LUMBEE

LUMBEE. Numbering over 54,000 enrolled members, the Lumbees are the largest Indian tribe east of the Mississippi River. Located mainly in southeastern North Carolina along the Lumber River, the Lumbees have lived among the river swamps for almost three centuries. There are numerous theories regarding the historical tribal origin of the Lumbees. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the prevailing theory was that the Lumbees were the descendants of the coastal Algonkian tribes of North Carolina and the English colony that mysteriously disappeared from Roanoke Island in 1587. More recent theories suggest significant tribal influence from the many Siouan-speaking tribes from the Piedmont and coastal plain, particularly the Cheraws, who had long lived in this area. Regardless of tribal origin, archaeological evidence indicates a continuous indigenous presence in the area for at least 14,000 years.

A number of events in Lumbee history have forced the tribe to assert its rights. The decade of the Lowry War (1864–1874) saw unbounded violence against the white establishment throughout Robeson County. Led by the Lumbee outlaw Henry Berry Lowry, the Lowry gang waged war for ten years in an effort to fight the injustices perpetrated against the Lumbees by the Confederacy and local militia. Because of his unrelenting struggle, Lowry, who mysteriously disappeared in 1872, has become the legendary hero of the present-day Lumbee people.

By the late 1800s, reform had come to North Carolina. In 1885 the state legislature created a separate educational system for the Indians of Robeson County. In 1887 an Indian normal school was established to train the Lumbee people to be teachers in their own schools. For many years, this was the only higher educational institution available for the Lumbees, and from 1940 to 1953, Pembroke State College (which grew out of the early normal school) was the only state-supported four-year college for Indians in the United States. Pembroke State College is now the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, one of the sixteen constituent campuses of the University of North Carolina, and serves a multicultural student body.

In 1956 the federal government officially recognized the Lumbees but withheld customary Indian benefits and services. Through administrative and legislative efforts, the Lumbees have continually tried to remove the restrictive language of the 1956 law but have not yet been successful. On 7 November 2000, the Lumbees elected a twenty-three-member tribal government, part of whose focus is on achieving full federal status as a tribe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dial, Adolph L., and David K. Eliades. The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee People. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996.

Sider, Gerald M. Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity, and Indian Identity in the Southern United States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Starr, Glenn Ellen. The Lumbee Indians: An Annotated Bibliography with Chronology and Index. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1994.

Linda E.Oxendine

See alsoTribes: Southeastern .