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Excavating Occaneechi Town
Archaeology of an Eighteenth-Century Indian Village in
North Carolina
Edited by R. P. Stephen Davis Jr., Patrick C. Livingood, H. Trawick Ward, and Vincas P. Steponaitis
Copyright © 1998 by the University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved. ISBN 0-8078-6503-6 (cd-rom & booklet).
FROM THE CD-ROM / Page: Archaeological Background: Historical Background, Page Number:
1Archaeological Background by Roy S.
Dickens, Jr., H. Trawick Ward, and R. P. Stephen Davis,
Jr.
Historical Background
When European
explorers first entered the Virginia and Carolina Piedmont, they found
it occupied by several small Indian tribes who shared a common culture
and a similar language. These Siouan tribes also shared a mixed
subsistence of hunting, gathering, and agriculture, and a social system
regulated by ties of kinship and reciprocity (see
map). As the colonial frontier was pushed into the
Piedmont and as Indian and European interaction was intensified, the
Occaneechi tribe became prominent among the Siouan groups. The
Occaneechi controlled much of the deerskin trade, and their language
became the lingua franca of the Piedmont. Their pivotal role in the
fur trade came about partly because one of their villages, on an
island in the Roanoke River, was astride the Great Trading trail from Virginia to
Georgia. The island village of the Occaneechi was visited
by John Lederer in 1670 (Cumming 1958). After the Occaneechis "barbarously murthered" six Cherokees who
were attempting to establish trade relations with the Virginia
colonists, Lederer, fearing for his life, cut short his visit. James
Needham and Gabriel Arthur, who traveled through the same territory in
1673, observed that the Occaneechis controlled the colonial trade,
which endowed them with an importance that far exceeded their numbers
(Alvord andBidgood 1912). They seem to have maintained and reinforced
their role in the trade network through warfare and intimidation.
Thus, the Occaneechi tribe earned a fierce and pugnacious reputation,
which eventually led to an eruption of armed hostilities with
Nathaniel Bacon's militia in 1676. After pursuing a group
of Susquehannock Indians into Occaneechi territory, Bacon convinced
some "Manakins" and "Annalectins," who had also joined the Occaneechi,
to aid his forces in defeating the Susquehannocks. After that victory
was accomplished, Bacon then attacked the Occaneechis
(Billings 1975:267-269). After the battle with Bacon, the
Occaneechis were so reduced in numbers that they could no longer
defend their island stronghold on the Roanoke (see map). The survivors abandoned their home
territory, retreated southward, and reestablished a village on the Eno
River, near present Hillsborough, North Carolina (see map). In 1701, English surveyor John
Lawson visited the relocated Occaneechi Town where he observed that
there were "no Indians having greater Plenty of Provisions than these"
(Lefler 1967:61) (see
Lawson's journal: title page, text. After Lawson's visit,
conditions worsened for the Occaneechi, as well as for the other
Siouan tribes, and by 1722, disease, warfare, and rum had virtually
destroyed Indian societies in the Piedmont. Remnants of once
autonomous groups either huddled together around Fort Christanna in
Virginia or moved to join their cousins, the Catawba, in South
Carolina. By 1730, except for a few isolated Indian families, the
North Carolina Piedmont lay mostly vacant, awaiting the arrival of
hordes of colonists from Virginia, Maryland, and
Pennsylvania.
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From Excavating Occaneechi Town, a CD-ROM for Windows / ISBN 0-8078-6503-6 / $45.00 / Published for the Research Laboratories of Archaeology by the University of North Carolina Press
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