The Croatan were a small Native American

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

living in the coastal areas of what is now

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 ...

. They might have been a branch of the larger Roanoke people or allied with them. The Croatan lived in current

Dare County Dare County is the easternmost County (United States), county in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 36,915. Its county seat is Manteo, North Carolina, Manteo. Dare County is i ...

, an area encompassing the Alligator River,

Croatan Sound Croatan Sound is an inlet in Dare County, North Carolina. It connects Pamlico Sound with Albemarle Sound, and is bordered to the east by Roanoke Island; Roanoke Sound is on the other side of the island. Its name comes from the Croatan The ...

Roanoke Island Roanoke Island () is an island in Dare County, bordered by the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was named after the historical Roanoke, a Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English colonizat ...

Ocracoke Island Ocracoke ( )
, from the North Carolina Collection website at the

, and parts of the

Outer Banks The Outer Banks (frequently abbreviated OBX) are a string of barrier islands and spits off the coast of North Carolina and southeastern Virginia, on the east coast of the United States. They line most of the North Carolina coastline, separatin ...

, including

Hatteras Island Hatteras Island (historically Croatoan Island, sometimes referred to as Hatorask) is a barrier island located off the North Carolina coast. Dividing the Atlantic Ocean and the Pamlico Sound, it runs parallel to the coast, forming a bend at Ca ...

. The Croatan people who exist today live predominantly in

Cumberland Cumberland ( ) is an area of North West England which was historically a county. The county was bordered by Northumberland to the north-east, County Durham to the east, Westmorland to the south-east, Lancashire to the south, and the Scottish ...

, Sampson, and Harnett counties. The chiefs, called werowances ("he who is rich"), each controlled up to 18 towns. The greatest were able to muster 700 or 800 fighting men. Chiefs and their families were held in great status and received respect, but they were not all-powerful. To pursue a collective goal, chiefs had to convince their followers that the action would be in the tribe's best interest. The chief was responsible for spreading wealth to his tribe, and, if unable to do so, they received less respect, or even lost respect entirely. Phillip W. Evans, a linguist, suggested the word ''Croatan'' means "council town" or "talk town," which likely indicates the residence of an important leader and a place where councils were held.

Beliefs

According to

Thomas Harriot Thomas Harriot (; – 2 July 1621), also spelled Harriott, Hariot or Heriot, was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer and translator to whom the theory of refraction is attributed. Thomas Harriot was also recognized for his con ...

, the Native Americans living in coastal North Carolina believed there was "one only chief and great God, which has been from all eternity" and which made petty gods "to be used in the creation and government to follow." They believed in the immortality of the soul. Upon death, the soul either enters heaven to live with the gods or goes to a place near the setting sun called Popogusso, to burn for eternity in a huge pit of fire. The concepts of heaven and hell were impressed upon the common people to encourage them to respect leaders and live a life that would produce rewards in the afterlife. Conjurors and priests were distinctive spiritual leaders. Priests were chosen for their knowledge and wisdom and were leaders of the organized religion. Conjurors, on the other hand, were chosen for their magical abilities. Conjurors were thought to have powers from a personal connection with a supernatural being (mostly spirits from the animal world).

European colonization

It is known that the arrival of English Settlers upset some pre-existing tribal relationships. The

Algonquian people The Algonquians are one of the most populous and widespread North American indigenous American groups, consisting of the peoples who speak Algonquian languages. They historically were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and in the interior reg ...

advocated cooperation, while others (the

Yamasee The Yamasees (also spelled Yamassees, Yemasees or Yemassees) were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans who lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida. ...

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

and

Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is ...

, for example) resisted this approach. Later, this conflict between tribes and settlers would lead to the

Yamasee War The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee, who were supported by a number of allied Native Americans in ...

. Tribes that maintained mutually beneficial contact with the settlers gained power through their access to and control of European trade goods. While the English may have held great military superiority over the Carolina Algonquians, the Native Americans' control over food and natural resources was a much more decisive factor in the conflict with early settlers. Despite the varying relationships among tribes, the Roanoke and Croatan were believed to have been on good terms with English colonists of the

Roanoke Colony The Roanoke Colony ( ) refers to two attempts by Sir Walter Raleigh to found the first permanent English settlement in North America. The first colony was established at Roanoke Island in 1585 as a military outpost, and was evacuated in 1586. ...

