Lumbee

A little more than 50 years later, Lew Barton furthered McMillan and Weeks’ speculations with, The Most Ironic Story in American History (Charlotte, NC: Associated Printing Corporation, 1967). However, no extant evidence exists for "Lost Colony" origins, and of the many characteristically Lumbee names, few are shared with members of England's failed colony. While some modern day Lumbees continue to subscribe to this theory, the vast majority of Lumbees discredit the notion of "Lost Colony" origins. As a champion of rights for the Indians of Robeson County, McMillan very likely confused the oral traditions of some Lumbee families who spoke of migrating from the Roanoke and Neuse River basin during the mid-18th century where groups of Saponi (Siouan) and Tuscarora (Iroquoian) had settlements.

Some contemporary historians and anthropologists posit that these particular oral traditions belong to families whose ancestors were Yeopin, Potoskite, Nansemond, Saponi, and Tuscarora-- groups who had incurred devastating loss of life and land in the wake of the Tuscarora War-- who joined with migrating Cheraw families and other refugees on Drowning Creek.See Maynor, “Native American Identity," pp. 1-29; Wesley D. Taukchiray, "American Indian References in the South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, Royal South Carolina Gazette, South Carolina Gazette and Public Advertiser, and State Gazette of South Carolina, 1766–1792," South Carolina Historical Magazine 100 (Oct. 1999), pp. 319–27; and Robert K. Thomas, "A Report on Research of Lumbee Origins." Unpublished manuscript (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Archives, 1976).

Although anthropologists such as Gerald Sider and Karen Blu take seriously the Lumbee claim of being Native American, historical documents tell a very different story. The original Lumbee ancestors were free people of color and whites. While some small degree of Indian ancestry is plausible and likely, there is very little evidence for it. In the first federal census of 1790, the ancestors of the Lumbee were enumerated as Free Persons of Color, as the U.S. Census did not have an "American Indian" category until 1870, and up until that time, census enumerators oftentimes categorized individuals themselves, thereby determining the race of a particular individual. However, in other documents, such as court records, the Lumbee ancestors had the opportunity to describe themselve, they used the word "colored" or "person of color", and never the word Indian. In Robeson County, Lumbee ancestors were only officially classified as Indian after Reconstruction in 1885.

Genealogists Paul Heinegg and Dr Virginia E. DeMarce have using an array of primary source documents been able to trace the migration of the primary Lumbee ancestral families from the Tidewater region in Virginia into present-day Robeson County, North Carolina. According to Heinegg and DeMarce, ancestral Lumbees were the descendants of mixed-race unions of African and Europeans in Virginia, who then migrated south into North Carolina along common routes of colonial expansion.Virginia DeMarce, "Looking at Legends—Lumbee and Melungeon: Applied Genealogy and the Origins of Tri-Racial Isolate Settlements," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 81 (March 1993): 24-45; and Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina: From the Colonial Period to about 1820 (Baltimore, MD: Clearfield, 2001).

Heinegg and DeMarce, building on the work of Brewton Berry and Edward Price, claim that the early eighteenth century ancestors of the Lumbee coalesced because of a firmly entrenched racial caste system in North Carolina that relegated the ancestors of the Lumbee to a status between that of whites and blacks.Brewton Berry, Almost White: A Study of Certain Racial Hybrids in the Eastern United States (New York, NY: MacMillan Company, 1963); and Edward Price, "A geographic analysis of white-Indian-Negro racial mixtures in the Eastern United States," Association of American Geographers (1953): 138-55; and "Mixed-blood populations of eastern United States as to origins, localization and persistence," Ph.D. dissertation (Berkeley: University of California, 1950).

DeMarce rightly uses the term "tri-racial isolate" in her 1993 discussion of the Lumbee, as they bear many similarities to such groups as the Melungeons of East Tennessee.

Eighteenth Century

In 1725, John Herbert, commissioner of Indian trade for the Wineau Factory on the Black River, attempted to chart a portion of what eventually became Robeson County. Herbert's map identified four Siouan-speaking communities along the Pee Dee River in South Carolina: the "Saraws," "Pedee," "Scavanos," and "Wacomas."

In 1754, a surveying party reported that Bladen County (which at that time contained what today is Robeson County) was "a frontier to the Indians." Bladen County abutted Anson County, which at that time extended west into Cherokee territory. The same report also claimed that no Indians lived in Bladen County. Land patents and deeds filed with the colonial administrations of Virginia, North and South Carolina during this chaotic period reveal that Lumbee ancestors were migrating into southern North Carolina along the typical routes of colinial migration, and obtaining land deeds in the same manner as any other migrants.

Lumbee historian Adolph Dial replicated Hamilton MacMillan's claim that Lumbee ancestor James Lowrie received sizeable land grants early in the century, and by 1738 possessed combined estates of more than two thousand acres (8 km²). McMillan also claimed that John Brooks established title to over one thousand acres (4 km²) in 1735, and Robert Lowrie gained possession of almost seven hundred acres (2.8 km²).Adolph L. Dial and David K. Eliades, The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee Indians (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), pp. 28-29. However, no land grants were issued during these years in North Carolina. The first land grants to documented Lumbee ancestors would not occur until more than a decade later.

