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49-454: The meaning of the name Waccamaw is unknown. Francisco of Chicora , a 16th-century Indian man kidnapped by Spanish colonists, wrote it as Guacaya . The Waccamaw language was not recorded and remains unattested . The language likely belonged to the Siouan language family . English explorer John Lawson published a 143-word vocabulary of the possibly related Woccon language in 1709. People in

98-705: A council to oversee community issues. A school funded by Columbus County to serve Waccamaw children opened in 1934. At the time, public education was still racially segregated in the state. Before this, the Waccamaw had been required to send their children to schools for African Americans. North Carolina recognized the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe of North Carolina in 1971. The community is centered in Bladen and Columbus counties, North Carolina. They have unsuccessfully tried to gain federal recognition . They hold membership on

147-603: A separate school. The Croatan Indians of Samson County , now called the Coharie Intra-tribal Council, Inc. built their own schools and later still, developed their own school system. The Waccamaw-Siouan Tribe followed suit by founding the Doe Head School in 1885. Situated in the Buckhead Indian community, the school was open only sporadically. It closed in 1921, after the state had sent a black teacher to

196-565: Is in Bolton, North Carolina. According to the Waccamaw Siouan Indians, thousands of years ago, an immense meteor appeared in the night sky toward the southwest. Flaming to a brilliance of suns as it hurtled earthward, the meteor finally struck, burning deep within the earth. The waters of the surrounding swamps and rivers flowed into the crater and cooled it, creating the gem-blue, verdant green lake. Some historians contend that this story

245-424: Is now also an elected position. The tribe has an Elders Review Committee, which conducts monthly tribal meetings to inform and educate members about issues of importance to the tribe as a whole. The opinions and suggestions of tribal members are solicited during these meetings and are incorporated into the decision-making process. The tribal council employs a tribal administrator to handle the day-to-day operations of

294-503: Is the mid-20th century invention of James E. Alexander. Archeologist Martin T. Smith suggests that the 1521 Spanish expedition led by Francisco Girebillo likely encountered a Waccamaw village when they traveled inland from the Carolina coast along the Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers. Describing the inhabitants of the river valley as semi- nomadic , Girebillo noted that they relied on hunting and gathering, and limited agriculture. He wrote that

343-638: The Lumbee Fairmont High School in Fairmont, Robeson County ; or the Catawba Indian School in South Carolina . The Waccamaw Siouan Indians received state recognition in 1971 and organized as a nonprofit group, which forms its elected government. They are working on documentation to gain federal recognition. The tribe holds an annual cultural festival and powwow . This takes place on

392-635: The Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, based in Bolton, North Carolina . The Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe operates a HUD Native American Housing Assistance Project, which helps its members with housing rehabilitation, housing down payments, and emergency funding. They also operate a child day care center. According to the 2010 Census, the total Waccamaw Siouan population in Columbus and Bladen counties

441-720: The Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe , they are not federally recognized . They are headquartered in Bolton, North Carolina , in Columbus County , and also have members in Bladen County in southeastern North Carolina. In 1910, they organized as the Council of Wide Awake Indians . They founded a public school in 1933. They are not affiliated with the Waccamaw Indian People , a state-recognized tribe from South Carolina . The Waccamaw Siouan Indians also hold no affiliation with

490-590: The 19th century, Waccamaw Siouan children received no public school education. None existed in the South before the American Civil War. During Reconstruction , Republican -dominated legislatures established public schools, but legislators had to agree to racially segregated facilities to get them passed. Having been free people before the war, the Waccamaw Siouan did not want to enroll their children in school with

539-575: The Baptist), traditionally identified as Winyah Bay based on coordinates but more recently alternatively suggested as the Pee Dee River by linguist Blair A. Rudes . A crowd of curious natives gathered on the shore to watch the strangers. The natives fled when the Spanish approached in shallops , but two were caught, taken aboard a ship, given Spanish clothes, and returned ashore. The natives again swarmed

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588-621: The Carolinas, John Lederer in 1670 and John Lawson some thirty years later, referred to the Waccamaw in their travel narratives as an Eastern Siouan people. They were repeating information from others; neither visited the area of wetlands where some of the Waccamaw were beginning to seek refuge from colonial incursions. John Lawson had placed the Woccon a few miles to the south of the Tuscarora in his New Voyage to Carolina (1700). Settling around

637-580: The Jordan River (now the Santee River in South Carolina), one of his ships went aground. As the party went ashore, de Chicora immediately abandoned the Spanish and fled to rejoin his own people. He disappeared from the historical record. Researchers have worked to identify the provinces and tribes described by Chicora. They have analyzed phonetics of 16th-century Spanish, as well as the many languages of

