Native+Americans

One of the four major tribes in North Carolina is the Algonquin Tribe. The Alqonquin Tribes lived along the Alantic Coast, which today goes to Maine to North Carolina. Villages like the Chowanoc, had more than one thousand people in the 1500s. the Waccamaw, the largest group on the Cape Fear, gave their name to one of the largest of the Carolina bays. They ate many "kinds of fruits, corn(maize), melons, Walnuts, Cucumbers, Gourdes, Peas, and diverse roots."

The Coastal plain was dominated in the 1500s by one tribe, the Tuscarora. This group had about fifteen large villages, each with about 300 to 500 people, concentrated near the Neuse and Tar rivers. The name Tascarora, means "hemp gatherers. The Tascarora were kin to the famous Iroquoisnation of New York and possibly came south in the 1400s.



The Catawaba came to be the largest group beyond the fall line. They were distinguished by the burnt-black pottery they made out of the various clays found in the area. The Catawaba tribe fought with the colonist against the British and Cherokee in the Revolutionary War. The Catawaba Indians are also known as the "People Of The River." The "smallpox" wiped out nearly half of the Catawaba people.

The Cherokee have been the most famous Indian group in North Carolina history, for both their size and their location. The Cherokee first settled in the deep mountains during the height of the Woodland period. The Cherokee were one of the largest tribes in United States. They may have numbered more than 30,000 during the late Woodland period. Each of the three principal groups spoke a different dialect of the Cherokee language. the Cherokee lacked clay to make pottery. instead, they stored many items in intricately woven baskets made of green strips of tender branches, often from oak trees.