Atlanta Constitution
November 7, 1897


BILL ARP’S LETTER

It seems to me that I am haunted by Indians.  The other night as I came from Macon to Atlanta my friend, Judge Hall, introduced me to Dr. Peterson, of St. Louis, a very learned and cultured gentleman who was connected with the ethnological department of the government and was engaged in examining Indian mounds and in writing up the history of the Indian tribes, especially of the five tribes known as civilized. Viz. The Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws and Seminoles.  As these were our Indians, I became much interested in this discourse, for he had been careful and diligent in his research, and what he knew, he knew well.  We talked about DeSoto and how, with a handful of brave soldiers, he overran this country and took captive as many Indian girls as his men wanted.

“Why did not these Indians overwhelm DeSoto and his handful of followers and extinguish them?” I asked. “Because," said the doctor, “they were paralyzed with fear of this new and aggressive race of people just as the Peruvians were paralyzed by Pizarro, who overran and conquered Peru with less than a hundred men.”

The doctor had been to eastern North Carolina investigating the tribe of 4,000 Croatans over there. They were originally called Hatteras Indians but about three hundred years ago Sir Walter Raleigh planted a colony of English and Portuguese on Roanoke Island and put them in charge of Governor John White, a very practical and accomplished gentleman. A few days after landing, Governor White’s daughter Eleanor, who had married a Mr. Dare. Gave birth to a child and she was named Virginia and so Virginia Dare was the first English child born on American soil.  Let the boys and girls remember that.  But no man knows anything more about her. 

Governor White and Sir Walter went back to England for supplies and farming tools for the colony and on their return trip got into a fight with some Spanish cruisers and lost their cargo and many of their men and had to go back to England, and it was several years before they made another venture and when they arrived at the island the colony was nowhere to be found and little Virginia has never been heard of.  The colony left some marks on a tree pointing to an Indian town called Croatan, but the town was deserted. 

The doctor’s investigations have satisfied him that the colony did not perish nor were they killed but that the men wanted wives and went into the interior and co-habited with the Croatans- for it was found a hundred years after that, these Indians were of mixed colors and many of them spoke broken or mixed English and Portuguese, although they had no intercourse with white people until the colony came nor for a hundred years after.  He believes that Virginia Dare probably grew up with those Indians and her descendants are now of mixed blood.

It seems that these Croatans were never Americanized until the last civil war when many of them came to the front with their guns and said they wanted to fight some.  They were accepted and enrolled and did fight for the confederacy.  During the war there was an election held in a county where some of them lived. And they were persuaded by an ambitious candidate to go to the polls and vote for him.  Their votes were challenged by the other fellow upon the ground they had some Negro blood in their veins.  They were very indignant and said, “When you want us to fight for you, we are same as white folks, when we want to vote, you say we are negurs.”  And so a committee of four doctors was appointed to examine them and say what they were.  The committee took them out to a sandy place in the road and had them take off their shoes and make tracks barefooted.  Five of them made very fair Anglo-Saxon tracks and were accepted, but of the other two the report was that the hollow of their feet made holes in the ground and they were rejected.  There are some of these Croatoans on Newman’s ridge, in Tennessee.

 I remember that, some years ago, a party of us were riding in the Negro car on the state road, and when we reached Kingston a colored convention of preachers got aboard and claimed the car.  Sanford Bell ordered us out, and we retired, of course, but one man did not move.  He was a dark, cadaverous individual with black eyes and black hair.  “What are you” said Sanford, “are you a white man or a Negro:   He smile and said; ‘Mine fader a Portugee, mine mudder a negur.”  Sanford looked perplexed and turning to one of the colored preachers, said “What must I do with him?” And he said “Let him alone I reckon.”  I learned afterwards that he was a Croatoan.

[This ends the part of the article dealing with Croatan and Newman's Ridge.]


A QUEER NORTH CAROLINA RACE
 
Are These Descendants of Members of the Lost Colony of Roanoke?
 
NEW YORK SUN
November 15, 1894
 
There live in the swamps of Robeson County, North Carolina, a strange race of people.  Their manners, customs and personal appearance are unlike those of any other race on the American continent.  They live within themselves, and their intercourse with their neighbors, both white and colored, is limited to the extent which necessity demands.  Among the citizens of the county they are called Portuguese and mulattoes.  They are neither.  Recent investigations by antiquarians who have closely studied their characteristics, in cline to the opinion that they are the descendants of the Croatan Indians and the lost colony of Roanoke Island.
 
