Lindley S. Butler - The North Carolina Experience: An Interpretive and Documentary History

The North Carolina Experience

1984 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

05 04 03 10 9 8 7

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:

The North Carolina Experience.

Includes index.
1. North CarolinaHistoryAddresses, essays,
lectures. 2. North CarolinaHistorySources.
I. Butler, Lindley S., 1939 II. Watson, Alan D., 1942
F254.5.N67 1984 975.6 83-27357
ISBN 0-8078-1609-4
ISBN 0-8078-4124-2 pbk.

THIS BOOK WAS DIGITALLY PRINTED.

The North Carolina Experience: An Interpretive and Documentary History is designed to introduce the reader to the process of history. Simply stated, history is the recorded past interpreted, and this work presents to the reader brief interpretive essays and primary sources on specific topics. In this encounter with historians and their sources of history, one should grow to understand that history is no simple formula but a complex discipline that often raises more questions than are answered.

Although conceived as a supplementary reader for the teaching of North Carolina history on the college level, this work will serve well as a basic text in brief survey courses or as a source book for teachers on the elementary, secondary, or postsecondary level. The efforts of nineteen scholars have been combined to present in topical form the states history from discovery to the present. The structure of the work provides a midpoint at 1835, which is the traditional date dividing year-long courses in North Carolina history. The editors realize that there are obvious gaps and that not every reader will agree with their choice of subjects, but they chose topics or issues that could provide a general framework for a broad look at the states past and illuminate some of the key issues or turning points in our history.

The format was planned with flexibility in mind to enable the teacher to select the classroom approach that best satisfies his needs and goals. In order to present the widest possible coverage of the topics as well as to develop an entre into the field, each chapter consists of an introductory essay, supportive documents, and a list of suggested readings. The authors bring their own expertise to their essays and have produced well-rounded, interpretive surveys of specific segments of the states history. Following each essay is a collection of documents emphasizing the major points of the discussion and offering a brief foray into the primary sources for the students. The documents not only illuminate the past from the viewpoint of the contemporaries but in conjunction with the essay may also be a springboard for extended discussion on the topic or for further research. Each author has proposed readings to acquaint the student with readily available pertinent secondary literature and published sources.

Despite the specific educational purpose for which this work was planned, it beckons to all who profess an interest in the Tar Heel State. Broad coverage of various facets of North Carolinas past, coupled with the widest latitude granted to the authors in order to encourage their speculations, has produced an undertaking both historical and relevant to the present. The general tenor of the work provides insight for all with the fascinating history of a unique southern state. If this volume kindles an interest in significant aspects of the Tar Heel heritage and contributes to an understanding of North Carolinians, then it has fulfilled its purpose.

Lindley S. Butler

Alan D. Watson

The North Carolina Experience

Herbert R. Paschal

Old Man of Pomeiock, by John White, 1585, engraving by Theodore De Bry, 1590 (Courtesy of the Division of Archives and History, Raleigh, N.C.)

The study of the American Indian in North Carolina has proceeded at two levels. One of these has had as its principal goal the description of the Indians origins and culture, social and political organizations, and manner of life at the time of their first encounter with Europeans. The second level of study has centered upon the interaction between the Indians and the Old World intruders.

The confrontation between Indians and Europeans holds out to the historian many possible topics for exploration, but there is one that transcends all othersthe rapid disintegration of the Indians way of life and their virtual disappearance from North Carolina after the arrival of the European settlers. Loss, therefore, is the central theme of North Carolina Indian history. The astonishing rate of attrition suffered by the Indians of North Carolina dwarfs all other aspects of their history. Only a clear understanding of the tragic details of this story can lead to a full appreciation of the Indians role in North Carolina history. Before turning to explore this theme, however, we need briefly to note the origins of the first inhabitants of the American continent and to describe the Indians in North Carolina at the time of permanent European settlement.

The Indians who peopled North America were descendants of the Asian hunters who gradually pushed westward from Siberia over the Bering land bridge into Alaska probably between twenty-eight thousand and twenty thousand years ago. By 9000 to 8500 B.C. the aborigines had reached and begun to settle in small numbers in the region that would someday be North Carolina. These earliest arrivals belong to the Late PaleoIndian period. They were nomadic hunters who moved about in small bands hunting the giant bison, mastodons, mammoths, and other great mammals, using spears tipped with a distinctive stone point known as the Clovis Fluted.

Upon the appearance of the Archaic period, dated 7000 to 6000 B.C., the economy of the Paleo-Indian peoples of this region changed noticeably. They gradually came to depend on small game, fish and shellfish, and wild plants for their food sources. Although the variety of tools increased, the spear continued to be the chief weapon of the hunters, but it was now used with a spear thrower or atlatl to give it greater distance. Altogether, the Archaic period can be viewed in the words of Peter Farb as a long period of time during which local environments were skillfully exploited in a multitude of ways.

Sometime about 700 to 500 B.C. the Woodland period evolved. This period was characterized by the appearance and development of pottery, the beginnings and growth of agriculture, and the replacement of the spear by the bow and arrow as the chief weapon of the hunter. The Woodland period passed through a number of increasingly complex stages, and by historical times well-developed and highly diversified societies were occupying the land that would become North Carolina.

The Indians in North Carolina entered the historical period early in the sixteenth century with the arrival of European explorers along the coast. The earliest visitors to North Carolina found the Indian a fascinating element in the New World scene and were soon sending reports describing these people and their physical characteristics, dwellings, villages, manner of life, religion, government, and society back to an entranced Europe. As European discovery and exploration gave way to European settlements, descriptions of the Indians and comments upon them came more and more to express two sharply divergent views about the Indians nature and character.

To many observers the Indian was a noble savage living without guile or the conceits of more advanced societies and finding in the forces of nature and the wilderness about him spiritual strength and direction. Others saw the Indians as brutal and bloodthirsty, devoid of even the most limited attributes of civilization, and unwilling or unable to master them. Obviously the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes, but which point of view is to be given the greater credence is difficult to determine. Recent scholarship has leaned heavily toward the concept of the Indian as natures child while assigning his European protagonist the role of the brutal interloper.