BEING CATAWBA: the WORLD of SALLY NEW RIVER, 1746-1840 Brooke Michele Bauer a Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Unive
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
BEING CATAWBA: THE WORLD OF SALLY NEW RIVER, 1746-1840 Brooke Michele Bauer A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved by: Kathleen DuVal Theda Perdue Malinda Maynor-Lowery Brett H. Riggs Harry Watson © 2016 Brooke Michele Bauer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Brooke Michele Bauer: Being Catawba: The World of Sally New River, 1746-1840 (Under the direction of Kathleen DuVal and Theda Perdue) This dissertation analyzes a segment of the history of the Catawba Indian Nation of South Carolina by concentrating on how Catawba women in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries created, promoted, and preserved a Catawba identity through kinship, land ownership, and economic productivity. Catawba kinship, land, and pottery were and are the most important distinguishing attributes of being Catawba. Each of the three aspects are interconnected with land serving as the foundation upon which Catawba people formed a nation through their kinship connections and as a space where Catawba women collected clay for pottery. Whereas scholarship on the Catawbas has stressed dramatic transformation, focusing on the lives of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Catawba women reveals startling continuities in Catawba ways of being. This dissertation tells a story of Catawba women’s lived experiences and their adaptive responses to the immense change occurring in their world by focusing on their economic, political, and social relationships. iii In honor of the Catawba women of my family and in memory of my uncle, Wayne George. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this dissertation is due in large part to many special people who challenged and supported me along the way. I wish to express sincere thanks to my committee, Kathleen DuVal, Theda Perdue, Malinda Maynor-Lowery, Harry Watson, and Brett Riggs. Each provided encouraging comments and without their valuable insight this dissertation would not have been possible. I especially want to thank Kathleen DuVal and Theda Perdue who encouraged this project from the start. Kathleen invested an enormous amount of time and patience reading several drafts and correcting many grammatical errors. Theda encouraged me to apply to the History Department’s Graduate Program many years ago, and her careful reading and critique of this dissertation has improved it substantially. I want to thank a wonderful group of friends and colleagues at UNC who supported and helped me flesh out my argument. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to form unwavering friendships with Randi Byrd, Liz Ellis, and Chelsea Kolander, my Native sisters who bolstered me with their amazing humor and love. To Amy Locklear-Hertel, the director of the UNC American Indian Center, thank you for providing an accessible, friendly Native space on campus, a home away from home. The archival research that sustains this dissertation would not have been possible without the generous support of the UNC Department of History, the UNC Center for the Study of the American South, and the UNC Graduate School. I am grateful to the Newberry Library, the Smithsonian Institution, the William L. Clements Library, the American Philosophical Society, and the Davie Poplar Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution for funding that v enabled me to continue my research. In addition, I am thankful to the UNC Graduate School for awarding me the Royster Society of Fellows’ Sequoyah Dissertation Fellowship, which allowed me to dedicate a year to writing. I am also indebted to a number of archivists, curators, and librarians who helped me as I conducted research. I would like to thank Brent Burgin and Brittany Taylor-Driggers at the Native American Studies Center at the University of South Carolina Lancaster for their enthusiastic encouragement and generous assistance. I emailed Brent many times about obscure documents that I had trouble locating and he never failed to point me in the right direction. I want to thank Brian Dunnigan, Jayne Ptolemy, and Clayton Lewis at the William L. Clements Library, Candace Greene at the Smithsonian Institution, and Wanda Fowler at the Historical Center of York County for their help as I sifted through archival materials and material culture collections to gather evidence I needed to tell the story of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Catawba women. My family has been wonderfully supportive of my academic endeavors. In particular, I want to thank my mother JoAnn George Bauer, my father Lawrence Peter Bauer, Jr., my stepmother Beverly, and my children, Travis Tanner and Kacey Ussery. Their love and encouragement kept me on track. I