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Narrator 0:48
Music, eastern North Carolina is perhaps typical of rural and suburban America. Driving through the countryside, one sees barns and fields, tractors and children, houses and convenience stores. It's easy to assume that this vibrant society has always called this beautiful region home, but history tells us otherwise. Before Europeans ever dreamt of the North American continent, the tuscaroras farmed this land. Modern North Carolinians are vaguely aware that a proud and numerous Indian people once occupied the rich soils of the inner Coastal Plain. The tuscaroras Cleared fields, planted orchards and developed communities that were the envy of the first Europeans to visit in the 17th century, but the Europeans kept coming, and their visits turned into conquests, and eventually, the tuscaroras were forced from this land, only to be relegated to a few pages in a North Carolina history text, the traces of the Tuscarora can still be seen in eastern North Carolina, but they are scant and recognized only by the trained eye. Geographical names are Tuscarora, words content, NIA Creek, kenita, the hunta swamp. Broken pottery and arrowheads betray hundreds of past residences throughout the landscape. Against all odds, the tuscaroras have survived. Their culture has survived, though adapted to the greater American culture in which it has developed over past centuries. The cultural memory of the tuscaroras takes them back through time. It takes them back to the place where their fields were fertile, the streams full of fish and their ancestors are buried North Carolina. This film is a step toward reducing the effects of conflict and time to bring to light, once more, Tuscarora culture as it existed in North Carolina in a time long ago. The Tuscarora nation is based on their reservation in New York near Niagara Falls. Students at the Tuscarora school today learn of their traditional culture while also learning the skills necessary to succeed in modern American society. The tuscaroras are one of the Six Nations of the famous Iroquois League, an Indian political union that has played a prominent role in American history, it is said that certain aspects of the Constitution of the United States were inspired by the political structure first devised by the Iroquois. The tuscaroras are among the few Indian societies that maintain a traditional form of tribal government key components of the system are the clan and the chief. The chief represents the clan. Clans are societal groupings that are based on shared ancestry but are larger than the typical extended family. The tuscaroras have nine clans, each named after an animal species and arranged according to whether the animal is of the air, land or water.
Unknown Speaker 4:30
These are all the nine clans. The air clans are Heron and hawk. The land clans are are fair, deer in wolf in the water. Classroom, are you turtles and beaver?
Narrator 4:51
The teachers at the Tuscarora school recognize that for students to understand who they are, they must understand their past. I. The story relating how they came to reside in New York is passed to the younger generation, yet Little is known of the remote past the long years of residence in North Carolina.
Unknown Speaker 5:13
Something else that's very important that we talk with the students about is our bead work. And this was a piece that was made by one of the parents, and she donated to our program. And the students also, throughout the year get various opportunities to do some bead work. This, of course, would be a very involved piece. It would be very experienced bead worker, but starting out with our students, a much easier piece would be something like this, of course, the Jitterbug, where the students would just start with this to begin to work with the bees.
