In history textbooks, maps that accompanied a chapter on the Fall of Rome show long, meandering arrows depicting the routes of generations of various Germanic tribes moving slowly across Europe and the western Mediterranean. The explosive power of the Huns moving across the steppes of Russia and Ukraine may have provided added speed to these journeys, but the crumbling Western Roman Empire offered ample territories in which to rule and settle.

Just as the fifth-century era of famine, epidemics, and invasion saw tribes shift from region to region in the Old World, so too did the proto-colonial period in eastern North America. Historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists have recorded such movements — and the all-too-common finality of tribal extinction.

For example, as late as the 19th century, accounts document that most of North Carolina’s Tuscarora departed Bertie County to join their Iroquoian cousins in New York state.

What Happened to Carolina Algonquian-Speaking Peoples After English Exploration and Colonization?

Barrier islands protected the Carolina Sounds, providing land and sea seasonal food for the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the coast. Unfortunately for them, this coast also attracted the earliest English exploration and colonization, and both activities brought often violent political upheaval, subsequently reduced food supplies, and virulent pandemics.

On the north side of Albemarle Sound, the Choanoke tribe, which Lane recorded as the largest he visited in 1586, had by 1640 so diminished that the remnant had moved from the west bank of the Chowan River to the eastern bank, abandoning their homeland to aggressive ‘Mangoac’ Tuscaroras.

The reduced Weapemeocs, in turn, quit the lower Chowan valley to survive for generations in a small area on the Yeopim River.

Tribal Movements on the Albemarle-Roanoke-Croatan Sounds

Similar tribal movements took place to the south, on the Albemarle-Roanoke-Croatan sounds, though these are poorly recorded. Tracing name references on sixteenth- to eighteenth-century maps, however, does provide sufficient clues to base a coherent hypothesis.

Roanoke Tribal Population in Dasemunkepeuc After John White’s Arrival

When John White arrived in 1587, the Roanoke tribal population in Dasemunkepeuc was sufficient to raise harvestable crops there, but not enough to maintain the village on Roanoke Island. After a small war band killed the settler George Howe, the Roanokes abandoned Dasemunkepeuc.

Almost immediately, Croatoan families came for the crops, where they were mistakenly attacked by White’s soldiers. There is no record of the Roanokes ever returning to the area and no record of the Croatoans departing Dasemunkepeuc.

Moreover, before his return to England, Governor White had recognized Manteo of the Croatoan tribe as “Lord of Roanoke and Dasemunkepeuc,” the two areas abandoned by the Roanokes.

Croatoan Appearances on Maps of Carolina

Less than twenty years after an Indian “emperor” guided Virginia traders to Old Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island, the name ‘Croatan’ appears on numerous maps of Carolina: the 1671 First Lords Proprietors Map and Moxon’s map and on Speed’s 1676 map as all the mainland east of Alligator River.

But on the Thames School cartographers’1684 map, on Maule’s 1718 MS survey of Roanoke, and on the 1733 Moseley map, the Croatan area is confined on the mainland northwest of the un-eroded north end of Roanoke Island. This is repeated on the Mouzon 1775 map, but the 1738 Wimble “Chart of his Majesty’s Province” it had again been all “Croatan Land” east of the Alligator River.

As late as the 19th century, however, the 1808 Price and Strother map has it as the dry ground of northern Manns Harbor, and it now survives as the name of the sound separating Manns Harbor and Roanoke Island.

Cartographic Studies of the Croatoan Territory

Cartographic study therefore suggests that a broad territory was attributed in the historical period to the remnant Croatoans and that the likely location for their core habitation and Dasemunkepeuc itself lay northwest of Roanoke. It also suggests that no member of the Croatoan tribe had lived at Hatteras since the 1500s and that members of the Coree tribe came to occupy the island area.

Over time ‘Croatan’ descendants no doubt disbursed through marriage among the various peoples of eastern Carolina, bringing genetic and familial memories with them.

Croatan Ancestry and the Indians of Sampson County

It seems that one or two groups in the 18th century made substantive claims to that ancestry. The Indians of Sampson County, despite subsequent State governmental designation as nonwhite, colored, and even Cherokee, were determined to hold on to their history as Croatans, finally being accepted in an 1889 Congress-ordered Federal investigation (see below).

