Sioux tribes.
Iroquois tribes.
Muskogi tribes.
The Indians of North Carolina at the time which we are treating belonged to three ethnic families. Along the coast, northward from Cape Lookout to the Virginia line, the Corees, Pamlicos, Mattamuskeets, Pasquotanks, and Chowanoes all belonged to the Algonquin family, and they could muster in all about 400 warriors. The coast territory occupied by these tribes was continuous with that which had once been controlled by the Powhatan Confederacy to the northward. The Corees, in Carteret Precinct, were the southernmost of these Algonquin tribes. The Cape Fear Indians, on the coast southwest of Carteret, belonged to the great Sioux or Dakota family. From the meridian of 77° 30´ westward to the Blue Ridge, and from the Santee River on the south to the Potomac on the north, the country was occupied by Sioux tribes, of which the names most familiarly known are the Waxhaws, Catawbas, Waterees, Saponis and Tutelos, Monacans and Manahoacs.[275] Now deep into this Sioux country, in North Carolina, there ran a powerful wedge of alien stock. The thick end of the wedge covered the precincts of Bath and Craven, with part of New Hanover; and from its centre, at the mouth of Trent River, it ran northwestward more than a hundred miles, a little beyond the site of Raleigh, with an average width of less than thirty miles. This wedge of population consisted of the Tuscaroras, a large tribe of the dreaded Iroquois family, able to send forth at least 1,200 warriors. Another tribe of Iroquois then dwelt in Bertie Precinct, between the Chowan and Roanoke rivers. It was known as the Meherrins, and was really the remnant of the fierce Susquehannocks, from whom Bacon had delivered Virginia in 1676. Its fighting numbers can hardly have been much over a hundred. Just north of the Meherrins was another small Iroquois tribe called Nottoways. To frame our picture, although it takes us away from the scene of action, we should add that the whole Alpine region west of the Sioux country, from the Peaks of Otter as far southwest as Lookout and Chickamauga mountains, belonged to the great Iroquois tribe of Cherokees; while to the south of Santee River, from Florida to the Mississippi River, we encounter a fourth ethnic family, the Muskogi, represented by such tribes as Choctaws and Chickasaws, the Creek Confederacy, the Yamassees, and others.
Algonquin-Iroquois conspiracy.
Between the Tuscaroras and the numerous Sioux tribes by which they were partly surrounded there was incessant and murderous hostility. On the other hand, there was amity and alliance, at least for the moment, between the Tuscaroras and the Algonquin coast tribes whose lands the palefaces were invading. The first murders of white settlers occurred in Bertie Precinct at the hands of Meherrins, and seem to have been isolated cases. But a general conspiracy of Iroquois and Algonquin tribes was not long in forming, and the day before the new moon, September 22, 1711, was appointed for a wholesale massacre.
Capture of Graffenried and Lawson.
Lawson’s horrible death.
A few days before the appointed time the Baron de Graffenried started in his pinnace from New Berne to explore the Neuse River. His only companions were a negro servant and John Lawson, a Scotchman who for a dozen years had been surveyor-general of the colony. Lawson was the author of an extremely valuable and fascinating book on Carolina and its native races,—a book which one cannot read without loving the writer and mourning his melancholy fate.[276] No man in the colony was better known by the Indians, who had frequently observed and carefully noted the fact that his appearance in the woods with his surveying instruments was apt to be followed by some fresh encroachment upon their lands. Lawson and Graffenried had advanced but little way into the Tuscarora wilderness when they were surrounded by a host of Indians and taken prisoners. The Indians were very curious to learn why they had come up the river; perhaps it might indicate that the people at New Berne had some suspicion of the intended massacre and had sent them forward as scouts. If any such dread beset the minds of the red men, it was probably soon allayed; for it is clear that, had there been any suspicion, Graffenried and Lawson would not thus have ventured out of all reach of support. The barbarians were two or three days in making up their minds what to do. Then they took poor Lawson, and thrust into his skin all over, from head to foot, sharp splinters of lightwood, almost dripping with its own turpentine, and set him afire.[277] The negro was also put to death with fiendish torments, but Graffenried was kept a prisoner, perhaps in order to be burned on some festal occasion.
The massacre, Sept. 22-24, 1711.