Narrator 5:49
Scientists working in eastern North Carolina have begun to shed new light on the Tuscarora past. New detailed information is becoming available through the science of archeology, the study of past cultures. Archeology combines information gained through the study of living cultures, the interpretation of historical documents and the excavation of sites where the tuscaroras once lived,
Dr. David Phelps 6:17
in the examination of the Tuscarora past there are a number of sources that one might use. First of all, there were tribal legends and lore, which, unfortunately, in North Carolina, we do not have, simply because no one cared enough to record them. In the early colonial times, we have historic records, most of them in the colonial and early state records of North Carolina, which address mostly matters having to do with the Tuscarora wars, which, of course, were primary concern to the Colonials of the time. But there is very little in them having to do with Tuscarora culture and its form and behavior of the past. We do have a few books, like Lawson's history of North Carolina, collected information, collected in 1701 and the book written in 17 nine, which does describe some of the original Tuscarora culture, but unfortunately, it is very small though history, even though the written records would be valuable, history leaves us without many of these records in order to understand the past of the Tuscarora. That leaves us with archeology, the anthropological study of past cultures. And of course, that is what we have pursued mainly in understanding that first 1000 years of Tuscarora culture,
Kenneth Patterson 7:45
written history, finds the tuscaroras in eastern North Carolina. I am Chief Kenneth Patterson of the wolf Clam of the tuscaroras of the Iroquois Confederacy. The hat that I am wearing is an Iroquoian hat, and all the groups of the Iroquois wear a similar hat. The Chiefs are selected by the clan mothers. We are a matrilineal society, as we were back in John Lawson's time,
Narrator 8:22
the Jordans landing site, a prehistoric Tuscarora village in Bertie County, has proven to be a remarkable resource for understanding Tuscarora culture as it existed nearly 1000 years ago. Prehistoric Tuscarora culture has been named the cache phase by archeologists. The archeological phase refers to culture in a specific location during a relatively brief time interval
Dr. David Phelps 8:53
in the excavations of Jordan's landing, we learned an awful lot about Tuscarora culture that would identify it. And then, of course, we have applied that to other sites in the Tuscarora homeland, in order to identify them.
Narrator 9:07
The myriad objects left behind by the Jordans landing villagers provide archeologists with an immediate understanding of Tuscarora material culture nearly 1000 years ago,
Dr. David Phelps 9:20
and we've gotten a vast array of materials which tell us a great deal in the way of material culture. About the Tuscarora, for example, the ceramic complex. This set of vessels on the table are relatively representative of the cachai pottery. It is well made, highly fired. The Potters put a tempering in it from small pebbles in order to facilitate the air drying process. And the vessels range in size, from this medium sized pot to much larger. Looking pots that are not easily handled, smaller vessels like this one, again, in the pot shape with the pointed bottom. These pointed bottoms facilitated placing them in the earth and putting the fire around them.
Narrator 10:16
Materials recovered from the Jordans landing village have provided key evidence of the villagers food ways. The archeologists use what is essentially the garbage discarded long ago to reconstruct diet and understand how food was acquired. It is clear that the village was located in a place ideal for exploiting the abundant resources of the Roanoke River Valley, the soils surrounding the village were high and well drained, perfectly suited for agriculture, both upland forests and wetland forests rich with deer and other animals are found adjacent to the village. The close proximity of the river ensured a steady supply of fish, turtles and other aquatic species, corn and beans. Evidence that farming contributed to the diet have been recovered from the remnants of hearths. Remarkably well preserved animal remains indicate that a great diversity of species provided meat for the villagers, meals,
Dr. John E. Byrd 11:26
bone, shell, teeth and other types of animal remains that have been recovered from the Jordans landing site. I've been giving archeologists critical information that helps to reconstruct what Tuscarora foodways were like in the prehistoric past. I have here in front of me a tray of bones from the neorocah fort site. These are bones of the white tailed deer. White tailed deer was a very important species for the Tuscarora. White tailed deer provide skins which could be used for clothing, ligaments and tendons that can be used to make tools and meat, of course, which can be eaten immediately, or it can be dried and preserved to be consumed at a later time. As important as the white tailed deer was for the Tuscarora had the Jordans landing village, though it was not the most important species I have on the tray to my right, the remains of many species that were in fact, more significant as a food resource. For example, we have here shells of a species known as the Eastern elliptia. We call these generally fresh water mussels. We also have bones and shell fragments of turtles. These are the vertebrae of snakes birds were eaten by the Tuscarora villagers at the Jordans landing site as well. Perhaps the most important single food resource for the Tuscarora villagers at Jordan's landing was fish. I have here before me a number of fish. Vertebrae of the fish species exploited, rock fish, herring and shad were very important in the spring time. Rock herring and shad run up the Roanoke River in great abundance in the springtime even today,