Ancestral Lumbees took titles to land described in relation to Drowning Creek, and prominent swamps such as Ashpole, Long, and Back Swamp. The Lumbee settlement with the longest continuous documentation from the mid-eighteenth century onward is Long Swamp, or present-day Prospect, North Carolina. Prospect is located within Pembroke and Smith townships. According to James Campisi, the anthropologist hired by the Lumbee tribe, this area "is located in the heart of the so-called old field of the Cheraw documented in land records between 1737 and 1739.".See “Testimony of Dr. Jack Campisi Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs," S. 420 (Washington, DC: September 17, 2003), or http://www.lumbeetribe.com/hearings/s420.htm. However, this appears to be pure speculation on Campisi's part, as he gives no documentary evidence that could prove his contention. Campisi further notes that the earliest census and county records document the presence of an extended Locklear family who functioned throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as community leaders, both by descent and marriage, and were among the leadership that petitioned Congress for federal recognition in 1888.“Testimony of Dr. Jack Campisi": http://www.lumbeetribe.com/hearings/s420.htm. Pension records for veterans of the American Revolution list a Samuel Bell, Jacob Locklear, John Brooks, Berry Hunt, Thomas Jacobs, Thomas Cummings, and Michael Revels. And in 1790, ancestral Lumbees such as Cumbo, "Revils" (Revels), Hammonds, Bullard, "Lockileer" (Locklear), Lowrie, Barnes, Hunt, "Chavers" (Chavis), Strickland, Wilkins, Oxendine, Brooks, Jacobs, Bell, and Brayboy are listed as inhabitants of the Fayetteville District, and enumerated as "Free Persons of Color" in the first federal census.U.S. Bureau of the Census, "Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States: Fayetteville District, North Carolina," The First Census of the U.S.: 1790 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908); and Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, p. 29.

The Long Nineteenth-Century

The Starving Times

Anthropologist Gerald Sider tells of "tied mule" incidents in which a white farmer had only to tie his mule to the post of a neighboring Indian's land or let his cattle graze on the Indian's land. The white farmer then filed a complaint for theft with the local authorities who promptly arrested the Native farmer. "Tied mule" incidents were resolved with the Indian agreeing to pay a fine, or in lieu of a fine, by giving up a portion of his land, or agreeing to a term of labor service with the "wronged" white farmer. However, Sider has never documented the occurence of such an incident. Robeson County land records show an appreciable loss of Indian title to land during this desperate time, but mostly due to failure to pay taxes and other more common reasons.See Evans, To Die Game; and Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, p. 45; Adolph L. Dial, The Lumbee (Indians of North America book series) (New York, NY: Chelsea House Publications, 1993), p. 39

In 1853, the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of North Carolina's ban on firearms with the conviction of Noel Locklear in the State v. Locklear for the illegal possession of firearms.Evans, To Die Game, 1995, p. 108; and Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, p.45; and Laurence M. Hauptman, “River Pilots and Swamp Guerillas: Pamunkey and Lumbee Unionists,” in Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 77. But, in 1857, William Chavers, another Lumbee ancestor from Robeson County was arrested and charged as a "free person of color" with carrying a shotgun. Chavers, like Locklear, was convicted. Chavers promptly appealed, arguing that the law only restricted "free Negroes," not "persons of color." The appeals court reversed the lower court, finding that "free persons of color may be, then, for all we can see, persons colored by Indian blood, or persons descended from Negro ancestors beyond the fourth degree." Two years later, in another case involving a Lumbee ancestor from Robeson County, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that forcing an individual to display himself before a jury was the same as forcing him to provide evidence against himself. Overall however, the ambivalent legal and political status of Robeson County's free people of color only increased in the years leading up to and during the Civil War.

Failed Neutrality During the Civil War

Some Lumbee ancestors served in the Confederate army. Others tried to avoid coerced labor in the Confederate Army -- such as Henry Berry Lowrie-- by hiding in the swamps. Eventually, a measure of hope began to seep into the community as William Tecumseh Sherman's army made its way toward North Carolina. While hiding in the swamps, some Robesonians operated as guerillas for the Union, sabotaged the efforts of the Confederacy, and sought retribution against their Confederate neighbors.

The King of Scuffletown

Henry Berry Lowrie organized a mixed-race outlaw group made up of two of his brothers, six cousins (two of whom were also his brothers-in-law), the brother-in-law of two of his cousins, in addition to a few others who were not related through kinship. The group committed two murders and were suspectd of a number of thefts and robberies. After a complicated series of accusations, counter-accusations, and incidents regarding thefts and conscription, Robeson County's Home Guard shot Henry Berry Lowrie's father and brother as the seventeen year-old youth watched from his hiding place.Evans, To Die Game, 3-18; and Dial and ELiades, The Only Land I Know, pp. 50-53. Shortly thereafter, Henry Berry Lowrie and his band stole a large stockpile of rifles intended for use by the local militia from the Lumberton courthouse and embarked on an eight-year period of revenge.