. Wanchese, the last leader of the Roanoke, accompanied the English on a trip to England, although he was distrustful of the English. In 1586, Wanchese finally severed his former good relations with the English, leaving Chief Manteo as the colonists' sole native ally.

The Lost Colony

Some of the survivors of the Lost Colony of Roanoke may have joined the Croatan. Governor White finally reached

on August 18, 1590, three years after he had last seen them there, but he found his colony had been long deserted. The buildings had collapsed and "the houses

ere Ere or ERE may refer to: * ''Environmental and Resource Economics'', a peer-reviewed academic journal * ERE Informatique, one of the first French video game companies * Ere language, an Austronesian language * Ebi Ere (born 1981), American-Nigeria ...

taken down." The few clues about the colonists' whereabouts included the letters "CROATOAN" carved into a tree. Croatoan was the name of a nearby island (likely modern-day

) in addition to the local tribe of Native Americans. Roanoke Island was not originally the planned location for the colony and the idea of moving elsewhere had been discussed. Before the Governor's departure, he and the colonists had agreed that a message would be carved into a tree if they had moved and would include an image of a

Maltese Cross The Maltese cross is a cross symbol, consisting of four " V" or arrowhead shaped concave quadrilaterals converging at a central vertex at right angles, two tips pointing outward symmetrically. It is a heraldic cross variant which develope ...

if the decision was made by force. White found no such cross and was hopeful that his family was still alive.

Speculation of the fate of the "Lost Colony"

Based on legend, some

Lumbee The Lumbee, also known as People of the Dark Water, are a mixed-race community primarily located in Robeson County, North Carolina, which claims to be descended from myriad Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands who once inhabited th ...

s, based in

, self-identified as descendants of the Croatan and survivors of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. For more than a hundred years, historians and other scholars have been examining the question of Lumbee origin. Although there have been many explanations and conjectures, two theories persist. In 1885, Hamilton McMillan, a local historian and state legislator, proposed the "Lost Colony" theory. Based upon oral tradition among the Lumbees and what he deemed as strong circumstantial evidence, McMillan posited a connection between the Lumbees and the early English colonists who settled on Roanoke Island in 1587 and the Algonquian tribes (Croatan included) who inhabited coastal North Carolina at the same time. McMillan's hypothesis, which was also supported by the historian Stephen Weeks, contends that the colonists migrated with the Indians toward the interior of North Carolina and by 1650 had settled along the banks of the Lumber River. It is suggested the present-day Lumbees are the descendants of these two groups. Other scholars believe the Lumbees to be descended from an eastern Siouan group called the Cheraws. During the 17th and 18th centuries, several Siouan-speaking tribes occupied southeastern North Carolina. John R. Swanton, a pioneering

ethnologist Ethnology (from the , meaning 'nation') is an academic field and discipline that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). Scien ...

at the

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, wrote in 1938 that the Lumbees were probably of Cheraw descent, but were also genealogically influenced by other Siouan tribes in the area. Contemporary historians such as James Merrell and William Sturtevant confirm this theory by suggesting that the Cheraws, along with survivors of other tribes whose populations had been devastated by warfare and disease, found refuge from both aggressive settlers and hostile tribes in the Robeson County swamps in eastern North Carolina.Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Houghton Mifflin
/ref> In 1914, when Special Indian Agent O.M. McPherson was reporting on the rights of various Indian groups, he published a list of names of the Lost Colony. Numerous names on the list were typical Indian names in the North Carolina counties of Robeson and Sampson, at the time of his report. Many of the surnames included were that of surviving Croatan Indians. Late twentieth-century research has demonstrated that among surnames established as Lumbee ancestors were numerous mixed-race

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

s free in

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before the

American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...

and their descendants who migrated to Virginia and North Carolina frontiers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These "free people of color" were mostly descendants of European men and African women who worked and lived together in colonial Virginia. These connections have been traced for numerous individuals and families through court records, land deeds, and other existing historical documents. In Robeson County, they may have intermarried with Native American survivors and acculturated as Native Americans.

Research

Researchers from the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

, United Kingdom, have also been excavating on Hatteras Island in conjunction with the Croatoan Archaeological Society. Roberta Estes founded the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research which excavated English artifacts within the territory of the former Croatan tribe. The artifacts may also be evidence of trade with the tribe or of Natives finding them at the former colony site. The center conducted the Lost Colony DNA Project to try to determine if there are European lines among Croatan descendants. However, no bones from the Lost Colony have been found to sequence DNA, and, as of 2019, the project had not identified any living descendants.