want to thank the Catawba women of my family, past and present. The lives of my grandmothers, Sarah Jane Ayers Harris, Rachel “Wysie” George Brown, Edith Harris Brown, and Evelyn Brown George, inspired me to write about Catawba women. This dissertation would have been impossible without these wonderful women, their stories, and their valuable knowledge and skills about Catawba history and pottery. Finally, I want to extend a special thanks to my best friend and partner, Barry Hodges. Barry has been with me since I embarked on my journey at UNC, always pushing me to reach vi further and do more. He has listened patiently and thoughtfully to many paper presentations and several chapter drafts and offered useful and productive feedback. I would not have finished this dissertation without his constant encouragement and support. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………….x INTRODUCTION……….……………………………………………………………………….xi CHAPTER 1: HOW THE CATAWBAS BECAME A NATION, 1542 – 1750…..……………..1 The People Who Became the Catawbas……….………………………………………….2 Catawba Life Ways……………………………………………………………………....11 Catawba Belief System…………………………………………………………………..20 Catawba Towns of the 1750s…………………………………………………………….24 Catawba People…………………………………………………………………………..31 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….39 CHAPTER 2: CATAWBA KINSHIP, 1700 – 1820 …………………………………………..40 Ethnographic Evidence of a Matrilineal Kinship System………………………………..44 Sally New River………………………………………………………………………….51 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….57 CHAPTER 3: INDIFFERENT TO CHRISTIANITY, 1716 – 1822….….……………….…….59 Catawba Education………………………………………………………………………61 English Education………………………………………………………………………..63 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….80 CHAPTER 4: “STAY AT HOME,” 1700 – 1763 .……………………………………………..81 Crises in Catawba Territory……………………………………………………………...82 Disease………………………………………………………………………………….103 “Perish for Want”..……………………………………………………………………...110 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...114 CHAPTER 5: TRADING POTS, 1760 – 1820.……………………………………………….115 viii Making of Pots………………………………………………………………………….117 Catawba Women Go Trading Pots……………………………………………………..125 Sally’s Household………………………………………………………………………139 CHAPTER 6: CATAWBA LAND OWNERSHIP AND LEASING, 1750 – 1840..……….....143 Catawba Land Ownership………………………………………………………………144 Land Leasing System…………………………………………………………………...158 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...182 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………185 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………193 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: “A Map Describing the Situation of the several Nations of Indians between South Carolina and the Massisipi River; was Copyed from a Draught Drawn & Painted upon a Deer Skin by an Indian Cacique; and Presented to Francis Nicholson Esqr. Governor of South Carolina, 1721….….………………………………………………….7 Figure 2: Map by John Evans, 1759...……..……………………………………………………25 Figure 3: Nassaw town site.……………………………………………………………………..27 Figure 4: Sketch of Captain Redhead…………………………………………………………...35 Figure 5: Drawing by John White Plate 43, “Cooking in a Pot” ……………………………...117 Figure 6: Examples of pottery rim strips from Nassaw and Weyapee sites…………………...122 Figure 7: Examples of incised sherds from bowls recovered from the Nassaw and Weyapee Sites…………………………………………………………….122 Figure 8: Catawba pottery sherds from the Old Town site…………………………………….129 Figure 9: Variety of Catawba pottery forms at the late eighteenth-century Catawba town of New Town..…………………………………………………………129 Figure 10: Catawba bowl recovered from Sally New River’s home site at New Town……….130 Figure 11: A Hagler-head mold made by Evelyn Brown George in the 1990s………………..132 Figure 12: A portion of the 1764 Samuel Wyly map with Catawba towns highlighted……….157 Figure 13: One of James Spratt’s Catawba leases of 875 acres………………………………..178 x INTRODUCTION On an early spring day in 1796, one hundred Catawba Indians met in council at New Town to discuss urgent business regarding their land. Because Catawba politics dictated that issues relevant to the entire Nation required the consensus of all adult Catawbas, the council meeting probably transpired as follows. A headman told the men and women gathered at the meeting that just 500 acres of Catawba land remained. White South Carolinians, he reminded them, had taken a majority of their land. Within the remaining 500 acres stood three Catawba towns and a few smaller fields where Catawba women grew corn and beans. Because Catawba women controlled and managed both the agriculture and the daily running of the towns, their opinions were particularly important. The headman underscored the threat to Catawba land several times in his speech, causing a low murmur to circulate among his people. The anxious whispers of Catawba