Inhabitants of Our Region—Part 2
If you missed Part 1 of our series on Inhabitants of Our Region, you can read it here. Please note this series is an admittedly limited historical account of a very broad period of history; we encourage you to explore other, more detailed historical resources (ncpedia.org/anchor is very thorough and easy to read).
THE BRITISH INVASION
For almost 100 years after the Spanish left Western North Carolina, the native American tribes were left to their own land and customs…
…Until the British, envious of Spain’s wealth and power, decided to have a try at colonizing the New World.
In part, they wanted to be able to compete with French and Spanish shipping.
And, like Spain’s efforts to make the New World Catholic, England also wanted to spread the new Protestant religion among the “savages.”
England’s first attempt to settle Virginia in the late 1500s resulted in “the lost colony” of Roanoke Island. Success would not come until the establishment of Jamestown, VA, in 1607.
Much later, in 1663, Britain’s King Charles II gave the region south of Virginia (which he called Carolina, Latin for his own name) to a group of his friends and political supporters, known as the Lords Proprietors. It must have felt like a great gift; however, the the colony proved harder to manage than expected.
Colonists who had moved south from Virginia didn’t think much of these new landlords or in being governed by England. And the Native Americans were (rightly) infuriated by the new settlers now running rampant across the area and ‘claiming’ land parcels of what had always been regarded as public (or at least tribal) property.
Early Explorations
In three expeditions into the new colony in 1669-70, expedition leader John Lederer recorded much of the early history and mapping of the Southeast, by commission of the Lords Proprietors.
In 1700, John Lawson, NC’s first Surveyor General, also journeyed through the region, detailing flora, fauna, and the native tribes. His generally positive writings likely encouraged more white settlement across the region.
Despite all these problems, the colony grew, in large part because the Lords Proprietors offered freedom of religion to all Christians (something not possible in England), making it attractive to people from many countries, including England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, and Moravia.
It soon became apparent, though, that the feudal system the Lords Proprietors had in mind was not going to work in Carolina, especially as they meant to be ‘absentee’ overlords (ie, their primary goal was to collect monies from allocating land). As of 1660, landholders could pay the lords a quitrent—essentially an annual property tax based on the value of their property—which the new settlers felt gave them full rights to their land.
This attitude and others resulted in ever-growing strife and frequent skirmishes between the new settlers and the existing Native American tribes. Finally, after the Tuscarora War in the early 1700’s, the remnants of many independent tribes joined together on small reservations or left the colony entirely. By 1720, only the Cherokee tribe remained intact, leaving North Carolina east of the mountains essentially cleared for white settlement.
Adding insult to this massive and far-reaching injustice to Native Americans, indentured servants and slaves were also soon suffering at the hands of the new European settlers.
In many cases, wealthy men in England paid transportation costs of poorer men and women, who became their indentured servants in America. The servants were bound to work the land for five to seven years, during which time they were not free to leave their master or disobey him. At the end of their servitude, the servant was given clothing and basic tools and set free. A freed servant was granted a small piece of unoccupied land (ten acres to a man, six to a woman) — not enough for a self-sustaining farm (although a freed servant could borrow money from his master to buy additional land). Indentured servants in North Carolina usually worked on farms. Ideally, an indentured servant might be treated as part of a family and community. Often, though, indentured servants were subject to abuse and violence.
Far worse was the treatment of slaves, initially Native Americans forced into servitude, and then more often, Africans brought against their will from their homelands to the New World through the newly burgeoning slave trade. Slaves were legally considered the ‘property’ of their enslavers with almost no legal protections at all, and as such, could be bought and sold; further, any children born to slaves were considered enslaved themselves.
To grasp even a part of the appalling toll that the American slave trade exacted—and continues to exact—on generations of African-Americans, view a compelling short film by the Equal Justice Initiative here.
This story continues in a feature on Revolutionary War bounty land grants, here.