Lowrie's Band avenged the deaths of his father and brother by killing several of the men responsible, one of whom was the sheriff of the county. Adding to their notoriety, the band stole two safes (one of which belonged to the sheriff), plundered the plantation storage bins and smokehouses of local elites, and gave the spoils to the poor Robesonians who had suffered at the hands of local elites. In 1868, Lowrie and his band were outlawed and the reward for his capture climbed to $12,000-- second only to that offered for Jefferson Davis.Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, p. 67. Robeson's elites and the governor of North Carolina were so desperate that they required the aid of Federal troops and federal detectives in the attempt to apprehend North Carolina's most famous outlaw. These efforts proved useless. Lowrie enjoyed wide support and he and members of his band were infrequently seen at public events. Reports of the Lowrie band's daring-do received national coverage; their exploits were featured in the New York Times and in Harper's Magazine. Lowrie's last-known feat occurred on February 16, 1872 when he and his band lifted $20,000 worth of goods from a Lumberton, North Carolina store. They also managed to take the store's safe which contained approximately $22,000 in cash.Evans, To Die Game, pp. 72-73; 105-106; 154-155; and Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, p. 78.

Even so, the "Lowrie War" came at a terrible cost to the Robeson County community and to the Lowrie family.For further reading on the "Lowrie War," see Evans, To Die Game; Edward S. Magdol, "Against the Gentry: An Inquiry into a Southern Lower-Class Community and Culture, 1865-1870," Journal of Social History 6 (Spring 1973), pp. 259-83; Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, pp. 43-88; and Sider, Lumbee Indian Histories, pp. 157-176. After eight long years, Henry Berry Lowrie either accidentally killed himself or was forced to leave the land of his ancestors. All the members of the Lowrie band, save one, suffered violent deaths. One cousin and member of the gang was publically executed by the state of North Carolina. Lowrie and his band stole from the rich and gave to the poor while waging war against the county's Home Guard. But Henry Berry Lowrie may have best summed up the stakes: "Robeson County is the only land I know. I can hardly read, and do not know where to go if I leave these woods and swamps, where I was raised."Dial and Eliades, The Only Land I Know, p. 78. For all that the Robeson County community had had to endure, the war that Lowrie gang waged against the white supremacist Conservatives in North Carolina had far-reaching consequences: the mulatto community developed a sense of itself as unique-- possessed with a unique identity and history-- while Henry Berry Lowrie became a culture hero who to this day represents those boundaries that mark the Lumbee as a self-determining Indian people.Evans, To Die Game, pp. 251-253.

Building a Nation

North Carolina established its public education system in 1868. The following year, the state legislature approved a measure that provided separate schools for whites and blacks. Some Lumbee ancestors complied with the legislation and sent their children to Freedman's Bureau schools. Many formerly free people of color refused to enroll their children in schools for freed slaves. In Robeson County, this racialized impasse came to a halt when, in 1885, North Carolina formally recognized the formerly freeo people of color in Robeson County as "Croatan Indians." With state recognition, the Croatan Indians were able to petition for a school system for the exclusive use of tribal members where tribal members could exercise control over enrollment. That same year, the North Carolina General Assembly approved legislation which authorized a public school system for Indians. Within the year, each Indian settlement in the county established a school "blood committee" that determined students' racial eligibility. Moreover, in 1887, tribal members petitioned the state legislature once again, this time requesting the establishment of a normal school to train Indian teachers for the county's tribal schools. North Carolina granted permission, and tribal members raised the requisite funds, along with some state assistance that proved woefully inadequate. Several tribal leaders donated money and privately-held land to the tribe on which to build their schools but for the next decade, the Indians of Robeson County were unable to make much headway. In 1899, the first bill was introduced in Congress to appropriate funds to educate the Indian children of Robeson County. Another bill was introduced a decade later, H.R.19036, 61st Cong., 2d Sess., and yet another in 1911, S.3258, 62nd Cong., 1st Sess. In 1913, the House of Representatives Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing on S.3258 where the Senate sponsor of the bill reviewed the history of the Lumbee and concluded that they had "maintained their race integrity and their tribal characteristics."Sequentially, the series of bills are H.R.4009, 56th Cong., 1st Sess. (1888), H.R. 19036, 61st Cong., 2d Sess. (1910), and S. 3258, 62nd Cong., 1st Sess. (1911). In 1913, the House of Representatives Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing on S. 3258. The four bills are cited in "Testimony Before the Committee on Resources United States House of Representatives," in Legislative Hearing on H.R.898, "To provide for the recognition of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and for other purposes," April 1, 2004: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/archives/108/testimony/2004/arlindalocklear.pdf.

