A Carolina Tribe Whooped the Klan—An Apt Lesson for Native American History Month

 

 

Lumbee tribe members surround a  Ku Klux Klan rally meant to intimidate them in rural North Carolina.

The area around Maxton, North Carolina was not typical of the Deep South in the 1950's when Jim Crow law were beginning to be challenged by the emerging Civil Rights Movement.  The population split between Whites, African-Americans, and a distinct Native American tribe included members also descended from the other two races.  They had lived side by side if not together, and not without difficulties, but on the whole amicably for more than 200 years.

The region, tucked away by the South Carolina border, was divided by Robeson and Scotland Counties where the Coastal Plane begins to fade into the Piedmont.  Settlements there by mostly Scottish colonists as early as 1775 identified four villages  or clans of Siouian-speaking communities.  The people began to call themselves Lumbee for the Lumber River that flowed through their hunting grounds. During the American Revolution both Anglos and natives enlisted, mostly in the State Militia.  So did sizable numbers of Free Blacks.  Pension records show that several members of known Lumbee families were listed as Free Blacks, evidence of intermarriage.

Robeson and Scotland Counties by the South Carolina border right where it takes it turn due west.

In the late 18th Century Lumbee families began buying land, obtaining it as a veteran grant, and gaining, for the first time, legal ownership of traditional land.  Several families amassed substantial holdings and some owned slaves.  But the isolated area away from major river routes did not lend itself to large scale plantation system farming.  Most families in all groups were small, subsistence farmers, seasonal hunters, and hired laborers.

Isolation was good for the tribe.  They were not swept up by Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal policy.  In fact they were the largest remaining group north of Florida.  In the late 1830s and '40s they welcomed and absorbed Iroquoian speaking Tuscarora groups likewise stranded when the rest of their people were exiled west of the Mississippi.   

None-the-less when the State of North Carolina began adopting and enforcing Free Black Codes, the Lumbee were stripped of the citizenship rights they had long enjoyed including the rights to vote, purchase property, serve on a Jury, muster with the militia, or posses fire arms.  The enforcement of the fire arms ban was particularly galling because hunting was an important part of feeding their families.  Several prominent men were arrested, tried, and punished.

Like many small, non-slaveholders some local Whites and Natives resented the haughty Tidewater aristocracy that drove secession and Civil War.  Some were avowed Unionists or sympathizers and avoided Confederate Service and war taxes.  When the South enacted a draft, some fled into the woods and back country including those sheltered by the Lumbee.

Other members of the tribe, however, remained loyal to their state and the Confederacy and served in the war.  Northern forces never came near the remote area.  But after the war most Lumbee supported Democrats because they resented the Reconstruction 40 Acres and a Mule for Freemen but did not include those living as members of the tribe.  In fact, the Federal government refused to recognize them as a tribe.  

Under Republican control the State set up separate school for Whites and Blacks.   As non-whites were excluded from white schools and compelled to attend Freedman schools.  They began to campaign for their own schools.

They renamed the central market town originally named Shoe Hill to Tilden in honor of the Democratic Presidential Candidate who promised to end Federal occupation in the South.  Tilden won the popular vote but the election was among the most contentious in American history, and was only resolved by the Compromise of 1877 in which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction  in exchange for recognition of his presidency.  Without Federal troops, Democrats quickly regained control of Southern governments and began enacting the Jim Crow laws that returned Blacks semi-servitude with no Civil Rights.

Men of the extended Lumbee Chavis family in traditional dress in the Post Civil War Era.  In their daily lives tribal members wore the same ordinary work clothing as their White neighbors, lived on their own farms, used Anglo style names, and commonly spoke.

As part of a reward for Lumbee support,  Democrats began to look for ways to created Native schools.  To do that they needed to officially recognize the tribe.  In the 1880s, as the Democratic Party was struggling against a biracial Populist movement which combined  poor Whites both Populist  and Democrats and Blacks Republicans the state recognized the Indian people of Robeson County as the Croatan Indians and to create a separate system of Croatan Indian schools.  Croatan referred to the once powerful native confederation around Roanoke in the earliest days of colonization.  There was no known connection between the Lumbee and that nation. By the end of the 19th century, they were legally known as Indians of Robeson County and had established schools in eleven of their principal settlements.  The town of Tilden was finally renamed Maxton.

