While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Catawba (probably from Choctaw katápe,
`divided,' `separated,' `a division.'-Gatschet).
The most important of the eastern Siouan tribes. It is
said that Lynche creek, South Carolina east of the Catawba
territory, was anciently known as Kadapau; and from the fact
that Lawson applies this name to a small band met by him
southeast of the main body, which he calls Esaw, it is possible
that it was originally given to this people by some tribe living
in eastern South Carolina, from whom the first colonists
obtained it.
The Cherokee, having no b in their language, changed
the name to Atakwa, .plural Anitakwa. The Shawnee and other
tribes of the Ohio valley made the word Cuttawa. From the
earliest period the Catawba have also been known as Esaw, or
Issa (Catawba iswä', `river'), from their residence on the
principal stream of the region, Iswa being their only name for
the Catawba and Wateree rivers. They were frequently included by
the Iroquois under the general term Totiri, or Toderichroone,
another form of which is Tutelo, applied to all the southern
Siouan tribes collectively. They were classed by Gallatin (1836)
as a distinct stock, and were so regarded until Gatschet visited
them in 1881 and obtained a large vocabulary showing numerous
Siouan correspondences. Further investigations by Hale,
Gatschet, Mooney, and Dorsey proved that several other tribes of
the same region were also of Siouan stock, while the linguistic
forms and traditional evidence all point to this eastern region
as the original home of the Siouan tribes. The alleged tradition
which brings the Catawba from the north, as refugees from the
French and their Indian allies about the year 1660, does not
agree in any of its main points with the known facts of history,
and, if genuine at all, refers rather to some local incident
than to a tribal movement. It is well known that the Catawba
were in a chronic state of warfare with the northern tribes,
whose raiding parties they sometimes followed, even across the
Ohio.
D. A. Harris
The first notice of the Catawba
seems to be that of Vandera in 1579, who calls them Issa in his
narrative of Pardo's expedition. Nearly a century later, in
1670, they are mentioned as Ushery by Lederer, who claims to
have visited them, but this is doubtful.
Lawson, who passed through their territory in 1701, speaks of
them as a " powerful nation" and states that their villages were
very thick. He calls the two divisions, which were living a
short distance apart, by different names, one the Kadapau and
the other the Esaw, unaware of the fact that the two were
synonymies. From all accounts they were
formerly the most populous and most important tribe in the
Carolinas, excepting the Cherokee.
Virginia traders were already among them at the time of
Lawson's visit. Adair, 75 years later, says that one of the ancient
cleared fields of the tribe extended 7 miles, besides which they had
several smaller village sites. In 1728 they still had 6 villages, all on
Catawba river, within a stretch of 20 miles, the most northern being named
Nauvasa. Their principal village was formerly on the west side of the
river, in what is now York County, S. C., opposite the month of Sugar
creek. The known history of the tribe till about 1760 is chiefly a record
of petty warfare between themselves and the Iroquois and other northern
tribes, throughout which the colonial government tried to induce the
Indians to stop killing one another and go to killing the French. With the
single exception of their alliance with the hostile Yamasi, in 1715, they
were uniformly friendly toward the English, and afterward kept peace with
the United States, but were constantly at war with the Iroquois, Shawnee,
Delawares, and other tribes of the Ohio valley, as well as with the
Cherokee. The Iroquois and the Lake tribes made long journeys into South
Carolina, and the Catawba retaliated by sending small scalping parties
into Ohio and Pennsylvania. Their losses from ceaseless attacks of their
enemies reduced their numbers steadily, while disease and debauchery
introduced by the whites, especially several epidemics of smallpox,
accelerated their destruction, so that before the close of the 18th
century the great nation was reduced to a pitiful remnant. They sent a
large force to help the colonists in the Tuscarora war of 1711-13, and
also aided in expeditions against the French and their Indian allies at Ft
Du Quesne and elsewhere during the French and Indian war. Later it was
proposed to use them and the Cherokee against the Lake tribes under
Pontiac in 1763. They assisted the Americans also during the Revolution in
the defense of South Carolina against the British, as well as in
Williamson's expedition against the Cherokee.
In 1738 smallpox raged in South Carolina and worked great destruction, not
only among the whites, but also among the Catawba and smaller tribes. In
1759 it appeared again, and this time destroyed nearly half the tribe. At
a conference at Albany, attended by delegates from the Six Nations and the
Catawba, under the auspices of the colonial governments, a treaty of peace
was made between these two tribes. This peace was probably final as
regards the Iroquois, but the western tribes continued their warfare
against the Catawba, who were now so reduced that they could make little
effectual resistance. In 1762 a small party of Shawnee killed the noted
chief of the tribe, King Haiglar, near his own village. From this time the
Catawba ceased to be of importance except in conjunction with the whites.
In 1763 they had confirmed to them a reservation,
assigned a few years before, of 15 miles square, on both sides
of Catawba river, within the present York and Lancaster
Counties., S. C. On the approach of the British troops in 1780
the Catawba withdrew temporarily into Virginia, but returned
after the battle of Guilford Court House, and established
Benjamin P. Harris
themselves in 2 villages on the reservation,
known respectively as Newton, the principal village, and
Turkey Head, on opposite sides of Catawba River.
In 1826 nearly the whole of their reservation was
leased to whites for a few thousand dollars, on which the few survivors
chiefly depended. About 1841 they sold to the state all but a single
square mile, on which they now reside. About the same time a number of the
Catawba, dissatisfied with their condition among the whites, removed to
the eastern Cherokee in western North Carolina, but finding their position
among their old enemies equally unpleasant, all but one or two soon went
back again. An old woman, the last survivor of this emigration, died among
the Cherokee in 1889. A few other Cherokee are now intermarried with that
tribe. At a later period some Catawba removed to the Choctaw Nation in
Indian Territory and settled near Scullyville, but are said to be now
extinct. About 1884 several became converts of Mormon missionaries in
South Carolina and went with them to Salt Lake City, Utah.
The Catawba were sedentary agriculturists, and seem to
have differed but little in general customs from their neighbors. Their
men were respected, brave, and honest, but lacking in energy. They were
good hunters, while their women were noted makers of pottery and baskets,
arts which they still preserve. They seem to have practiced the custom of
head-flattening to a limited extent, as did several of the neighboring
tribes. By reason of their dominant position they gradually absorbed the
broken tribes of South Carolina, to the number, according to Adair, of
perhaps 20.
In the early settlement of South Carolina, about 1682,
they were estimated at 1,500 warriors, or about 4,600souls; in 1728 at 400
warriors, or about, 400 persons. In 1738 they suffered from smallpox; and
in 1743, after incorporating several small tribes, numbered less than 400
warriors. In 1759 they again suffered from smallpox, and in 1761 had some
300 warriors, or about 1,000 people. The number was reduced in 1775 to 400
souls; in 1780 it was 490; and in 1784 only 250 were reported. The number
given in 1822 is 450, and Mills gives the population in 1826 as only 110.
In 1881 Gatschet found 85 on the reservation, which, including 35 employed
on neighboring farms, made a total of 120. The present number is given as
60, but as this apparently refers only to those attached to the
reservation, the total may be about 100. See Lawson, History of Carolina,
1714 and 1860; Gatschet, Creek Migration Legend, 1-11, 1884-88; Mooney (1)
Siouan Tribes of the East, Bull. 22, B. A. E., 1894, (2) in 19th Rep. B.
A. E., 1900; H. Lewis Scaife, History and Condition of the Catawba
Indians, 1896.
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