Robeson County 's Indian Normal School eventually evolved into Pembroke State University and later still, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. By century's end, the Indians of Robeson County established schools in eleven of their principle Indian settlements.Thomas Ross, American Indians in North Carolina (Southern Pines: Karo Hollow Press, 1999), pp. 115-116; 124-125.

Seeds of the Recognition Issue

By the first decade of the twentieth century, congressional legislation was introduced to change the Croatan name and to establish "a school for the Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina." Charles F. Pierce, Supervisor of Indian Schools, investigated the tribe's congressional petition, reporting favorably that "a large majority [were] at least three-fourths Indian" as well as law abiding, industrious, and "crazy on the subject of education." Pierce also believed that federal educational assistance would be beneficial, but opposed any such legislation since, in his words, "[a]t the present time it is the avowed policy of the government to require states having an Indian population to assume the burden and responsibility for their education, so far as is possible."Pierce is cited in Legislative Hearing on H.R.898: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/archives/108/testimony/2004/arlindalocklear.pdf. A later committee report undertaken in 1932 explicitly acknowledged that the federal bill of 1913 was intended to extend federal recognition on the same terms as the amended state law. Moreover, while the bill passed the Senate, but not the House, the chairman of the House committee also abrogated any assumption of direct educational responsibility to the Indians of Robeson County by the federal government since he felt that they were already eligible to attend Indian boarding schools; that the federal government was already meeting its responsibility to the Indians of Robeson County through Indian boarding schools such as Carlisle Indian Industrial School.See Rep. No. 826, House of Representatives, 68th Cong., 1st Sess.; also S.4595, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., a 1932 bill which referred to the 1913 state statute as its antecedent. See Legislative Hearing on H.R.898: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/archives/108/testimony/2004/arlindalocklear.pdf.

The next year, Special Indian Agent, O.M. McPherson, who investigated the tribe under the auspices of the U.S. Senate found that the Indians of Robeson County had already developed an extensive system of schools and a complex political organization to represent their interests. While he, like Pierce before him, noted that Robeson's Indians were eligible to attend federal Indian schools, he also doubted that these schools could meet their needs. Despite McPherson's recommendations, Congress decided not to act on the matter.O.M. McPherson, “Report on Condition and Tribal Rights of the Indians of Robeson and Adjoining Counties of North Carolina,” 63rd Cong., 3rd sess., 5 January 1915. S. Doc. 677.

The Indian New Deal

The Lumbee Act

The "Lumbee Act," or HR 4656, which recognized the Lumbee as a tribe of Native Americans was passed by the U.S. Senate on May 21, 1956, by the House on May 24, 1956, and signed by President Dwight David Eisenhower on June 7, 1956. With ratification of the Lumbee Act, congress designated the Indians of Robeson, Hoke, Scotland, and Cumberland counties as the "Lumbee Indians of North Carolina." In as much as HR 4656 recognized the Lumbee as Indians, the Lumbee Act was ratified during an era of federal termination policies and hostile legislation which proved equally devastating to other Native American nations as well. Thus, HR 4656 also stipulated that "[n]othing in this Act shall make such Indians eligible for any services performed by the United States for Indians because of their status as Indians." Despite the Lumbee Act's failure to gain federal services for the Lumbee, the Act served as the model for the 1968 Act which “recognized” the Tiwa Indians of Texas. With the failure of the federal government's termination policies, Congress granted full recognition to the Tiwa in 1987.“Testimony of Dr. Jack Campisi," S. 420, or http://www.lumbeetribe.com/hearings/s420.htm.

Klan Conflict

Known today in Robeson County as the "Battle of Hayes Pond," or "the Klan Rout," the rally wherein 50 Klansmen (not the planned 5,000) were forced to flee the tribal homeland of 500 armed Lumbees made national news. Before Cole had a chance to begin the Klan rally, the Lumbee suddenly appeared, fanned out across the highway, encircled the Klansmen, and opened fire. Four Klansmen were wounded in the first volley--none seriously-- while the remaining Klansmen panicked and fled. James W. "Catfish" Cole reportedly escaped through a nearby swamp, but was later apprehended, charged, and convicted for inciting to riot for which he served a sentence of two-years.For a comprehensive bibliography of citations specific to this series of events, see Glenn Ellen Starr, "Category: 35. The Ku Klux Klan routing of 1958," The Lumbee Indians: An Annotated Bibliography Supplement: http://linux.library.appstate.edu/lumbee/35/index.html. See cited primary source material as well.

Notes

Historical timeline of the Lumbee

1700s

1725 John Herbert, Commissioner of Indian Trade for the Wineau Factory publishes a map in 1725 and identifies enclaves of Cheraw, Pee Dee, Waccamaw, and Scavano Indians who continue to live on their traditional lands along the Pee Dee River at what is now the border of North Carolina and South Carolina, and near its tributary Drowning Creek in Robeson County, North Carolina.