The Lumbee and their Democratic Party allies in Congress campaigned unsuccessfully for decades in the 20th Century for Federal recognition as a tribe primarily to get support for their schools.  Repeatedly rebuffed they resorted to petitioning under the names Croaton Cherokee and later Croaton as Siouans to take advantage of those Western tribes' existing recognition.  They had no real connection to the Eastern Band of Cherokee in South Carolina who vigorously protested their claim and dim 200 year old connections to the Sioux.  Both claims were ignored.

The Croatan Normal School at Pembroke, North Carolina, 1916, the first Croatan (Lumbee) Indian school established and supported by the state.

In 1919 an agent of the Indian Office reported: 

While these Indians are essentially an agricultural people, I believe them to be as capable of learning the mechanical trades as the average white youth. The foregoing facts suggest the character of the educational institution that should be established for them, in case Congress sees fit to make the necessary appropriation, namely the establishment of an agricultural and mechanical school, in which domestic science shall also be taught.

Then in 1934 another agent reported:

I find that the sense of racial solidarity is growing stronger and that the members of this tribe are cooperating more and more with each other with the object in view of promoting the mutual benefit of all the members. It is clear to my mind that sooner of later government action will have to be taken in the name of justice and humanity to aid them.

 World War II put efforts for Federal recognition on hold while tribal members, like their White and Black neighbors, went into the service.  Near full domestic employment brought unheard of prosperity as other members left to work in defense industries in regional cities.  And when it was over returning GIs used their benefits to buy new homes, start small businesses, and attend college.  Although still poorer than the rest of the country, by 1950 most members were living in homes with electricity, running water, and telephones as well as owning a family car or truck.  Everyone had modern shot guns and varmint rifles for hunting--and self-defense.  That was resented by some whites who thought the native veterans were "uppity" and disrespectful.

In the immediate post-war years the bid for Federal recognition was put on hold during an internal dispute over what tribal name to request with factions favoring Croaton,  Cherokee-Coaton, or Cheraw [Souian].  What they agreed on was that they no longer wanted to be designated the Indians of Robeson County anymore, especially since their populations was spread far beyond that limited jurisdiction. 

In the early 1950s, Reverend D. F. Lowry organized the Lumbee Brotherhood. Lowry and his supporters contended that since their people were most likely the descendants of a mixture of colonial-era indigenous tribes—a theory many scholars supported—they should adopt the name Lumbee after the river that had become the cultural heart of the community. In 1952 members overwhelmingly voted to adopt the new name, and the North Carolina General Assembly changed their official designation in 1953 to the Lumbees.  That paved the way for Congressional action at last.

The Lumbee Act  passed by Congress in late May 1956 as a concession to political lobbying and signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated the Lumbee as an Indian people. It withheld full recognition as a "Tribe", as had been agreed to by the Lumbee leaders. The Lumbee Act designated the Indians of Robeson, Hoke, Scotland, and Cumberland Counties as the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina.  But there was a catch.  The Act stipulated, "Nothing in this Act shall make such Indians eligible for any services performed by the United States for Indians because of their status as Indians." It also forbad a Government relationship with the Lumbee and banned  them from applying through  the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) administrative process to gain recognition.  

The rational was The Lumbee had essentially assimilated into early colonial life prior to the formation of the United States. They lived as individuals, as did any other colonial and U.S. citizens. Lumbee spokesmen repeatedly testified at these hearings that they were not seeking federal financial benefits; they said they only wanted a name designation as Lumbee people.

The Blood Drop Cross logo used by the Ku Klux Klan represented the the "one drop rule" what classified any one with "even a single drop" of Black or Native blood could taint someone "passing" for White.  The multi-racial Lumbee were a prime example of that threat.

The fight for tribal identity put them in the spotlight, especially because tribal members were descended from Native, White, and Black individuals and there was still inter-racial marriage.  Playing on racial anxiety and resentment of Lumbee competition for jobs and property Grand Dragon of the Kights of the Ku Klux   began a campaign of harassment against the Lumbee, as mongrels and half-breeds  whose race mixing threatened to upset the established order of the Jim Crow South.  After giving a series of speeches denouncing the loose morals of Lumbee women, Cole burned a cross in the front yard of a Lumbee woman in St. Pauls as a warning. 