Contacts with Europeans before colonizations and origin of Croatan

The American-English writer and researcher John Lawson (1674 – 1711) in his book from 1709, "A New Voyage to Carolina", noted that among the Croatan Indians of that time in North Carolina there was a legend about a shipwreck and the arrival of white people who stayed to live with them. However, the appearance of white-skinned people, which he also observed, turns the legend into truth. Among other things, Lawson explores the remains of a fort built for Sir Walter Raleigh's colonists in the era after 1580. A farther Confirmation of this we have from the ''Hatteras Indians,'' who either then lived on ''Ronoak''-Island, or much frequented it. These tell us, that several of their Ancestors were white People, and could talk in a Book, as we do; the Truth of which is confirm’d by gray Eyes being found frequently amongst these ''Indians,'' and no others.

Possible Croatian connections

Josip Cuculić, a Dubrovnik immigrant to the USA, has researched the appearance of the Croatan Indians in America. He has noticed a similarity between many Croatan and Croatian words.

19th century

Historian Malinda Maynor (

) wrote that, in 1890, a group of about 100 people who self-identified as Croatan descendants, or Lumbees, left Robeson County, North Carolina, for southern Georgia. By building a church and a school for their people outside of the influence of publicly funded or pre-existing buildings in the area, they established an identity for themselves that subverted the racial barriers of the time which, locally prior to 1890, had operated under a very clear distinction between "black" and "white." This group, instead, considered themselves to be "Indians." They headed back to Bulloch County where they could keep their people together as "Indians." They used the segregation of Jim Crow South to develop themselves as an entire community. In 1910, the North Carolina state legislature renamed the Croatan Indians in North Carolina to "Cherokee." A historical marker placed by the state of

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states: "In 1870 a group of Croatan Indians migrated from their homes in Robeson County North Carolina, following the turpentine industry to southeast Georgia. Eventually, many of the Croatans became tenant farmers for the Adabelle Trading Company, growing cotton and tobacco. The Croatan community established the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Adabelle, as well as a school and a nearby cemetery. After the collapse of the Adabelle Trading Company, the Croatans faced both economic hardship and social injustice. As a result, most members of the community returned to North Carolina by 1920."

State-recognized tribes

The North Carolina state legislature recognized the Croatan Indians of Robeson County and the Croatan Indians of Sampson County in 1911. They were also granted the right of "Indians and their descendants shall have separate school for their children, school committees of their own race, and shall also have the right to choose their own teachers based upon the general assembly of North Carolina. Today, these two groups are

state-recognized tribes State-recognized tribes in the United States are Native American tribes or heritage groups that do not meet the criteria for federally recognized Indian tribes but have been recognized by state government through laws, governor's executive orders ...

, known as the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and the Coharie Intra-tribal Council, Inc., respectively.

Unrecognized groups

The Croatan Indian Tribe of South Carolina, an unrecognized organization, claims to descend from Croatan people.

Notable people

* Manteo, ambassador and mediator; disappeared after 1587.

Notes

References

* K.I. Blu: "Lumbee", ''Handbook of North American Indians'', vol. 14: 278-295, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004 * T. Hariot, J. White, J. Lawson: ''A vocabulary of Roanoke'', vol. 13, Merchantville: Evolution Publishing, 1999 * Th. Ross: ''American Indians in North Carolina'', South Pines, NC: Karo Hollow Press, 1999 * G.M. Sider: ''Lumbee Indian histories'', vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 * S.B. Weeks: ''The lost colony of Roanoke, its fate and survival'', New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1891 * J.R. Swanton: "Probable Identity of the Croatan Indians." U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, 1933 * J. Henderson: "The Croatan Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina", U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, 1923 *K.O. Kupperman: "Roanoke, the Abandoned Colony", Rowman and Littlefield, 1984 {{authority control Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands Algonquian ethnonyms Algonquian peoples Cumberland County, North Carolina Dare County, North Carolina Extinct Native American tribes Harnett County, North Carolina Native American history of North Carolina Native American tribes in North Carolina Pre-statehood history of North Carolina Sampson County, North Carolina