1726-1739 The Cheraw disappear from the historical record. While some historians believe that they are absorbed by the Catawba, others contend that they amalgamate with other remnant Southeastern Siouan Piedmont groups in the largely uncharted region of present-day Robeson, Scotland, Moore, Hoke, and Cumberland counties. To the south, with the acceleration of the slave trade and decline of the deerskin trade, the influence of the powerful Catawba confederacy begins to wane. By the end of the 19th century, the Catawba will have been reduced to inhabiting a one square-mile reservation in South Carolina.

1754 A surveying party representing the interests of South Carolina land speculators lists a "mix'd crew" of some fifty families living on Drowning Creek without official patent to the land. A surveyor is shot on the Kersey farmstead in Bladen Creek, North Carolina.

1800s

1835-1852 Court dockets for Robeson County are replete with suits filed by Robeson County Indians who contest the ban on owning and using firearms.

1853 The North Carolina Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of North Carolina's ban on firearms with the conviction of Noel Locklear in the State v. Locklear for the illegal possession of firearms.

1861-1865 Well into the Civil War, North Carolina begins to forcibly conscript young Indian men from Robeson County through the auspices of the Robeson County's Home Guard. After the murder of his father and brother, Henry Berry Lowrie organizes a gang to fight the Confederate Home Guard.

1900s

1956 The U.S. Congress [recognizes name change] and recognizes the Lumbee as American Indians. Specific language in the Lumbee Act, however, denies the tribe the customary Indian financial benefits.

1958 Over five hundred armed Lumbees rout a group of protesting Ku Klux Klan members led by Wizard James W. "Catfish" Cole in a confrontation near Maxton, North Carolina. The incident receives national attention. One headline read, "Indians Rout The Klan." The event is remembered as the "Battle of Hayes Pond" and ends Klan intimidation of the Lumbee.

1971 The first Indian-owned bank in United States, the Lumbee Bank, is established in Pembroke, North Carolina.

1973 Henry Ward Oxendine, a Lumbee Indian, is the first Indian born in North Carolina to serve in the North Carolina House of Representatives.

1994 Glen Maynor is elected sheriff of Robeson County, and Joanne Locklear is elected Clerk of Court for Robeson County, the first Lumbees to hold these positions. In Georgia, Lumbee John Oxendine is elected statewide as Commmissioner of Insurance.

2000s

Famous Lumbees

Delano Cummings is the author of Moon Dash Warrior: The Story of an American Indian in Vietnam, a Marine from the Land of the Lumbee (Livermore, Me.: Signal Tree Pub., 1998). His memoir is a poignant account of his tours of duty as a Marine in Vietnam.

Adolph L. Dial was a historian and advocate for American Indian rights who spent 30 years as a professor of American History and American Indian Studies at Pembroke State University, North Carolina, and served as a North Carolina state senator and spokesperson for full federal recognition of the Lumbee. Dial is the author of The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee Indians and The Lumbee. Toward the end of his life, Dr. Dial was the recipient of the Henry Berry Lowry Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Lumbee community.

Arlinda Locklear is a veteran of Federal Indian law, having practiced in the field for twenty-five years. Locklear has represented tribes across the U.S. in federal and state courts on treaty claims to water and land, taxation disputes, reservation boundary issues and federal recognition of tribes. In the course of her career, she became the first Native American woman to argue a case, Solem v. Bartlett, to the Supreme Court. She successfully challenged the state of South Dakota's authority to prosecute a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe for on-reservation conduct, and as a lawyer for the Native American Rights Fund, Locklear supervised significant litigation of Native American issues, as well as the legislative work of the office. In 1985, Locklear appeared as lead counsel in the Supreme Court again when she represented the Oneida Indian Nation in Oneida Indian Nation v. County of Oneida. In that case, she formulated and argued the theory that tribes have a federal common law right to sue for possession of tribal land taken in violation of federal law. The Supreme Court adopted the argument, and the case became the seminal case in aboriginal land claims litigation, upon which all subsequent claims have been based.

Heather Locklear is purportedly of Lumbee descent, and has appeared in the TV series, Dynasty, T.J. Hooker, Melrose Place, and Spin City. Locklear has family in, and occasionally visits Robeson County, North Carolina.

Sean Locklear is a professional football player with the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League. Was the starting right tackle on the 2005-2006 Seahawks Super Bowl team. Is still currently listed on Depth Chart as starter at right tackle (6/1/05-NFL).

James Lowery (a.k.a. Anybody Killa) was raised in Detroit, Michigan and is one of the few rappers to have a lisp. Many fans say his speech impediment is an important part of his art. Lowery is noted for having Native American themes on his albums, including his hits Mud Face and Hatchet Warrior.