The Civil Rights Movement was gaining strength across the former Confederate states--the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court decision had just made segregated public schools illegal and Whites were turning to the once-again revived KKK.  Cole thought that an attack on the Lumbee would be easy pickings and a recruitment tool in North Carolina where Klan growth lagged behind neighboring states. He called for a Klan rally on January 18, 1958, near the Maxton. 

The Lumbee, led by veterans of World War II and Korea, decided to disrupt the rally.

 Cole had predicted more than 5,000 Klansmen would show up for the rally, but that night  fewer than 100 and possibly as few as three dozen attended.  Klansmen had prepared for the rally in a large field, with loudspeakers, a cross to be burned, and a large banner. Cole, who was from South Carolina, misunderstood the racial dynamics in Lumbee territory including relatively good relations with local Whites and the extent to which the tribe was prepared to defend itself and other indigenous people.

More than 500 Lumbee, armed with guns, sticks, and ax handles gathered in a nearby swamp.  When they realized they possessed an overwhelming numerical advantage, they attacked the Klansmen encircling the Klansmen, opening fire and wounding four  in the first volley, none seriously. 

Local newspaper headlines expressed astonishment at the rout of the Klan.

Local law enforcement showed up after the altercation had taken place, but by then, the field was clear.  It turned out that the long tribal support of Democrats and friendly ties with local authorities paid off.  The remaining Klansmen panicked and fled. Cole was found in the swamps, arrested and tried for inciting a riot.

The Lumbees gathered up discarded robes and the rally banner and marched back into Maxton to celebrate, which included burning Catfish Cole in effigy. Press coverage showcased two Lumbee men, one a celebrated World War II bomber engineer, wrapped in the KKK banner they had torn off a Klansmen’s car at the rally.

Simon Oxedine and Charlie Warriax, decorated WWII veterans, displaying their captured KKK flag at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention.

The Lumbee celebrated the victory by burning Klan regalia and dancing around the open flames.

The Battle of Hayes Pond, or the Klan Run, as it came to be called, marked the end of Klan activity in Robeson County, is still celebrated as a Lumbee holiday.  

 

The ignominious route of the Klan was widely celebrated.  Later, in the 1960s it was held up as an example of armed self-defense as opposed to Martin Luther King's non-violence  by Black Power activists, the Black Panthers, and Nation of Islam as well as to the American Indian Movement.

In the 21at Century  many observers were shocked by shifting Lumbee political action.  Robeson County, the heart of Lumbee territory, was carried by Barack Obama by an 18 point margin in 2012 in 2016.  Four years later both Joe Biden and Donald Trump promised long-sought tribal recognition, but Trump  but the failure of Democratic administrations to actually accomplish it flipped the tribal vote and by an even wider margin in 2020 after a campaign rally circus at the Robson County Fair Grounds in Lumberton where the grandstand behind Trump's podium was salted by campaign with members waving bright red Lumbrees for Trump placards.

 

Lumbee showed support for Donald Trump at a 2020 campaign rally in Robeson County.

This year  Trump brought his act to the Aero Center near Wilmington International Airport.   Despite a record as President hostile to Native American tribal interests, he reiterated his support for recognition with tribal members John Cummings, a Robeson County Board Commissioner and other leaders.  Kamala Harris' attempts to reconnect to Native voters was not enough.  Trump carried Robeson County and other areas with strong Lumbee populations and helped tip the critical battleground state.  

There remains Democratic support among tribe members, the political shift is a reflection of the long-time Lumbree stratagy of forging unlikely partnerships with politicians who could best serve the tribes interests. 

 

Lumbee women and girls in procession at a tribal Pow Wow.
 

Today, the Lumbree are the second largest tribe in the United States behind the Navajo with more than 60,000 enrolled members in the original rural core as well as in urban centers including Baltimore, Maryland;  New Port News, Virginia; and Wilmington, North Carolina.  They retain cultural adhesion.