686-611: The NC Commission of Indian Affairs as per NCGS 143B-407, and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization in 1977. Lumbee Legal Services, Inc., represents the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe in its administrative process for seeking federal recognition. In 2005 South Carolina recognized the Waccamaw Indian People , a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Conway, South Carolina . with an office in Aynor, South Carolina . Both organizations claim to descend from

735-787: The North American tribes in the area, to reach their conclusions. The location and ethnicity of the actual people referred to in Chicora's tall tales of Duhare has been debated; candidates have included Catawban, Guale , and Cusabo . In 2004 Blair Rudes asserted that other linguistic evidence in Martyr's account points to the Iroquoian Tuscarora tribe, and specifically their town on the Neuse River called Teyurhèhtè . He suggests, for example, that Old Tuscaroran Teeth-ha (king) corresponded with

784-534: The North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs as per NCGS 143B-407. The Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe is not federally recognized . Their congressional representative introduced a failed bill for federal recognition in 1948. Lumbee Legal Services, Inc., represents the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe in its administrative process for seeking federal recognition. The tribe is centered on the edge of Green Swamp, seven miles from Lake Waccamaw. Its headquarters

833-474: The Spanish explorers in the 16th century. Within the second decade of the 16th century, Francisco Gordillo and Pedro de Quexos captured and enslaved several Native Americans, and transported them to the island of Hispaniola where they had a base. Most died within two years, although they were supposed to have been returned to the mainland. One of the Native men kidnapped by the Spanish in 1521, Francisco de Chicora

882-435: The Waccamaw Siouan Indians and others were stripped of their political and civil rights . They could no longer vote, bear arms, or serve in the state militia. Local whites intensified harassment of the Waccamaw Siouan Indians after North Carolina ratified this discriminatory state constitution. Whites tended to classify them simply as black, rather than recognizing their cultural identification as Indian. Through much of

931-449: The Waccamaw Siouan Indians had become highly acculturated. They depended on European-style agriculture and established claims to land through individual farmsteads. In 1835, following Nat Turner's slave rebellion , North Carolina passed laws restricting the rights and movements of free blacks, who had previously been allowed to vote. Because Native Americans were classified equally as " Free people of color " and many were of mixed-race ,

980-505: The Waccamaw Siouan people, calling them the Woccon. In 1670, the German surveyor and physician John Lederer mentioned them in his Discoveries . By the beginning of the 17th century, the Woccon (Waccamaw), along with a number of Pee Dee River tribes, had been pushed north by a combination of Spanish and allied Cusabo Indian forces. Some of the earliest English travelers to the interior of

1029-568: The Waccamaw Sioux Indian Tribe of Farmers Union, an unrecognized tribe based in Clarkton, North Carolina. Waccamaw Siouan Indians live in St. James, Buckhead, and Council, with the Waccamaw Siouan tribal homeland situated on the edge of Green Swamp about 37 miles from Wilmington, North Carolina , seven miles from Lake Waccamaw , and four miles north of Bolton, North Carolina . In 1977,

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1078-516: The Waccamaw sought refuge in the wetland region situated on the edge of Green Swamp, near Lake Waccamaw . They settled four miles north of present-day Bolton, North Carolina , along what is still known as the "Old Indian Trail." State land deeds and other colonial records substantiate the oral traditions of the Waccamaw Siouan Indians and their claim to the Green Swamp region. Given their three-century-long historical experience of European contact,

1127-469: The area have built sedentary villages since at least 3,000 to 500 BP. Maize became a staple crop in the regions. Complex chiefdoms first arose in the area between 1150 to 1200 AD. Tribes neighboring the Waccamaw included the Sewees , Santees , Sampits (Sampa), Winyahs , and Pedees . According to ethnographer John R. Swanton , the Waccamaw may have been one of the first mainland groups of Natives visited by

1176-586: The arrival of settlers and their diseases in the 16th century resulted in devastating population loss and dispersal. Anthropologist James Mooney estimated the 1600 population of the "Waccamaw, Winyaw, Hook, &c" at 900 people, while the 1715 census records only one remaining Waccamaw village with a total population of 106 people, 36 of them men. In 1910, the Waccamaw Siouan Indians , one of eight state-recognized groups in North Carolina , organized

1225-446: The beach, seeing their comrades' return and changed appearance as a wondrous sign, since they had worn only buckskins before. The chief ordered 50 of his subjects to bring food for the Spanish. Once ashore, the Spanish were given presents and a guided tour for several days. They claimed the land for their king, and invited the natives aboard to see their ships. Gordillo had been ordered by de Ayllón to cultivate friendly relations with