Their history speaks of close connections and intermarriage with the Indians to the west, along the Lumber River. The earliest documents offering evidence for this is the 1732 land grant there by King George II to Berry and Lowery. The Lowery family remain leading figures in Robeson County, while the Berry descendant leave the area in the 19th century, in what may well have been a return to their ancestral lands along Croatan Sound.

Shifting Inlets and Changing Names

As inlets closed during and after the 1600s, the name ‘Hatteras’ shifted south to replace ‘Croatoan,’ and with the new name, natives living there had probably arrived from further down the barrier islands, from Core, Portsmouth, and Ocracoke. As for the vanquished Roanoke tribe, ‘Roanoke’ reappears as the name applied by Jamestown authorities to modern Albemarle Sound.

Westward Movements of Roanokes After the Tuscarora War

When that body of water received its new appellation in the reign of Charles II, it was then applied to the river called ‘Moratuc’ by Governor Lane. One may theorize that these labels followed the westward movements of the dwindling Roanokes, but their documented association with Matamuskeets in the Tuscarora War suggests otherwise.

The Southern Tuscaroras had allied with the Coree, Machapunga and the related Bear (Bay) River tribe, as well as Mattamuskeet, Neuse, and Pamlico, among others. The defeat of this alliance led to further disintegration and regrouping, from which two coalesced tribes, Lumbee and Coharie, today claim their distant Elizabethan descent.

Later Traditions of Sampson County Croatan & Cohaire Tribes

The claims and traditions of the Coharie group were carefully examined around the turn of the last century. In George Butler’s 1916 booklet, The Croatan Indians of Sampson County, North Carolina. Their Origin and Racial Status. A Plea for Separate Schools (Durham, N.C. The Seeman Printery), details the course of their history and that of the Lumbees.

He drew from several previous pamphlets that offered past observations, tribal memory, and legal documents. In the section “Historical Sketch of Indians of Sampson and Adjoining Counties,” Butler notes that after the 1885 NC General Assembly recognized the Coharie tribe as “Croatan Tribe,” they appealed to Congress for assistance, and 1889 the Federal Indian Office responded in an investigative report from by its Ethnological Bureau.

From this report the following points are excerpted:

At the coming of the white settlers there was located on the waters of the Lumbee River a large tribe of Indians speaking English, tilling the soil, owning slaves, and practicing many of the arts of civilized life. They held their lands in common, and land titles only became known on the approach of the white men. The first grant of land to any of this tribe of which there is written evidence, was made by King George II, in 1732, to Henry Berry and James Lowrie, two leading men of the tribe, and was located on Lowrie Swamp, east of the Lumber River in the present county of Robeson.

p. 21 Just when the colonists and Indians, with whom they amalgamated, removed to the interior is not certainly known, but it is believed to have been as early as 1650. White settlers came into the middle section of North Carolina as early as 1715 and found the ancestors of the present tribe of Croatan Indians tilling the soil, holding slaves, and speaking English.

p. 20 The Croatans fought under Colonel Barnwell against the Tuscaroras in 1711, and the tribe of today speak with pride of the stand taken by their ancestors under “Bonnul” for the cause of the whites. In this war they took some of the Mattamuskeet Indians prisoners and made them slaves.

p. 27 [For] services in the Revolutionary War: John Brooks, James Brooks, Berry Hunt, Thomas Jacobs, Michael Revells, Richard Bell, Samuel Bell, Primus Jacobs, Thomas Cummings, and John Hammond [received] pensions … granted under the Federal Statutes of 1818 and 1832.

Language Spoken by the Croatans

Butler also makes reference to a “Col. Fred A. Olds, a newspaper correspondent of Raleigh,” who had written that:

“The language spoken by the Croatans is a very pure but quaint old Anglo-Saxon, and there are in daily use some 75 words which have come down from the great days of Raleigh and his mighty mistress, Queen Elizabeth. These old Saxon words arrest attention instantly.

For man they say ‘mon,’ pronounce father ‘fayther,’ use ‘mension’ for measurement, ‘ax’ for ask, ‘hosen’ for hose, ‘lovend’ for loving, ‘wit’ for knowledge, ‘housen’ for houses; and many other words in daily use by them have for years been entirely obsolete in English-speaking countries.

The migrations of the Croatan tribe from former homes farther to the east can be traced to their present home from former settlements on Black River in Sampson County… The time of their removal is uncertain; but all traditions point to a time anterior to the Tuscarora War in 1711, and it is probable that they were fixed in their present homes as early as 1650.”