214 



CATAWBA 



[I 



Indian allies about the year 1660, does 

 not agree in any of its main points with 

 the known facts of history, and, if genu- 

 ine at all, refers rather to some local in- 

 cident than to a tril)al movement. It is 

 well known that the Catawba were in a 

 chronic state of warfare with the northern 

 tribes, whose raiding parties they some- 

 times followed, even across the Ohio. 



The first notice of the Catawba seems 

 to be that of Vandera in 1579, who calls 



BENJAMIN P. HARRIS, A CATAWBA 



them Issa in his narrative of Pardo's 

 expedition. Nearly a century later, in 

 1670, they are mentioned as Ushery by 

 Lederer, who claims to have visited them, 

 but this is doubtful. 



Lawson, who passed through their ter- 

 ritory in 1701, speaks of them as a "pow- 

 erful nation" and states that their vil- 

 lages were very thick. He calls the two 

 divisions, which were living a short dis- 

 tance apart, by different names, one the 

 Kadapau an<l the other the Esaw, un- 



aware of the fact that the two were syno- 

 nyms. From all accounts they were for- 

 merly the most populous and most im- 

 portant tribe in the Carolinas, excepting 

 the Cherokee. Virginia traders were 

 already among them at the time of 

 Lawson' s visit. Adair, 75 years later, 

 says that one of the ancient cleared fields 

 of the tribe extended 7 m., besides which 

 they had several smaller village sites. In 

 1728 they still had 6 villages, all on Ca- 

 tawba r., within a stretch of 20 m., the 

 most N. being named Nauvasa. Their 

 principal village was formerly on the w. 

 side of the river, in what is now York 

 CO., S. C, opposite the mouth of Sugar 

 cr. The known history of the tribe till 

 about 1760 is chiefly a record of petty 

 warfare between themselves and the Iro- 

 quois and other northern tribes, through- 

 out which the colonial government tried 

 to induce the Indians to stop killing one 

 another and go to killing the French. 

 With the single exception of their alli- 

 ance with the hostile Yamasi, in 1715, 

 they were uniformly friendly toward the 

 English, and afterward kept peace with 

 the United States, but were constantly at 

 war with the Iroquois, Shawnee, Dela- 

 wares, and other tribes of the Ohio valley, 

 as well as with the Cherokee. The Iro- 

 quois and the Lake tribes made long 

 journeys into South Carolina, and the 

 Catawba retaliated by sending small scalp- 

 ing parties into Ohio and Pennsylvania. 

 Their losses from ceaseless attacks of their 

 enemies reduced their numbers steadily, 

 while disease and debauchery introduced 

 by the whites, especially several epi- 

 demics of smallpox, accelerated their de- 

 struction, so that before the close of the 

 18th century the great nation was reduced 

 to a pitiful remnant. They sent a large 

 force to help the colonists in the Tusca- 

 rora war of 1711-13, and also aided in 

 exi^editions against the French and their 

 Indian allies at Ft Du Quesne and else- 

 where during the French and Indian 

 war. Later it was proposed to use them 

 and the Cherokee against the Lake tribes 

 under Pontiac in 1763. They assisted 

 the Americans also during the Revolution 

 in the defense of South Carolina against 

 the British, as well as in Williamson's 

 expedition against the Cherokee. In 

 1738 smallpox raged in South Carolina 

 and worked great destruction, not only 

 among the whites, but also among the 

 Catawba and smaller tribes. In 1759 it 

 appeared again, and this time destroyed 

 nearly half the tribe. At a conference at 

 Albany, attended by delegates from the 

 Six Nations and the Catawba, under the 

 auspices of the colonial governments, a 

 treaty of peace was made between these 

 two tribes. This peace was probably final 

 as regards the Iroquois, but the western 



