Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe[1] | |
 Official seal of the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe | |
| Named after | Waccamaw people Waccamaw River |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1910: Council of Wide Awake Indians,[2] 1977: Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe (nonprofit)[1] |
| Type | state-recognized tribe, nonprofit organization[1] |
| EIN 59-1739024[1] | |
| Legal status | school, educational service provider, charity[1] |
| Purpose | P84: Ethnic, Immigrant Centers and Service Provider[1] |
| Headquarters | Bolton, North Carolina[1] |
| Location |
|
| Membership | 2,313 self-identified[3]1,245 enrolled (2000) |
Official language | English |
| Revenue | $391,626[1] (2020) |
| Expenses | $399,935[1] (2020) |
| Staff | 17[1] (2020) |
| Website | waccamaw-siouan |
TheWaccamaw Siouan Indians are one of eightstate-recognized tribes inNorth Carolina. Also known as theWaccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe, they are notfederally recognized.[4] They are headquartered inBolton, North Carolina,[1] inColumbus County, and also have members inBladen County in southeastern North Carolina.
In 1910, they organized as theCouncil of Wide Awake Indians.[2] They founded a public school in 1933.[2]
They are not affiliated with theWaccamaw Indian People, a state-recognized tribe fromSouth Carolina. The Waccamaw Siouan Indians also hold no affiliation with the Waccamaw Sioux Indian Tribe of Farmers Union, anunrecognized tribe based in Clarkton, North Carolina.[5]
Waccamaw Siouan Indians live in St. James, Buckhead, and Council, with the Waccamaw Siouan tribal homeland situated on the edge ofGreen Swamp about 37 miles fromWilmington, North Carolina, seven miles fromLake Waccamaw, and four miles north ofBolton, North Carolina.[6]
In 1977, theWaccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe incorporated as a501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, based inBolton, North Carolina.[1]
The Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe operates a HUD Native American Housing Assistance Project, which helps its members with housing rehabilitation, housing down payments, and emergency funding.[1] They also operate a child day care center.[1]
According to the 2010 Census, the total Waccamaw Siouan population inColumbus andBladen counties was 1,896 (1,025 and 331, respectively). This represents 2.7% of the total combinedNative American population ofNorth Carolina. Current tribal enrollment consists of 2,594 members.[7]
Between 1980 and 2000, the two-county area experienced a small overall population increase of 6.7% compared with a 37% rate of growth forNorth Carolina. The growth in the two counties was mostly among theNative American andHispanic populations—61% and 295%, respectively, the latter also representing immigration. There was a 7% increase in the black population, and a 0.6% decrease in the white population.[8]
The tribe is governed by the Waccamaw Siouan Tribal Council, Inc., consisting of six members who are elected by the tribal membership, with staggered terms of one to three years. The Tribal Chief's position, formerly inherited or handed down in personal appointment, is now also an elected position. The tribe has an Elders Review Committee, which conducts monthly tribal meetings to inform and educate members about issues of importance to the tribe as a whole. The opinions and suggestions of tribal members are solicited during these meetings and are incorporated into the decision-making process.
The tribal council employs a tribal administrator to handle the day-to-day operations of the tribe, with an annual budget of approximately $1 million. The administrator supervises the management of tribal grant programs and provides a monthly reporting of the status of grant activities to local, state, and federal agencies, private donors, the tribal council, and tribal members.[9]
The Waccamaw Siouan were designated and officially recognized by the state ofNorth Carolina on July 20, 1971, through the passage of alaw by theNorth Carolina General Assembly.[10][11] North Carolina General Statutes § 71A-4. Waccamaw Siouan Tribe of North Carolina lays out their rights, privileges, immunities, obligations and duties:
"The Indians now living in Bladen and Columbus and adjoining counties of North Carolina, originally found by the first white settlers in the region of the Cape Fear River, Lake Waccamaw, and the Waccamaw Indians, a Siouan Tribe which inhabited the areas surrounding the Waccamaw, Pee Dee, and Lumber Rivers in North and South Carolina, shall, from and after July 20, 1971, be designated and officially recognized as the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe of North Carolina and shall continue to enjoy all their rights, privileges and immunities as citizens of the State as now or hereafter provided by law, and shall continue to be subject to all the obligations and duties of citizens under the law."[11][10]
The "Waccamaw-Siouan from Columbus and Bladen Counties" hold membership on the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs as per NCGS 143B-407.[12]
The Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe is notfederally recognized.[4]
Their congressional representative introduced a failed bill for federal recognition in 1948. Lumbee Legal Services, Inc., represents the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe in its administrative process for seeking federal recognition.[13][14][15]
The tribe is centered on the edge of Green Swamp,[6] seven miles from Lake Waccamaw. Its headquarters is in Bolton, North Carolina.[1]
According to the Waccamaw Siouan Indians, thousands of years ago, an immensemeteor appeared in the night sky toward the southwest. Flaming to a brilliance of suns as it hurtled earthward, the meteor finally struck, burning deep within the earth. The waters of the surrounding swamps and rivers flowed into the crater and cooled it, creating the gem-blue, verdant green lake. Some historians contend that this story is the mid-20th century invention of James E. Alexander.[16]
Archeologist Martin T. Smith suggests that the 1521 Spanish expedition led by Francisco Girebillo likely encountered a Waccamaw village when they traveled inland from the Carolina coast along the Waccamaw andPee Dee rivers. Describing the inhabitants of the river valley as semi-nomadic, Girebillo noted that they relied on hunting and gathering, and limited agriculture. He wrote that the people practiced mortuary customs "peculiar" to them, but failed to describe their distinctive practices in any detail.[17]
Francisco Gordillo and Pedro de Quexos captured and enslaved several Native Americans in 1521, and shipped them toHispaniola, which the Spanish were colonizing. One of the men became known asFrancisco de Chicora. Francisco identified more than twentyindigenous peoples who lived in the territory of present-day South Carolina, among which he mentioned the "Chicora" and the "Duhare", whose tribal territories comprised the northernmost regions. AnthropologistJohn R. Swanton believed that these nations included the Waccamaw and theCape Fear Indians.Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón returned to the area in 1526.