Why the Greatest Real Estate Deal of All Time Wasn’t and How it Cursed All it Touched

Almost everything is wrong with this 19th Century depiction of the sale of Manhattan Island to the Dutch under Peter Minuit including the squatting Canarsie tribe being depicted in Plains Indian attire and the trade goods offered by the Europeans.

On this day in 1626 the greatest real estate deal in history went down.  But the real winner in the deal is not the one you have been told about.

Due to a simplistic account in a 19th Century popular reader, almost any American will tell you that Manhattan Island was bought by the Dutch from local Indians for “$24 in beads and trinkets.”  Those with especially acute memories might recall the alleged sharpie who hoodwinked the natives with his paltry offering was Peter Minuit, Governor of the North American colony owned by the Dutch West Indies Company. 

There are several things wrong with this version.  First and foremost is that the trade goods Minuit offered were not the trade trifles mentioned, but a selection of metal tools and implements including axe heads, knives, awls, needles, cast iron kettles, as well as cloth.  They were valued by Minuit at 60 silver guilders, a significant sum.  Depending on who is doing the reckoning and how inflation over nearly four centuries is figured, that would be worth well more than $1000 in today’s cash. 

But as one historian points out, the value of the items to the natives was probably much more than the actual monetary value.  Most of these items had been virtually unobtainable, although a few had found their way ashore from other European ships or have been traded down from New England or far away New France.  A historian described it as a significant “high-end technology transfer, handing over equipment of enormous usefulness.”

                        Peter Minuit--a colonial governor for both Dutch and Swedish mercantile firms.

But it was the natives who Minuit dealt with that may have been the real sharpies.  He assumed he was doing business with the Lenape; a powerful and extensive tribe that held sway over what is now the Delaware Valley including much of modern New Jersey and over the area around the mouth of the Hudson River including Manhattan and much of Long Island.  They were a sedentary people engaged in extensive agriculture and both coastal and inland fishery, including the harvesting of oysters.  Relatively large villages relocated within the range every year or so, returning to previous sites when the land rejuvenated itself.

Evidently the local Lenape, however, were not using Manhattan at the time the Dutch arrived.  Instead, they made sort of a sub-lease agreement with the much smaller Canarsie tribe who shared some of Long Island with them and a dozen other small bands.  The Canarsie, who were harvesting oysters and gardening on the island, could hardly believe their good fortune.  They gladly sold the Dutch what didn’t belong to them and retreated to Long Island with what they must have considered a fortune.

A previous governor had established Fort Amsterdam on the southern tip of the island the year before.  Minuit now felt secure enough in his sale to begin settlement of a new colonial capital Nieuw-Amsterdam.  Eventually the Lanape, who became the chief partners of the new colony in the fur trade, complained about the Dutch squatting on their land and a second purchase had to be arranged.  The exact price paid in this second deal is lost to history, but the Lenape likely did pretty well in trade goods themselves.

The fates of all parties to the deal were unhappy.

In 1631 Minuit was fired by the Dutch West India company for failing to meet expectations for the fur trade and was accused of skimming accounts for his own benefit.  Enraged, he returned to Europe and offered himself to the Swedes, an ascending power eager to get into North American colonization.  In 1638 he returned as Governor General of New Sweden and established Fort Christiana new modern day Wilmington, Delaware.  He was killed later the same year on a return voyage to recruit more settlers.  He sailed via the Caribean to pick up a load of tobacco to make the journey profitable for the company and perished in a hurricane near the island of St. Christopher.  His colony lasted a dozen more years until a later Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, conquered it in 1655.

The Canarsie, one of thirteen small tribes on Long Island, allied themselves with the much more powerful Mohawks from the mainland for protection.  They lived in relative harmony with the Dutch until a later governor, William Kieft, launched a war on local tribes.  A massacre of the village of Pavonia united all the tribes in a general uprising in 1643.  The ensuing war was devastating to both settlers and the tribes.  Peter Stuyvesant eventually negotiated a peace.  Many Canarsie converted to Christianity during the period of peace and continued to farm and fish in the area.

The Dutch persuaded the 13 tribes of Long Island not to pay tribute to their traditional protectors, the Mohawks.  In 1655 a large Mohawk war party invaded Long Island and massacred most of the local tribal residents.

