nationhood in Southeastern North Carolina, M.A. Thesis, 2005, University of Arizona
  • John R. Swanton, "The Indians of the Southeastern United States", Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 137 (Washington, D.C., 1946)
  • Bruce G. Trigger, ed., Northeast, vol. 15 of Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978)
  • Anthony F. C. Wallace, "The Modal Personality Structure of the Tuscarora Indians", Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 150 (Washington, D.C., 1952)
  • Anthony F. C. Wallace, Tuscarora: A History (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012)
  • Tuscarora and Six Nations Websites, official website
  • Six Nations Of The Grand River Territory, official website
  • Tuscarora Nation of New York, IDA Treaties Explorer
  • Skaroreh Katenuaka Nation, Tuscarora Nation of Indians, official website