About 150 years later, the Englishman William Hilton recorded his encounter with ancestors of the Waccamaw Siouan people, calling them theWoccon. In 1670, the Germansurveyor andphysicianJohn Lederer mentioned them in hisDiscoveries. By the beginning of the 17th century, theWoccon (Waccamaw), along with a number ofPee Dee River tribes, had been pushed north by a combination of Spanish and alliedCusabo Indian forces. Some of the earliest English travelers to the interior of the Carolinas,John Lederer in 1670 andJohn Lawson some thirty years later, referred to the Waccamaw in their travel narratives as an EasternSiouan people. They were repeating information from others; neither visited the area ofwetlands where some of the Waccamaw were beginning to seek refuge from colonial incursions.
John Lawson had placed the Woccon a few miles to the south of theTuscarora in hisNew Voyage to Carolina (1700). Settling around the confluence of the Waccamaw andPee Dee rivers, this amalgam of tribes had fragmented by 1705; a group of Woccon who moved farther north to the LowerNeuse River and Contentnea Creek.[18] The first written mention of theWoccon (or Waccamaw) by English colonials was recorded in 1712. TheSouth Carolina Colony tried to persuade the Waccamaw, along with theCape Fear Indians, to join James Moore, son of the former British colonial governor ofSouth Carolina, in his expedition against theTuscarora in theTuscarora War.
By the second decade of the 18th century, many Waccamaw, also known as theWaccommassus, were located one hundred miles northeast ofCharleston, South Carolina. In 1749, a war broke out between the Waccamaw andSouth Carolina Colony.
After the Waccamaw-South Carolina War, the Waccamaw sought refuge in thewetland region situated on the edge of Green Swamp, nearLake Waccamaw. They settled four miles north of present-dayBolton, North Carolina, along what is still known as the "Old Indian Trail".[19] State land deeds and other colonial records substantiate the oral traditions of the Waccamaw Siouan Indians and their claim to the Green Swamp region.
Given their three-century-long historical experience of European contact, the Waccamaw Siouan Indians had become highly acculturated. They depended on European-style agriculture and established claims to land through individual farmsteads.[20]
In 1835, followingNat Turner's slave rebellion, North Carolina passed laws restricting the rights and movements of free blacks, who had previously been allowed to vote. Because Native Americans were classified equally as "Free people of color" and many were ofmixed-race, the Waccamaw Siouan Indians and others were stripped of their political andcivil rights. They could no longer vote, bear arms, or serve in the state militia.
Local whites intensified harassment of the Waccamaw Siouan Indians afterNorth Carolina ratified this discriminatory state constitution. Whites tended to classify them simply as black, rather than recognizing their cultural identification as Indian.[21]
Through much of the 19th century, Waccamaw Siouan children received no public school education. None existed in the South before the American Civil War. DuringReconstruction,Republican-dominated legislatures established public schools, but legislators had to agree to raciallysegregated facilities to get them passed. Having been free people before the war, the Waccamaw Siouan did not want to enroll their children in school with the children offreedmen. The public schools had only two classifications: white and all other (black andmulatto, the term for mixed-race or "people of color", usually referring to people of African and European ancestry, the most common mixture).
Late in the 19th century, theCroatan Indians of Robeson County (now calledLumbee Tribe of North Carolina) gainedstate-recognition as tribes and support for a separate school. TheCroatan Indians of Samson County, now called theCoharie Intra-tribal Council, Inc. built their own schools and later still, developed their own school system. TheWaccamaw-Siouan Tribe followed suit by founding the Doe Head School in 1885. Situated in the Buckhead Indian community, the school was open only sporadically. It closed in 1921, after the state had sent ablack teacher to the school, and the community asked the teacher to leave.[22]
The first county-supportedIndian school open to Waccamaw Siouans was called the "Wide Awake School". The school was built in 1933 in the Buckhead community inBladen County.[23] Classes were taught by Welton Lowry (Lumbee). Waccamaw Siouan students who wanted to attend high school among self-identified Indians went to theCoharie Intra-tribal Council's community's East Carolina High School inClinton, North Carolina; theLumbee Fairmont High School in Fairmont,Robeson County; or theCatawba Indian School inSouth Carolina.[24]
The Waccamaw Siouan Indians received state recognition in 1971 and organized as a nonprofit group, which forms its elected government. They are working on documentation to gain federal recognition.[16]
The tribe holds an annual cultural festival andpowwow.[1] This takes place on the third Friday and Saturday of October at the Waccamaw Siouan Tribal Grounds in the Buckhead Community of Bolton, North Carolina.[25] Open to the public, the powwow includes a dance competition, drumming competition, horse show, and gospel sing.[26] A crafts fair features items made by members of the Waccamaw tribe, and demonstrations of the associated craft skills.[26]