Narrator 13:10
the excavation of the Jordans landing site has given us a vivid glimpse of prehistoric Tuscarora culture. It is clear that the Tuscarora lived in fixed settlements. They hunted, fished and grew crops in their fields. They constructed cooking pots and numerous other artifacts necessary in their daily living. They also created objects purely for pleasure. The Jordans
Dr. David Phelps 13:37
landing site has given us a very good summary of prehistoric or Kashyap phase Tuscarora culture. Not only do we have an array of material culture that consists of ceramics, stone, shell, bone and metal artifacts, but we have understood from the site the agricultural practices of the Tuscarora, their fishing techniques, the types of fish they caught, the animals they hunted and used in the uplands and the various other elements of the environment to which they were adapted. Basically, Jordan's landing is a perfect example of a small village occupied for about 500 years
Narrator 14:20
the advent of written records in North Carolina occurred when the first English colonists began to explore and eventually settle the coastal plain. These events mark the beginning of the historic period
Dr. David Phelps 14:35
European contact and colonization in what is now North Carolina began in 1584 and between 1584 and 1590 there were what we called the Roanoke colonies, attempts to colonize the coast, which failed in that period. Ralph lane. The governor of the 1585 colony actually contacted the Tuscarora, but it was an abortive contact, and the Tuscarora chased him back down the Roanoke River. And there were no other contacts until permanent colonization of North Carolina began in 1650 that colonization consisted of people moving down from Southern Virginia and the Jamestown colony as it spread out by 1650 it had gotten into the Albemarle region of North Carolina.
Narrator 15:34
As colonial settlements spread south and west, tensions mounted between the colonists and the tuscaroras
Dr. David Phelps 15:42
between 17 117 10, relations began to go bad between the Tuscarora and the Colonials, primarily due to the colonial pressure for moving inland. I think the touchstone that began the Tuscarora War was the establishment of the New Bern colony in 1710 and John Lawson's trip up the Neuse River with von Graf and read to show him how delightful it would be to expand into the Tuscarora
Kenneth Patterson 16:16
territory. John Lawson was an Englishman who traveled among the tuscaroras, made friends with many of them. She was appointed Surveyor General for the Lord's proprietors, whose responsibilities were to survey the Carolinas. He fell in with a fellow by the name of DE GRAFF And read a Swiss explorer who was building New Bern together, they traveled up into Tuscarora territory. John Lawson picked an argument with the tuscaroras, in which they killed him. They spared degraffenreids life. But shortly thereafter, a war ensued. Tuscaroras, other Indian groups, colonials, attacked the tuscaroras vigorously.
Narrator 17:15
The decisive battle of the Tuscarora war occurred in March of 1713, at the tuscaroras fort in the community of Nea Roca here, the defeat of the tuscaroras ensured the loss of their homeland and opened the inner coastal plain and Piedmont of North Carolina to colonial settlement. The NEA Roca fort site is located in Greene County, North Carolina, near the small town of snow hill. Archeologists have excavated a considerable portion of the site in recent years, and the materials recovered by the excavations have much to tell us about the fateful battle, the war and Tuscarora culture in the era of colonization,
Dr. David Phelps 18:02
there's a great deal of local legend and local knowledge of the area. So the fort has actually never been lost to the local people. It was simply lost to professional records. The first time the fort was recorded in the official North Carolina Archeological Survey was 1950 a Pennsylvania archeologist named John woodhoft visited the site in that year. John was interested in Tuscarora and Iroquois in pre history and history, and he was trying to convince the archeologist in North Carolina to do something about the fort that, of course, failed and their official research was done until 1990 when we began work here under the auspices of East Carolina University. Since 1990 we've spent eight field seasons here, working primarily with students who are taking field schools from the Department of Anthropology on the first part of the summer, and then summer ventures students in the second part of the summer. The summer Ventures Program, of course, is part of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Digging
Narrator 19:17
at near Roca fort commenced in 1990 the methods used to excavate the site are typical of archeological investigations and provide an example of how archeologists work in the field.
