The Hemp Gatherers

As Europeans began to colonize what would become

North Carolina, Native American populations were in
decline. Contact with European traders brought rampant
disease.
The Tuscarora, which means Hemp Gatherers, had
villages near Bath and New Bern and up the Neuse and
Pamlico rivers into the North Carolina Piedmont. While
Europeans tended to establish their settlements near
old Indian Towns, the area which would become Raleigh
was a thickly wooded and wild hunting ground for the
Tuscarora.
It is believed that the first white person to visit the area
that would become Raleigh was English surveyor John
Lawson, in February, 1701.
It seemed to the Tuscarora living on the coast that every
time John Lawson set off from his new home in Bath to
look at the land, more and more English settlers arrived
to set up plantations. These English neighbors did not like
the Tuscarora hunting on their new lands, and the
Tuscarora rarely received payment for the land that was
once theirs. Furthermore, the European traders were
rough and often cheated the Tuscarora, and the worst of
them sold Indians off to Charles Town as slaves, where
they were then taken to plantations in the West Indies.
The breaking point for the Tuscarora came in 1710, when
they petitioned the Pennsylvania governor to be allowed
to relocate there. Five years earlier, Pennsylvania passed
a law outlawing the further import of Indian slaves from

the Carolinas. The governor of Pennsylvania had one

reservation, and asked the North Carolina governor to
provide a statement of the Tuscaroras good behavior,
which Governor Hyde refused.
In the following weeks, the Tuscarora would attack
European settlements throughout their former lands
along the Neuse and Pamlico rivers. The North Carolina
colony responded with their own attacks, raising militias
and hiring help from Virginia and South Carolina. These
skirmishes lasted into 1715, and became known as the
Tuscarora War.
Before the Tuscarora War, the Hemp Gatherers had a
population of eight to ten thousand individuals. Fourteen
hundred Tuscarora were killed over four years of fighting,
and another thousand were enslaved and exported. The
English colonists lost around two hundred people.
Over the next fifty years, the Tuscarora migrated north
to join fellow Iroquois tribes in the Northeast, as many
other Native Americans in North Carolina met similar
fates from disease, warfare, and enslavement. The
Piedmont was opened for white settlement, with many
abandoned Indian settlements denoting the best
agricultural lands. With old trading paths crossing near
the cardinal boundaries of what would become Wake
County, the future state capitol remained wooded, largely
uninhabited, and thick with wildlife.
GLOSSARY
Colonize: to settle or make a colony in
Tuscarora: tribe of Native Americans. Name means Hemp Gatherers.
Establish: to install, build, or settle in a certain area.

Settlements: to put a permanent base or group of houses in an area.

Petitioned: A formal request; to ask formally.
Migrated: to go from one place to another.