The Cape Fear Indians were a small, coastal tribe of Native Americans who lived on the

Cape Fear River The Cape Fear River is a blackwater river in east-central North Carolina. It flows into the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Fear, from which it takes its name. The river is formed at the confluence of the Haw River and the Deep River in the town of ...

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

(now Carolina Beach State Park).

Name and language

The autonym of the Cape Fear Indians may have been Daw-hee. Their name for the area was Chicora. Of their villages, only one, Necoes, is known by name. The colonists noted Necoes as about 20 miles from the mouth of the Cape Fear River, in present-day Brunswick County.Swanton, John R. (1952; reprinted 2003). ''The Indian Tribes of North America'', p. 75. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company. Their language is unknown and may have been a Siouan language.

History

Smallpox spread from Spanish colonies in Florida to the Carolinas in the 16th century. The population of the Cape Fear Indians was estimated to be 1,000 in 1600. A colonial

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

in 1715 recorded that they numbered 206. British colonist William Hilton observed 100 Indians at Cape Fear in 1662. One Indian individual sold to Hilton Cape Fear River and adjacent lands. In 1664 the settlement called Charles Towne was founded, but it was abandoned in 1667 after war broke out between the Cape Fear Indians and the settlers over British slavery of Indians. The second Charles Towne was founded near Cape Fear lands in 1670.;Rudes, Blumer, and May 308 Some Cape Fear Indians fought with their Catawba allies under Colonel John Barnwell against the Tuscarora in 1712. When the Tuscarora War broke out in North Carolina in 1711, South Carolina tribes joined in the fighting. In 1712, Cape Fear warriors and the Saraw, Saxapahaw, Winyah, and Pedee served in British Captain John Bull's company to fight alongside the British against the Tuscarora and helped defeat them. As a result, most of the Tuscarora left the area and migrated north, reaching present-day New York and Ontario to join the related Haudenosaunee Confederacy of

Iroquois The Iroquois ( ), also known as the Five Nations, and later as the Six Nations from 1722 onwards; alternatively referred to by the Endonym and exonym, endonym Haudenosaunee ( ; ) are an Iroquoian languages, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Ind ...

tribes. The Cape Fear Indians and the Winyah people migrated from their coastal villages up the Pee Dee River adjacent to a trading post the British founded in 1716.Rudes, Blumer, and May 310 They eventually settled inland from Charleston in what is now known as Williamsburg County, South Carolina. In May 1749 provision was made by the Governor in Council to render protection to them through supplying their representatives with fifty pounds of bullets and twenty-five pounds of powder. There had previously been complaints that the Cape Fear were being abused and driven from nearby hunting lands by neighboring Europeans. It was ruled that they were a peaceable people and that their rights to hunt were protected by the government. Anthropologist John R. Swanton wrote, "In 1808 White neighbors remembered when as many as 30 Pedee and Cape Fear Indians lived in their old territories," but by this time "the Pedee and Cape Fear tribes were represented by one half-blood woman."Sawnton p. 97

Notes

References

* * * {{authority control Native American history of North Carolina Native American history of South Carolina Native American tribes in North Carolina Native American tribes in South Carolina Cape Fear (region)