Long before the arrival of the English and French colonists in North America, five autonomous tribes had come together to form an alliance known as the League of Five Nations, or the Iroquois Confederacy. The five member nations were the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Oneida, the Mohawk, and the Seneca. The purpose of the League was to renounce warfare among the member nations and to present a unified front against other nations. The League was created because of the spiritual vision of one man—Deganawida—and the speaking ability of another—Hiawatha. With the arrival of the French and English colonists in the American Northeast, the League became an important trading partner and power broker.
In 1722 the League of Five Nations became the League of Six Nations when the Tuscarora were admitted to membership. In his book Who Was Who in Native American History: Indians and Non-Indians From Early Contacts Through 1900, Carl Waldman writes:
“The Iroquoian-speaking Tuscaroras were friendly to British colonists who settled in their homeland in North Carolina, providing crops and knowledge about wilderness survival and helping them fight hostile tribes.”
In his 1851 book League of the Ho-De’-No-Sau-Nee or Iroquois, Lewis H. Morgan gives the name of the Tuscaroras as Dus-ga’-o-weh-o-no’ meaning “Shirt Wearing People.”
The expansion of the League to include the Tuscaroras was brought about by conflicts with the English settlers. With regard to colonial conflicts with the Iroquian-speaking Tuscarora, Jerry Keenan, in his book Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, 1492-1890, reports:
“The Tucaroras were a tribe that dwelled mainly along North Carolina’s extensive river system. Since the beginning of European colonization in America, unscrupulous white traders took advantage of the peaceful Tuscaroras, introducing liquor in the tribe and cheating tribe members in business transactions. Many were also captured and sold into slavery.”
In 1710, the Tuscaroras had the Susquahannock tribe carry a formal petition of peace to the English Provincial Government of Pennsylvania. As a result, two peace commissioners from Pennsylvania met with the Tuscarora chiefs as well as Opessa, the Shawnee head chief at Conestoga. The Tuscarora chiefs delivered eight wampum belts to the English. The first belt was from the women who asked that they might be able to fetch wood and water without danger. The second belt was from the children, including those not yet born, asking for room to play without the fear of death or slavery. The third belt was from the young men who ask to be able to hunt without the fear of death or slavery. The rest of the belts asked for a lasting peace and for a way of communicating with Pennsylvania. In her book The North American Indians: An Account of the American Indians North of Mexico, Compiled From the Original Sources, Rose Palmer reports:
“At this time there was no war between them and the white people; there had been no massacre by the Tuscarora, no threat of hostility on the part of the Indians, yet to maintain peace and to avoid the impending shedding of blood, they were even then willing to forsake their homes.”
The Pennsylvania commissioners did not give the requests a favorable reception. The English felt that there was no reason to agree to peace.
A year later, British traders from North Carolina encouraged the Yamasee and the Creek to attack the Tuscarora. In addition, the British traders supplied guns to the Cherokee with the understanding that these guns would be used against the Tuscarora.
It was not just the English colonists who were creating problems for the Tuscaroras. In 1711, Swiss Baron Christoph von Graffenried founded the colony of New Bern on Tuscarora land in North Carolina without obtaining Tuscarora consent or paying them for it. The Tuscarora, angered by the European land developers who paid little attention to Tuscarora land and to their treaties, captured a surveying party who were laying out the new colony. The captured men were taken to the Tuscarora town of Catechna and tried before a council of chiefs. One of the men, the provincial surveyor-general, was condemned to death and executed.
The Tuscaroras attacked the Swiss settlement, killing nearly 200, including 80 children. Concerned about slave-raids from English traders, the Tuscaroras expanded the war by raiding frontier farms. A number of other tribes joined with the Tuscarora in their war against the European invaders.
In response to the Tuscarora attacks, Colonel John Barnwell of Virginia led a mixed militia group which included Yamasee warriors, against the Tuscaroras. The militia group attacked and destroyed several Tuscarora villages. At the village of Cotechney under the leadership of Hancock, however, resistance was strong, and the militia is forced to withdraw. Jerry Keenan reports:
“When the Indian request for a peace talk was rejected, the Tuscaroras proceeded to torture some of their captives while Barnwell’s men watched. With no other alternative available, Barnwell agreed to withdraw his column from the area in return for the hostages.”
By 1712, the Tuscaroras were involved in a full-scale war against the Europeans colonists in Virginia and the Carolinas. The colonists were regularly attacking Tuscarora villages, killing hundreds, and capturing many Indians who were sold into slavery. The colonists also recruited the Catawbas and other tribes in their war of Tuscarora extermination. The English were motivated by their greed for Tuscarora land as well as the profits which could be made through the sale of Tuscarora slaves. The newly captured slaves were generally shipped to the Caribbean slave markets.
The Tuscaroras sent wampum belts north to the Iroquois Five Nations asking for help in their fight against the colonists. When the governor of New York heard of this request, he warned the Iroquois not to get involved. The Iroquois promised to ask the Tuscarora to stop fighting if the governor would ask the colonists to put down their arms. The French, however, convince the Iroquois to send some warriors to aid the Tuscarora.
In 1713, a unified force of 800 Creek, Cherokee, and Catawba warriorss, together with 100 colonial volunteers from South Carolina under the leadership of Colonel James Moore, attacked the Tuscarora fortified town of Noeheroka. The attacking force took 192 scalps and 392 slaves. Many of the survivors fled north to the villages of the Five Nations.
In North Carolina, Tom Blount, the leader of a group of Carolina and Virginia Tuscaroras feigned friendship with Hancock who was leading the Tuscarora revolt against the English. Blount captured Hancock and turned him over to the English. The English promptly executed Hancock.
By 1713, the colonists had defeated the Tuscaroras, and settlers began taking not only Tuscarora lands, but also the lands of tribes which had aided the colonists in their war against the Tuscaroras. As a result, many Tuscarora families begin to move north and seek shelter in Iroquois communities in Pennsylvania. The following year, a group of about 500 Tuscarora families, fleeing from North Carolina and Virginia, sought refuge among the Iroquois in New York.
When the Iroquois met with the colonial governor of New York in 1718 to renew the Covenant Chain (a trading agreement), the Iroquois expressed their concern that the English were planning to take over their lands as they had done with the Tuscaroras. The English explained that the Tuscaroras lost their land because they attacked the colonists in the Carolinas. To ease Iroquois fears, the governor gave the Iroquois a quantity of gun powder as a gift.
In 1722 or 1723, the Tuscaroras formally joined the Iroquois, and the League of Five Nations becomes the League of Six Nations. As a member of the League, the Tuscaroras are considered the younger brothers of the Cayuga. Their chiefs were not sachem chiefs within the league and thus the number of chiefs who sat in council did not change. In New York, the Tuscaroras maintained their village between the Oneida and Onondaga villages.
In his chapter on the Tuscaroras in the Handbook of North American Indians: Volume 15: Northeast, David Landy reports:
“The Five Nations were warmly receptive and generous in allotting land and other amenities, but the Tuscaroras, defeated and humiliated remnants of a once proud Indian power in the tidewater country of North Carolina and Virginia, were profoundly dependent upon that largesse.”
More American Indian histories
Indians 201: The Iroquois Peace, 1700-1713
Indians 101: American Indians and Europeans 300 years ago, 1723
Indians 201: Queen Anne's War in the north
Indians 101: Washington's Chehalis Indians and the Americans in 1792
Indians 201: Grey Lock's War in New England
Indians 101: American Indians and Europeans 250 years ago, 1773
Indians 101: Little Turtle's War
Indians 101: The eighteenth-century fur and hide trade
Note: Indians 201 is an expansion/revision of an earlier essay.