Malinda Maynor Lowery received her A.B. in History and Literature from Harvard University in 1995, an M.A. in Documentary Film and Video Production at Stanford University in 1997, and a PhD in History from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2005. In 2001, she co-produced the documentary, In the Light of Reverence, a film featuring three tribal nations, the Hopi, the Winnemem Wintu, and the Lakota Sioux, and their struggles to protect three sacred sites, Devil's Tower National Monument, the Four Corners in Arizona, and Mount Shasta. All three sacred sites are places of extraordinary beauty as well as impassioned controversy as Natives and non-Natives struggle to co-exist with very different ideas about how the land should be used. In 2006, Lowery became the first American Indian tenure-track professor at Harvard University, and is currently finishing a book about Lumbee identity and federal recognition in the first half of the twentieth century.

Henry Berry Lowrie was the Robeson County American Indian hero of the "Lowrie Wars" that took place during the Reconstruction era of the 1860s and 1870s. Lowrie and his guerilla band appropriated white Revolutionary doctrine to gain rights and freedoms that were being denied to American Indians in Robeson County, North Carolina. Indian perceptions of Reconstruction violence solidified the racial boundaries that had begun to take shape and harden during the Civil War era. The Lowrie gang received considerable support from the American Indian community. Critically, Lowrie and his guerilla band were popular among poor blacks and whites as well, since they believed that he best represented their interests to the elites of a racialized Southern society. Most importantly, the activities of the Lowrie gang radicalized the American Indian community. The post-Reconstruction rearticulation of a separate territory bounded by a web of wetlands that define Robeson County, along with an elaborate network of kinship ties was instrumental in the revitalized expression of Indian community. In an attempt to capture the elusive Lowrie gang, white incursions into Indian territory further highlighted the existence of a territorial and cultural borderland. Lowrie became a culture hero, representing those cultural and political boundaries that marked the Indians of Robeson County as a community of self-determining American Indian people. Henry Berry Lowrie is the protagonist of the outdoor Lumbee drama ["Strike at the Wind"].

Charly Lowry appeared as a contestant on the TV series "American Idol" in 2004.

John Oxendine is the Commmissioner of Insurance for the State of Georgia and one of the most popular Republican politicians in the state. Oxendine is of Lumbee descent through his father.

Jana (born Jana Sampson) brings a fresh outlook and exotic style to today’s pop music scene. In 2002, Jana won a Nammy (Native American Music Award) for Best Single for her remix of "Stairway To Heaven", and a Nammy for 2001 Best Pop Artist. In 2000, she was nominated for two Nammy awards and starred in the film Dream Weaver.

Kelvin Sampson is the former head coach of the University of Oklahoma and now the new head coach of the Indiana University men's basketball team. Sampson was born in the Lumbee community of Deep Branch, and attended Pembroke High School, Pembroke, North Carolina, and Pembroke State University before guiding the Sooners to an appearance in the Final Four of the men's NCAA basketball tournament in 2002.

Helen Maynor Scheirbeck was appointed by Congress to the (NMAI) Board of Directors, and continues to serve as NMAI’s Assistant Director of Public Programs. Scheirbeck received her B.A. in 1957 from Berea College (Kentucky) and her Ed. D in 1980 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Scheirbeck is the Human Resources Administrator for Save the Children Federation of the American Indian Programs, and has served as Chairwoman of the Indian Education Task Force, American Indian Policy Review Commission, U. S. Congress, as well as Director of the Office of Indian Affairs, U.S. Office of Education, Dept. of HEW, and as professional staff for the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights.

David E. Wilkins is Associate Professor of American Indian Studies, Political Science, and Law at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Wilkins received his PhD in Political Science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1990. His publications focus particularly on Federal Indian law, tribal government, and tribal sovereignty. Wilkins is the author of The Navajo Political Experience (2003); American Indian Politics and the American Political System (2002); Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law, co-authored with Tsianina Lomawaima (2001); Tribes, Treaties, and Constitutional Tribulations, co-authored with Vine Deloria, Jr. (1999); American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice (1997); and Dine' Bibeehaz'aanii: A Handbook of Navajo Government (1987).

Robert A. Williams Jr. is Professor of Law and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. Williams was named the first Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (2003-2004), having previously served as the Bennet Boskey Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of Law at Harvard. He is the author of The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest, Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800, and is co-author of Federal Indian Law: Cases and Materials. Williams has written numerous articles on Indian Law and indigenous peoples' rights, as well as several books, and is the director of the Tribal Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona. Williams has represented tribal groups before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, and served as co-counsel for Floyd Hicks in the United States Supreme Court case, Nevada v. Hicks (2001 term). Williams presently serves as Chief Justice of the Yavapai-Prescott Apache Tribe Court of Appeals and as Chief Justice for the Court of Appeals, Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation. Williams also serves as judge pro tempore for the Tohono O'odham Nation.

