THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET Tar River (The Name) By Bruce Corren It seems to be well established, both by tradition and by official documents that this river was once sometimes called Taw River. Most of our North Carolina histories have s0 stated and there are numerous wills, deeds and other papers preserved which refer to it as Taw or Tor River. Lawson in his thousand miles journey in 1701 appears to have crossed Tar River a few miles below the present town of Greenville. However, he calls it the Pampticough and neither in his text nor on his map does the name Tat; or Taw, appear. Williamson calls it Taw River wherever referred to in his work, and says that in the Indian language the word Taw signifies the river of health. Dr. Hawks repudiates this assertion of Williamson and says: “Its name is not Tar, though Col. Byrd called it by that name more than one hundred years ago. Others have sup- posed its original Indian name to be Taw or Tor, which Williamson with his customary dogmatism, ignorantly states means ‘Health.’ It never had such a meaning in any dia lect of the Algonquin or Iroquois that we have met with (and these were the two mother languages of the Indians of the eastern side of North Carolina) nor was there any such Indian Word as far as we can discover ; though such a sy! lable formed from an Indian word, is found in the compo sition of Indian words, according to the known polythinseti- cism of our Indian tongues. But the river was notwith- standing, called Taw, for we find (as I am informed by ¢ friend*) that name applied in a patent of 1729. °R. T. Clark, Esq., of Edgecombe. TAR RIVER 04 “Whee le Yr. hes, repudiating ‘Tar’ call it ‘Tau.’ “Mr. Clark thinks that from analogy, it should be written ; gy; Taw and cites the narpes Haw, Catawba, Chickasaw, Choc taw, where the Simms, Emmons and Cook, all modern authori- syllable terminates with w. “But the fact is that in the orthography of Indian names and words it is important to know to what country the indi Vidual belonged who first wrote them down for the eye ol Civ ilized man; otherwise the pronunciation may be mistaken. ch \ pm Se . " For ourselves while we are quite sure the river’s tru name never was Tar, we doubt whether Taw is the original word. “Words of “nguages, and especially in the name of places. They are almost invariably compounds. “Its Indian name was Torpaeo and we think it should be ha called now. lor. We have tried in vain to discover the meaning of the ©OMmpound Tor-paeo.” one syllable are exceedingly rare in the Indian 80 mm . . e > wer surile » [aw is but a corruption of the first syllable Dr, Hawk’s assertion that its Indian name was Torpaeo rests solely y ed to John Lederer, a German, who claimed to have traveled fay i pene se pee on T into the country south of Virginia in 1670. Lederer, Sioned I pon a map and an account of a journey accredi- it seems, with certain Englishmen, was commis- 'Y Governor Berkely of Virginia to make the jour- hey, for the ; purpose of exploration and for the purpose of discove . 10g a pass over the mountains. His English com- Panions dese rted him on the upper James and Lederer claims that he ? made the journey accompanied only by an Indian guide named Jackzetavon. Upon his return to Virginia he was received with insults and with such reproaches that he believed his life in danger ; the Virginias very frankly dishelieving his statements as to his travels and discoveries. Whereupon Lederer betook himself to Maryland where he Succeeded in interesting the governor, Sir William Talbot, 68 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET who having been convinced that he was “a modest and in- a pretty scholar from the Latin into Kung] and printed the whole, witl genious person and himself translated, ish, his account of his j journeyings 1 a map in London in 1672. Lederer, as translated and published by sets forth geographic conditions which we know could not have existed in North ( gained is that Chis account of Talbot, /arolina and the impression the Virginians were entirely right in their estimate of the man’h worth. From the text it is impossible part of North Carolina and the conviction is strong that Led- erer never made the journey claimed, but has set forth, both us impressions and idea of what that country was, as understood to recognize, positively, any in his text and on his map hi perhaps from Indians and frontier reports. South of the Roanoke two rivers are gl iown, the Torpaeo and the Errico. Both are erroniously made to flow into Roanoke river. The Torpaeo is undou btedly intended f for what is now Tar river and the Errico ej ther the Neuse or Cont entnea Creek. This arrangement of these streams is likewise shown on a map prepared for t he Lords P roprietors in 167 Ls the interior of “Ta country is tl one being a copy of the other terior of the country called © which for 1¢ same as the Lederer map; so far as they relate to the in- arolina. not appear in any other de reserved