1274-469: The captive natives to be free, and ordered them returned to the mainland, but such a trip never took place, as it was considered too costly. As recounted by Peter Martyr the court chronicler, according to colonial reports, most of the natives died within two years; many wandered the streets of Santo Domingo as vagrants, and few survived. One who survived was baptized Francisco de Chicora; he learned Spanish and worked for Ayllón. Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón took

1323-476: The children of freedmen . The public schools had only two classifications: white and all other (black and mulatto , the term for mixed-race or "people of color," usually referring to people of African and European ancestry, the most common mixture). Late in the 19th century, the Croatan Indians of Robeson County (now called Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina ) gained state-recognition as tribes and support for

1372-488: The chronicler Peter Martyr and told him much about his people. Martyr combined this information with accounts by explorers and recorded it as the "Testimony of Francisco de Chicora ," published with his seventh Decade in 1525. In 1526 Chicora accompanied Ayllón on a major expedition to North America with 600 colonists. After they struck land at the Santee River and the party went ashore, Chicora escaped and returned to his people. The Spanish had made repeated expeditions to

1421-457: The colonists as a result. In 1755, John Evans noted in his journal that Cherokee and Natchez warriors killed some Waccamaw and Pedee "in the white people’s settlements." The surviving Waccamaw grew corn for their own use. In the later 19th century, they cultivated tobacco and cotton as commodity crops, on a small scale, as did yeomen among the neighboring African-American freedmen and European-Americans . Waccamaw Siouan people in

1470-589: The confluence of the Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers, this amalgam of tribes had fragmented by 1705; a group of Woccon who moved farther north to the Lower Neuse River and Contentnea Creek. The first written mention of the Woccon (or Waccamaw) by English colonials was recorded in 1712. The South Carolina Colony tried to persuade the Waccamaw, along with the Cape Fear Indians , to join James Moore, son of

1519-931: The early 18th century, the Cheraw , a related Siouan people of the Southeastern Piedmont, tried to recruit the Waccamaw to support the Yamasee and other tribes against English colonists during the Yamasee War in 1715. The Cheraw made peace with the English. The English colonists founded a trading post in Euaunee, "the Great Bluff," in 1716. The Waccamaw engaged in a brief war against the South Carolina colony in 1720, and 60 Waccamaw men, women, and children were either killed or captured by

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1568-419: The engaging young Indian to Spain and presented him to the royal court , where he told fantastical tales about his homeland of Chicora , and the neighboring provinces of what is now the Carolinas. "Chicora" (the name the Spanish gave to the area) was evidently one of several Siouan-speaking territories subject to the chief Datha of Duahe (also recorded in Spanish as Duhare ). Francisco de Chicora described

1617-461: The first Europeans to reach the area. From analysis of the account by Peter Martyr , court chronicler, the ethnographer John R. Swanton believed that Chicora was from a Catawban group. In Hispaniola , where he and the other captives were taken, Chicora learned Spanish, was baptized a Catholic, and worked for Lucas Vasquez de Ayllón, a colonial official. Most of the natives died within two years. Accompanying Ayllón to Spain, de Chicora met with

1666-585: The former British colonial governor of South Carolina , in his expedition against the Tuscarora in the Tuscarora War . By the second decade of the 18th century, many Waccamaw, also known as the Waccommassus, were located one hundred miles northeast of Charleston, South Carolina . In 1749, a war broke out between the Waccamaw and South Carolina Colony . After the Waccamaw-South Carolina War,

1715-527: The historic Waccamaw people. The Waccamaw Sioux Indian Tribe of Farmers Union is an unrecognized tribe based in Clarkton, North Carolina, that incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 2001. Francisco of Chicora Francisco de Chicora was the baptismal name given to a Native American kidnapped in 1521, along with 70 others, from near Winyah Bay by Spanish explorer Francisco Gordillo and slave trader Pedro de Quexos, based in Santo Domingo and

1764-556: The island of Lucayoneque he fell in with a caravel commanded by the slave raider Pedro de Quexos (Pedro de Quejo), who was trying to capture Arawak to sell as slaves, without success. Quexos happened to be a relative of Gordillo's pilot Alonzo Fernandez Sotil, and decided to join Gordilla's expedition, and in June 1521 the two struck land at what they called the River of San Juan Bautista (St. John

1813-458: The late 19th century in North Carolina farmed diverse crops on inherited lands, but agriculture was depressed. They increasingly turned to wage labor by the end of the century. Men collected turpentine from pine trees to supplement their income, while women grew cash crops, including tobacco and cotton, and /or worked as domestic laborers and farm hands. While the Waccamaw were never populous,