References

Primary Sources

Recognition

• Baker, Fred A. Report on Siouan Tribe of Indians in Robeson County, North Carolina. [National Archives and Records Administration RG 75. Entry 121. File no. 36208-1935-310 General Services].
• “Testimony of Dr. Jack Campisi Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on S. 420,” September 17, 2003. Washington, DC: http://www.lumbeetribe.com/hearings/s420.htm.
• McPherson, O.M. Report on Condition and Tribal Rights of the Indians of Robeson and Adjoining Counties of North Carolina. 63rd Cong., 3rd sess., 5 January 1915. S. Doc. 677.
• Merrell, James H. to Charlie Rose, 18 October 1989, in “U.S. Congress, House Committee on Natural Resources,” ‘’Report Together with Dissenting Views to Accompany H.R. 334, 103rd Cong., 1st Sess., 14 October 1993, H. Rpt. 290.
• Pierce, Julian, J. Hunt-Locklear, Jack Campisi, and Wesley White, ‘’The Lumbee Petition’’, (Pembroke, NC: Lumbee River Legal Services, 1987).
• Seltzer, Carl C. "A Report on the Racial Status of Certain People in Robeson County, North Carolina." 30 June 1936. [NARA. RG 75, Entry 616, Box 13-15, North Carolina].
• Swanton, John R. "Probable Identity of the 'Croatan' Indians." [National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. MS 4126].

Conflict with Klan

• "Bad medicine for the Klan: North Carolina Indians break up Kluxers’ anti-Indian meeting." Life 44 (27 Jan. 1958): 26-28.
• "Cole Says His Rights Violated." Greensboro Daily News, 20 Jan. 1958: A1.
• Craven, Charles. "The Robeson County Indian Uprising Against the KKK," The South Atlantic Quarterly LVII (1958): 433-442.
• "Lumbee Indians put Klansmen to rout in ‘uprising’." The Amerindian [American Indian Review] 6.3 (Jan.-Feb. 1958): [1]-2.
• "The Lumbees Ride Again." Greensboro Daily News, 20 Jan. 1958: 4A.
• Morrison, Julian. "Sheriff Seeks Klan Leader's Indictment: Cole Accused of Inciting Riot Involving Indians and Ku Klux." Greensboro Daily News, 20 Jan. 1958: A1-3.
• "‘The Law’ Treads Lightly to Avert Maxton Violence." Robesonian, 20 Jan. 1958: 1.
• Ryan, Ethel. "Indians who crushed rally were mature tribesmen." Greensboro Record, 21 Jan. 1958: A1.

Misc.

• McMillan, Hamilton. Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony: An Historical Sketch of the Attempts of Sir Walter Raleigh to Establish a Colony in Virginia, with the Traditions of an Indian Tribe in North Carolina. Indicating the Fate of the Colony of Englishmen Left on Roanoke Island in 1587. Wilson, NC: Advance Press, 1888.
• Thomas, Robert K. "A Report on Research of Lumbee Origins." Unpublished manuscript. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Archives, 1976.
• U.S. Bureau of the Census. The First Census of the U.S.: 1790. Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States: North Carolina. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908.
• U.S. Bureau of the Census. We the People: http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html
• U.S. Congress, Senate. Recognition as Siouan Indians of Lumber River of certain Indians in North Carolina. 73rd Cong., 2d sess., 23 January 1934. S.Rpt. 204.
• ______. Relating to Lumbee Indians of North Carolina. 84th Cong., 2nd sess., 16 May 1956. S. Rpt. 2012.
• U.S. Bureau of the Census, ‘’2000 Census of Population, Social and Economic Characteristics: North Carolina’’ (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2002).