Dr. John E. Byrd 19:33
When we first began work at the Neo horoca fort site, it looked like any other cornfield in eastern North Carolina. We knew that there was a fort with walls and houses and artifacts out in this field somewhere, but we had no idea where it was in the field. The research methodology that we employed was to first dig a series of two by two meter squares randomly placed across the cornfield. These were initially un six. Successful, and so next, we began a long series of trenches that ran off of our two by two meter excavation squares. The first of these trenches was successful in that it did intersect one of the fort walls. This led us to next dig, what we call an area excavation, which was an expansion off of that original trench that intersected the fort wall. The area excavation was very successful in that it exposed one of the bastions on the southeast corner of the fort. The next task we had at hand was to discover what sorts of houses they were living in inside the fort, and this led us to begin digging large excavation areas in the center of the fort, the houses in niaroca fort site were semi subterranean houses, which means they were sunken about six feet deep into the ground and then covered with an earthen roof, which was packed on top of the superstructure that consisted of timbers and branches that were thatched on top of the timbers, and in some cases, Reed mats that were put on top of the thatched branches to keep the Earth from from falling into the house. This particular house has been cut in half by the archeologists to give you a cross sectional view of what that collapsed earthen roof looks like if we move through to other sections of the very same house, moving through what would have been a throughway or hallway, we find that the house was not nearly as deep, and we see a number of artifacts that were discovered on the floor of this section of the house that have been left in place by the archeologists so that their exact locations can be mapped in this section of the house, we find a number of artifacts lying about the floor, including this smoking pipe laying on the floor of the house where it was left on March, 23, 1713, it still has cake packed inside the bowl. We have also found on the floor of this house, a number of small triangular arrowheads, which may reflect a last desperate effort to make weapons to defend the house. There are a number of tools that are basic and fundamental to doing archeological research in the field. The first of these is what we call the square point shovel. Square point shovel is used to remove this plowed dirt over the top of this intact excavation floor. The shovel, however, is too big. Include an instrument to use to actually excavate things carefully, such as what we do inside the houses. Here for that kind of work, we use a masonry trial. Archeologists have been using trials for decades, but we use them a little bit differently than a brick mason would use the trial. One of the things the archeologists will do is carefully sharpen the trial so that it becomes almost as sharp as a razor blade. We'll use the trial then to carefully shave away the earth just a millimeter at a time. Documentation, as well as careful excavation, separates the professional archeologist from the amateur artifact collector. Archeologists will very carefully document what they're doing in the field with photographs. We usually will take black and white as well as color slide photographs of everything that we see in the ground. Records are kept of everything that comes out of the ground from a site like the Neo Roco fort site, and one of the most important records that we keep will come from actually measuring in the locations of all of the artifacts found in every house within the neoliberal fort site. This is done with another of our very basic and fundamental tools, the tape measure. Artifacts that have been matched in place in the excavation floor are then put on plot paper on a map that shows their exact locations within the house.
Narrator 24:04
Special methods are used to recover especially small and fragile remains.
Student 24:10
The way the flow tank works is we set up a pump with a motor on it, and we take to the intake valve. We put a hose on the intake valve and stick that other end of the hose into the creek. The water pumps up through the pump and through this hose, the blue hose here, into the bottom, and a valve on the bottom of the cylinder here, and the valve compresses the water and shoots it up through the middle of the tank. And when the level of the water reaches about the top here, we take a tarp, or mesh net, mesh net, and place over the top and tie it around it, and we place a vegetable bag at the front here on the ramp. And that enables us to do is to pour the excavated dirt from the site to the top of the tank here, and the heavy artifacts, like pottery and arrowheads and beads and etc, will float, will sink to the bottom, and the vegetable matter and floating matter will come to the top and float on this ramp here. In this bag. And after we pour all the dirt into the thing, into the float tank, it will settle on the bottom. The sand will sit on the bottom, and we take it out with this valve right here.