1862-478: The latter also representing immigration. There was a 7% increase in the black population, and a 0.6% decrease in the white population. The tribe is governed by the Waccamaw Siouan Tribal Council, Inc., consisting of six members who are elected by the tribal membership, with staggered terms of one to three years. The Tribal Chief's position, formerly inherited or handed down in personal appointment,

1911-690: The name "Datha", which he says may have been a title rather than proper name. He also notes close similarities between accounts of a religious ceremony as recounted by Francisco de Chicora, and one among the Tuscarora recounted by a European in the early eighteenth century. Other sources, such as Oviedo, Navarrete, Barcia, and Documentos Ineditos list additional provinces derived from Francisco de Chicora, some of which have been tentatively identified by Swanton and other researchers: Waccamaw Siouan Indians The Waccamaw Siouan Indians are one of eight state-recognized tribes in North Carolina . Also known as

1960-666: The people of Duhare as "white" and having "blond hair to the heels", and told of a gigantic Indian king called Datha who ruled a race of giants and of another race of men who grew long tails. Chicora met the court chronicler, Italian historian Peter Martyr, and recounted to him much about the customs of his people in Chicora and about the neighboring provinces. After returning to the Caribbean, in 1526 Ayllón led an expedition to North America with three ships and 600 colonists, bringing de Chicora with him. After striking land at what Ayllón named

2009-417: The people practiced mortuary customs "peculiar" to them, but failed to describe their distinctive practices in any detail. Francisco Gordillo and Pedro de Quexos captured and enslaved several Native Americans in 1521, and shipped them to Hispaniola , which the Spanish were colonizing. One of the men became known as Francisco de Chicora . Francisco identified more than twenty indigenous peoples who lived in

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2058-480: The people to prepare for later colonization. De Quexos, eager for slaves, persuaded him to trick the natives; the Spaniards suddenly raised anchor and set sail for Santo Domingo with 70 of the natives still aboard, including the man who would be named Francisco. When they arrived, Ayllón condemned the leaders for their treachery. He took the matter before a commission headed by Diego Columbus . The commission declared

2107-481: The peoples who became known as the Waccamaw and the Cape Fear Indians , respectively. European contact decimated the Waccamaw. Having no natural immunity to endemic Eurasian infectious diseases, such as smallpox and measles , the Waccamaw, like many southeastern Native peoples, had high mortality rates from the new diseases. The 1715 Carolina colonial census listed their population as 610 total, with 210 men. The 1720 census recorded that they had 100 warriors. By

2156-588: The school, and the community asked the teacher to leave. The first county-supported Indian school open to Waccamaw Siouans was called the "Wide Awake School." The school was built in 1933 in the Buckhead community in Bladen County . Classes were taught by Welton Lowry (Lumbee). Waccamaw Siouan students who wanted to attend high school among self-identified Indians went to the Coharie Intra-tribal Council 's community's East Carolina High School in Clinton, North Carolina ;

2205-569: The southeastern part of what is now the United States, where they explored areas around the Santee River in present-day South Carolina and Winyah Bay and other areas. Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón , oidor (judge) of the royal Audencia of Santa Domingo, commissioned Francisco Gordillo to make an expedition to the continent in 1520. Gordillo sailed north from Hispaniola through the Bahamas , where near

2254-494: The territory of present-day South Carolina, among which he mentioned the "Chicora" and the "Duhare," whose tribal territories comprised the northernmost regions. Anthropologist John R. Swanton believed that these nations included the Waccamaw and the Cape Fear Indians . Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón returned to the area in 1526. About 150 years later, the Englishman William Hilton recorded his encounter with ancestors of

2303-405: The tribe, with an annual budget of approximately $ 1 million. The administrator supervises the management of tribal grant programs and provides a monthly reporting of the status of grant activities to local, state, and federal agencies, private donors, the tribal council, and tribal members. The Waccamaw Siouan Indians were recognized by the state of North Carolina in 1971, and holds membership on

2352-527: Was 1,896 (1,025 and 331, respectively). This represents 2.7% of the total combined Native American population of North Carolina . Current tribal enrollment consists of 2,594 members. Between 1980 and 2000, the two-county area experienced a small overall population increase of 6.7% compared with a 37% rate of growth for North Carolina . The growth in the two counties was mostly among the Native American and Hispanic populations—61% and 295%, respectively,

2401-405: Was baptized and learned Spanish. He worked for Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón . The explorer took him to Spain. Chicora told the court chronicler Peter Martyr about more than 20 Indigenous peoples who lived in present-day South Carolina, among which he mentioned the " Chicora " and the "Duhare". Their tribal territories comprised the northernmost regions. Swanton believed that Chicora was referring to

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