Secondary Sources

• Anderson, Benedict . Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso; Revised edition, 1991.
• Anderson, Ryan K. "Lumbee Kinship, Community, and the Success of the Red Banks Mutual Association," American Indian Quarterly 23 (Spring, 1999): 39-58.
• Barth, Fredrik, ed. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969.
• Beaulieu, David L. "Curly Hair and Big Feet: Physical Anthropology and the Implementation of Land Allotment on the White Earth Chippewa Reservation." American Indian Quarterly 7: 281-313.
• Berry, Brewton. Almost White: A Study of Certain Racial Hybrids in the Eastern United States. New York, NY: MacMillan Company, 1963.
• Blu, Karen I. "'Reading Back' to Find Community: Lumbee Ethnohistory." In North American Indian Anthropology: Essays on Society and Culture, ed. by Raymond DeMallie and Alfonso Ortiz. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. 278-95.
• ______. The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
• ______. '"Where Do You Stay At?" Home Place and Community Among the Lumbee." In Senses of Place, ed. by Steven Feld and Keith Basso. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996. 197-227.
• Boyce, Douglas W. "Iroquoian Tribes of the Virginia-North Carolina Coastal Plain," in Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, vol. 15. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. 282-89.
• Brownwell, Margo S. "Note: Who Is An Indian? Searching For An Answer To the Question at the Core of Federal Indian Law." University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 34 (Fall-Winter 2001-2002): 275-320.
• Davis, Dave D. "A Case of Identity: Ethnogenesis of the New Houma Indians," Ethnohistory 48 (Summer 2001): 473-94.
• DeMarce, Virginia E. "Looking at Legends - Lumbee and Melungeon: Applied Genealogy and the Origins of Tri-Racial Isolate Settlements." National Genealogical Society Quarterly 81 (March 1993): 24-45.
• ______. "Verry Slitly Mixt': Tri-racial Isolate Families of the Upper South- A Genealogical Study," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 80 (March 1992): 5-35.
• Dial, Adolph L. ‘’The Lumbee (Indians of North America book series).’’ New York, NY: Chelsea House Publications, 1993.
• Dial, Adolph L. and David K. Eliades. The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee Indians. San Francisco, CA: Indian Historian Press, 1975.
• Dominguez, Virginia. White By Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.
• Evans, William McKee. To Die Game: The Story of the Lowry Band: Indian Guerillas of Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971.
• Feest, Christian F. "North Carolina Algonquians," in Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, vol. 15. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Insititution, 1978: 277-78,.
• Forbes, Jack D. Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
• Galloway, Patricia K. Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
• Garoutte, Eva M. Real Indian: Identity and the Survival of Native America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
• Hauptman, Lawrence M. "River Pilots and Swamp Guerillas: Pamunkee and Lumbee Unionists." In Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1995.
• Heinegg, Paul. Free African Americans oF Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina: From the Colonial Period to about 1820. Baltimore, MD: Clearfield, 2001. Available in its entirety at: [freeafricanamericans.com]
• Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. New York: Delacorte Press, 1969.
• Hudson, Charles M. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.
• Maynor, Malinda, “Native American Identity in the Segregated South: The Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina, 1872-1956,” ‘’PhD Dissertation’’. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2005.
• McCulloch, Anne M. and David E. Wilkins. '"Constructing' Nations Within States: The Quest for Federal Recognition by the Catawba and Lumbee Tribes." American Indian Quarterly 19 (Summer 1995): 361-89.
• McKinnon, Henry A. Jr. Historical Sketches of Robeson County. N.P.: Historic Robeson, Inc., 2001.
• Merrell, James H. The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
• Miller, Bruce G. Invisible Indigenes: The Politics of Nonrecognition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
• Nagel, Joane. "American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Politics and the Resurgence of Identity." American Sociological Review 60 (December 1995): 947-65.
• Norment, Mary C. The Lowrie History, As Acted in Part by Henry Berry Lowrie, the Great North Carolina Bandit. Weldon, NC: Harrell's Printing House, 1895.
• "North Carolina: Indian raid." Newsweek 51 (27 Jan. 1958): 27.
• Pascoe, Peggy. "Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America." Journal of American History 83 (June 1996): 44-69.
• Perdue, Theda. "Mixed Blood" Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003.
• Price, Edward T. "A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States." The Association of American Geographers. Annals 43 (June 1953): 138-155.
• “Raid by 500 Indians balks North Carolina Klan rally.” New York Times, January 19, 1958, p. 1.
• ______. "Mixed-blood Populations of Eastern United States as to Origins, Localization and Persistence. (Ph.D. diss.) University of California, Berkeley, 1950.
• Redding, Kent. Making Race, Making Power: North Carolina's Road to Disenfranchisement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
• Ross, Thomas. American Indians in North Carolina. Southern Pines: Karo Hollow Press, 1999.
• ______. “The Lumbees: Population Growth of a Non-reservation Indian Tribe,” in ‘’Cultural Geography of North American Indians,’’ eds. Thomas E. Ross and T.G. Moore. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987: 297-309.
• Saunt, Claudio. A New Order of Things : Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816. New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• ______. Black, White, and Indian : Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Seib, Rebecca S. Settlement Pattern Study of the Indians of Robeson County, NC, 1735-1787. Pembroke, NC: Lumbee Regional Development Association, 1983.
• Sider, Gerald M. Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity, and Indian Identity in the Southern United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• ______. "Lumbee Indian Cultural Nationalism and Ethnogenesis," Dialectical Anthropology 1 (January 1975): 161 - 172.
• Smith, Martin T. Archeology of Aboriginal Culture Change in the Interior Southeast: Depopulation During the Early Historic Period. Gainesville, FLA: University of Florida Press, 1987.
• Torbert, Benjamin. "Tracing Native American Language History through Consonant Cluster Reduction: The Case of Lumbee English" American Speech 76 (Winter 2001): 361-87.
• Usner, Daniel H. Jr. American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
• ______. Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy : The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
• Wilkins, David E. "Breaking Into the Intergovernmental Matrix: The Lumbee Tribe's Efforts to Secure Federal Acknowledgement." Publius 23 (Fall 1993): 123-42.

See also

• Melungeon
• Black (people)
• Mulatto
• Genealogical DNA test
• Passing#Race

External links

• [Lumbee Language and the Lumbee Indian Culture]
• [Lumbee Tribe]
• [The Lumbee Indians]
• ["Lumbee for Kids"]
• [Strike at the Wind Outdoor Drama]

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