of the c ountry, but several Indian names compounded with the sound pear on the map and in the records located on Tar River, or This name Torpeaeo does scription or map |} of “tor” subsequently ap- as well and are generally in the vic inity of Contentnea C reek. an Indian town either on tl Contentnea Creek, more likely on tl Tauhunter was 1e Tar, or on 1¢ latter and the name seems to have been preserved Nahunter Creek in Greene County. Toisnot is the beautiful name of Wilson a creek and swamp in County and was the name of a pretty village in the Same county, 69 TAR RIVER : ° . = ) ri i until changed into the homely compound of Klm ¢ ity. Other Indi 1an names in that section had sounds that might ] Pri pm : jo ave led into a corrupti on of Taw, or Tor. Lawson in dé aks , ‘ontentnea “Tl)1Ing his crossing of what seems to have been Contentne ‘eel . 1: ‘ This Creek Says 1t was called by the Indian Chattoukau. Thi name a] | re he ame r the “ame also ap} ears to have peen the Indian nan ‘ eae ei e land whereon New Bern stands, and is said to hav biked cs New York by the Tuscarora Indians and hautauqua that State p Int o been became the name of a lake, town and county 1n from which is called our modern Chautauqua. the Indians applied these names, whether to a Stream, , location. to a general section or tribe cannot be but at least Mm dialect of the section between Tar R j th could have been suger sted m . » m DD uae Ox Knol: ‘all this river Taw after their own Taw River in Engla1 from the x vicinity of which many of them came. Said, there were some words or names in the seems a probable explanation of the early efforts to call it Taw, Taw River in England i is a beautiful little stream, having source among the “ Tors‘ of flowing Pe Dartmoor in Devonshire and into Bidiford Bay. These Tors, or huge “ tri Ira no granite that crown most o the hills, are a striking ‘harac teristic of the landse ‘ape in sd county whe re Sir Wal- h was born and the very plentifully ing Country. There * Ral eig name Tor and Taw has been applied to the topography of the surround- 3 are many prominent Tors such as Yes Tor, Back Lor, High Tor, Cor Tor and Hare Tor while besides Taw River we have Tawton Torquey, Tor Bay and many other names that trace their origin directly to the Tors. The word IS algo Spelled Tor and North @ The word plied by the Taw just as to the river was in arolina. is of Saxon origin though some say it was ap- Romans to these hill t tops in Devon because they sremenranterserestummerstemmasecaetnss au THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET sometimes present a shape resembling the Greek letter tau (¢). However the word is applied in Devonshire to any ele vation that has rocks on its summit, just as “scar” is used in Yorkshire. It is also said that the first marbles were made from the stone of these Tors, hence the game Taw, and the position of Taw is still a prominent position in the playing of that most scientific of all juvenile games now called marbles. Very many of the early settlers who came to Virginia and North Carolina came from the vicinity of Taw River and the Tors of Devonshire. Indeed after the battle of Sedg- moore in 1685, Devonshire was almost depopulated so great was the exodus, enforced or otherwise, to different parts of the new world. Very many of these people found their way to Virginia and into North Carolina. Coming first upon Tar River in what is now Edgecombe or Nash County, there is reason to believe that these early settlers did not know that it was the same stream that lower down was called Pamlico, The impression being that it was tributary to the Roanoke as set forth in the maps of Lederer and Ogilby. Indeed some Scotch families having early settled south of the Roanoke in what is now lower Halifax County, the section was called “The Scotland Neck’ under the impression it would seem that it was on a neck formed by the confluence of these two streams, or by Fishing Creek and the Roanoke. So these people christened this river, or attempted to christen it, Taw River after their own Taw River in far off Devonshire just as Englishmen have always wanted to carry their place names with them. We know of course, that the attempt failed and the river was called Tar almost as soon as it was called Taw. If there was something in the Indian dialect of the section that suggested Taw, Taw itself at once suggested Tar, in honor of the then principal commodity of the country through which it flows. So Tar River it has been called exclusively for many years now and will no doubt continue by that name always. TAR RIVER i Chose settlers who pushed their way down the river called it Tar while old Bath County called it Pamlico, and it was known as Pamlico far those who pushed their way up the river, from up into what is now Pitt County. Finally as the up stream settlement dominated, the town of Washing- } eo ae x ee : Me ton became the dividing line, below which it is called Pam a4D0ve which It is called Tar River. lico,