Descendants of the Canarsie sill living in Brooklyn participated in this 1937 re-enactment of their real estate scam at a public school.

A remnant of the Canarsie later sold most of their remaining land to the British, after they seized New Amsterdam.  Small numbers continued to live and farm in rural Brooklyn into the 19th Century.  A unit of Canarsie volunteers served in the Civil War.  Eventually descendants of the tribe became absorbed by the white community and the tribe disappeared into the mist of history.

The much larger Lenape at least persist as a people.  Their culture was much disrupted by the arrival of the Dutch, Swedes, and the English.  In order to obtain much desired trade goods, they abandoned much of their traditional agricultural and fishery based economy to pursue the fur trade.  This took them deep into hostile territory dominated by the Mohawk and other Iroquoian people.  By the late 18th Century pressure from the Iroquois and expanding European settlement forced most major bands to re-settle west of the Allegany Mountains in what is now western Pennsylvania and along the Ohio River.  Remnant bands in the east were mostly absorbed by other tribes or by neighboring white settlements.  

A traditional eastern Lanape Village before their culture was disrupted and they were forced out of their original range.

After the signing of the Treaty of Easton in 1758, most of the remaining Lenape were forced to move west out of their lands in Delaware, New Jersey, eastern New York, and eastern Pennsylvania into what is today known as Ohio.  Some of Lenape were converted by the Moravians, a German pietistic sect that practiced pacifism.  These “Praying Indians” settled west of Ft. Pitt along the Ohio River with their missionaries. 

In the French and Indian Wars more warlike bands allied themselves with the French and were present at the Siege of Ft. Pitt.

During the American Revolution bands of the tribe, by then generally known as the Delaware, split allegiances between the British and the colonists.  Several large bands relocated to the Sandusky to be closer to the British stronghold of Ft. Detroit.  Others scouted for the Americans, or in the case of the Praying Indians tried to remain neutral.  Coshocton was the main town of the Delaware friendly to the colonists.  They hoped to form an all-Indian state within the infant republic.  But after their chief, White Eyes was killed, probably by American militiamen, many of the warriors from Coshocton joined their kinsmen with the British.

Massacre of the Praying Indians by the Pennsylvania Militia and their native scouts.

American Colonel Daniel Brodhead led an expedition out of Fort Pitt and in 1781 destroyed Coshocton. Surviving residents fled to the north to the British.  The next year the peaceful Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten was attacked by Pennsylvania militia.  At least 96 men, women and children were massacred.

Various Delaware bands were caught up in the continuing fierce warfare along the Ohio frontier after the Revolution.  Some took up arms again with the British in the War of 1812.  After the capture of Ft. Detroit in that war, northern Delaware bands, including some of the Moravians relocated to what is now western Ontario.

Most of the remaining American Delaware ceded their lands in Ohio in the Treaty of St. Mary’s in 1814.  Bands took up lands in Indiana and Missouri.  In 1829 yet another treaty, the Treaty of James Fork pushed the tribe yet further west.  In exchange for the Indiana and Missouri lands they received grants in Kansas.

The Delaware became active as guides and trappers in the trans-Mississippi West and frequently served as scouts for the Army.  They were prominent in the Seminole Wars and were among those with John Charles Frèmont when he entered California during the Mexican War.  Later they would be guides for emigrant trains to the West.

A Delaware couple in the late 19th Century, probably in Indian Territory (Oklahoma).  Their dress was reflective of cultural contact with other tribes and adaptations in their generations of being pushed ever west.

Despite loyal service the Delaware were again pushed from their lands.  Most relocated to Indian Territory by 1860.  They were forced to buy lands from the Cherokee.  In 1979 The Bureau of Indian Affairs ceased to recognize the Oklahoma Delaware as a separate tribe and began to count them as Cherokee.  That decision was overturned in 1996.  A challenge by the Cherokee to the re-instatement caused a see-sawing legal battle with the tribe stripped of recognition again and then having it restored.  As of 2009 they have had tribal status and the same year reorganized under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act with a tribal government of its own.

Other small bands of Lenape or Delaware are scattered from New Jersey to Wisconsin but have no formal recognition.  In Ontario, decedents of the Lenape of Ohio still live on four reservations.