Narrator 25:12
Food remains recovered in the flotation process are among the richest archeological finds in eastern North America. The Neo Heroku
Dr. John E. Byrd 25:21
fort site has produced a large quantity of plant food remains that are helping archeologists reconstruct what Tuscarora foodways were like in the early 18th century. I have before me here a tray of plant food remains from one of the houses inside the Neo Heroku fort site. These plant food remains are very black. In fact, have become almost like charcoal because they were extensively burned when the house in the Fort burned down on the last day of battle in 1713, on the tray here we have corn, beans, peach fragments, a number of other Native American cult agents such as goose foot, all mixed in this large accumulation that you see before you on the tray. It is the job of the archeologists to sort these materials according to what species there are, and to eventually analyze and quantify these materials to get an idea of how much of a diet was made up of corn, how much of beans, how much of sunflower and other cult agents. Materials
Narrator 26:26
recovered from the DEA Roca fort site provide a clear picture of Tuscarora material culture in the early 1700s
Dr. David Phelps 26:36
among the native produced items in Neo Rocha fort, we find numbers of ceramic vessels such as this one, in order to sustain life. Obviously, the necessity for a number of cooking pots in the fort was there. This one is typical. It has, of course, like most of the material in the fort, been burned in the houses, and therefore shows a great deal of discoloration. We find items like this wooden spoon, the Tuscarora made wooden spoons, bowls and platters for the trade. We find items of shell, such as the shell gorget. This is a blank that has not been finished at the moment, and we find numbers of marginella beads, which are the typical and most popular of the Tuscarora beads, other items that were popular simply because of the value of copper among the Indians for these little copper bells and this brass ring.
Narrator 27:47
The archeology of the neoroka fort site brings to light the human tragedy of the battle that took place at Neo Rocca. Historical records offer only a cold, terse account of how the battle progressed, followed by a body count. The reality is that a fort containing families was aggressively overrun, slain with the warriors were women, children and the elderly. Those that were captured alive were marched to Charleston and sold into slavery.
Dr. John E. Byrd 28:22
It's hard to put into words the scale of the tragedy of the battle at Neo Heroku fort for the Tuscarora people in the early 18th century, there were some 8000 Tuscarora Indians living in North Carolina at the close of the battle at the Neo Roco fort in March of 1713 there were some 1000 Tuscarora lost to the battle. At least 400 of the Indians in the fort were killed. The rest were either taken as captives and sold into slavery or escaped and disappeared forever into the frontier lands of the Carolinas and Virginia. It appears that about 15% of the total Tuscarora population may have been lost in that one battle at Nia hiroka fort, following the battle at niagaro fort, the Tuscarora along continent Creek were forced to abandon their homeland and flee northward into New York State to join the five nations, Iroquois, the Tuscarora along the tar and Roanoke River drainages, were forced to live on a small reservation in what is today Bertie County.
Narrator 29:37
The descendants of the survivors of 1713, moved on. Many helped the South Carolina colony survive its war with the yamasee Indians in 1715 others openly supported the American Revolution against the British crown in 1776 today, they're part of the complex. History of the United States and the diverse society which our unique past has spawned
Dr. David Phelps 30:08
after the war. In 1715 the Tuscarora, who remained were put on a reservation in Bertie County, but soon, because of colonial land grabbing practices, they left and went to New York, and have remained there since. But not all the Tuscarora went to the reservation. Obviously, there were some who simply hid out and stayed in North Carolina. Part of the significance of our work here, and of reclaiming Tuscarora history and pre history, is to give those people, the emerging Tuscarora, who still live in North Carolina but were submerged in American culture for all those years, to give them back their history. And in addition, we can give to the New York Tuscarora, the ones who left that 1000 years that they lost when they left here without any historic record.
Kenneth Patterson 31:03
Today, we are located here near Niagara Falls, New York, and the Tuscarora Indian Nation identifies culturally and linguistically, and it is amazing that the tuscaroras have been able to travel all the way up join the Iroquois Confederacy and live here today and still maintain a language, a culture and a land base through all the adversities whereby Indians and non Indians alike try to divest us of our language and our culture, and we've been able to maintain that, and still we've always held an identity with Our homeland of North Carolina.