It is an historical fact that on the arrival of the relief expedition fitted out by Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Richard Grenville the colony planted on Roanoke Island a few months before had totally disappeared. Years afterward, when the country had become sparsely settled by the English, and when the Tuscorora Indians were the dominant tribe, it was a tradition among them that in the interior there were white men who wee members of a smaller tribe of Indians, and that these men possessed many of the gifts of the English.  It is generally thought that when the English vessels sailed to England for supplies for the infant colony those left on Roanoke Island were too weak to defend themselves against the Croatan Indians, their nearest neighbors, and that in an incursion the men were killed and the women and children carried away into captivity.
 
Whatever may be the supposition, the fact, nevertheless, remains, that in this remote county of the Old North State, thee exists today a strange and peculiar people.  Their associations have, in the main, been with those who, previous to the war, were known in the Southern States as free negroes.  They inter-married with these free negroes and the majority of them are more or less tinctured with African blood.  this admixture, however, does not change their characteristics.  There are among them certain families who have held aloof  from such alliances, and these occupy a position of superiority.  while they are not, in the strictest sense, tribal in their government, they bow in implicit obedience to their rulers who are always members of the pure blooded families.  These pure bloods in personal appearance resemble the Portuguese, but in every other characteristic they are more like the Indian.  They are brave, generous, natural hunters, fine shots and very truthful.  The swamps abound in game, such as bear, deer, ducks, turkeys and smaller animals and birds.  They never forget an injury and treasure up their feelings of vengeance till they find a way to gratify it.  They live in houses of peculiar architectural design resembling the "dug out" of the primitive Western settler. 
 
A few years ago these people became a source of terror to their white neighbors. One of their principle men, Henry Berry Lowrey, organized a band of them and wrought as much crime in Robeson and the adjoining counties ad did the James gang in its more extensive field of operations.  This man, on account of a real or fancied wrong, waylaid and murdered a wealthy and influential white man, a Mr. Townsend.  The horrors of an Indian war, except the scalping of the victims, followed.  Women and children were killed as well as able bodied men.  No race was exempt.  It was a war of extermination.  Houses were burned, stock destroyed, and the country laid waste. After committing depredations, the band would return to the swamps, which are almost as impenetrable as the jungles of India.  they are covered with dense underbrush, and only those familiar with their recesses are able to find the hidden paths that lead into their depths.  Lowery possessed considerable intellect, and, being familiar with every inch of the ground, showed himself an adept in the warfare.  His second in command, Stephen Lowery, his uncle, was a capable lieutenant, and was often sent on a marauding expedition with a part of the command, while the chief would strike at a distant Point.
 
This was continued for several years, and became so disastrous to that portion of the state that the Legislature passed an act granting amnesty to all the desperadoes except Henry Berry and Stephen Lowery, for whose capture of death a reward of $10,000 was offered.  This action of the State had desired effect and the war came to an end.  What became of the leaders is not known. they were never captured and no one ever claimed the reward for killing them. they disappeared, and their followers resumed the even tenor of their way.
 
These people are legal citizens of the United States, but seldom avail themselves of their privileges.  They take no interest in either local or national affairs.  They have fought against all efforts for their improvement, and live today the same lives their ancestors did.

ODD THINGS ABOUT INDIANS

Atlanta Constitution

July 21, 1901

Excerpt;

North Carolina's Croatans, who claim to be descendants pf Raleigh's lost colony are not the only peculiar people among the red inhabitants of theseUnited States. The claim is not new it has been more or less exploited these thirty years, along with that of the still more curious Melungeons of East Tennessee.  Their name, said to come from the French melange, a mixture, must be pre-eminently fit, since they show racial characteristics of the Cherokees, the negroes, the Portugese, and the plain, ordinary poor whites.
 
Their language is as mixed as their blood, and their civilization is in somewhat the same condition.
Over against them set their neighbors, the Eastern Cherokees, who live in Qualla boundary in western North Carolina, and are so up-to-date they have formed themselves into a regular corporation, so as to share in the government benefits which were in danger ot monopoly by the, rich and out-reaching western Cherokee nation.