Lumbee

The Lumbee are a Native American tribe of North Carolina, though their origins are disputed. While Lumbees today identify ethnically as Indians, according to documentary sources they are in origin a mixture of European American, African-American, and Native American. The name "Lumbee" derives from that of the Lumber River (or Lumbee River) that winds through Robeson County.

Ancestors of the present-day Lumbee were first recognized by the State of North Carolina in 1885 as Croatan Indians, and have been requesting benefits from the federal government since 1888. In 1956, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill, HR 4656, better known as the Lumbee Act, which recognized the Lumbee as a Native American tribe. The Lumbee Act denied the federal aid that comes with full status as a federally recognized tribe. The Lumbee are not eligible to re-apply for federal recognition.

Origins and legends

The first recorded reference as to the origins of the present-day Lumbee population was made in a petition by 36 white Robeson County residents in 1840, in which they described ancestors of the Lumbee as being a "free colored" population that migrated originally from the districts round-about the Roanoke and Neuse Rivers (Sider's "Living Indian Histories" page 173). The first attempt at assigning any specific tribal designation to them was made in 1867 when, under investigation by Lieutenant Birney of the Freedmen's Bureau for the murder of several Lumbee ancestors, pastors Coble and McKinnon wrote a letter claiming descent of the Lowry gang from Tuscarora: "They are said to be descended from the Tuscarora Indians. They have always claimed to be Indian & disdained the idea that they are in any way connected with the African race." In 1872 George Alfred Townsend published "The Swamp Outlaws" in reference to the famed Lowrie Gang. Townsend described Henry Berry Lowrie, the leader of the gang, as being of mixed Tuscarora, mulatto, and white blood: "The color of his skin is of a whitish yellow sort, with an admixture of copper- such a skin as, for the nature of its components, is in color indescribable, there being no negro blood in it except that of a far remote generation of mulatto, and the Indian still apparent." Townsend also stated in reference to Pop Oxendine that "Like the rest, he had the Tuscarora Indian blood in him...If I should describe the man by the words nearest my idea I should call him a negro-Indian gypsy." Townsend's statements would be reiterated three years later in both the Memoirs of General Jno C. Gorman and in Mary Normant's "The Lowrie History."

In 1885, Hamilton McMillan theorized that the Lumbees were the descendants of England's "Lost Colony" who intermarried with the Hatteras, an Algonquian people. A number of other authors subsequently repeated McMillan's speculation as fact.

However, no extant evidence exists for "Lost Colony" origins. Of the many characteristically Lumbee names, few are shared with members of England's failed colony. While some modern day Lumbees continue to subscribe to this theory, the vast majority of Lumbees discredit the notion of "Lost Colony" origins.

In Robeson County, Lumbee ancestors were only officially classified as Indian after Reconstruction in 1885. Prior to 1885, Lumbee ancestors were usually described as colored, free colored, other free, mullato, mustie, mustees, or mixt blood in surviving records. Despite the lack of direct genealogical proof, various Department of Interior representatives such as Charles F. Pierce (1912), O.M. McPherson (1914), Fred Baker (1935), and D'Arcy McNickle (1936); various Smithsonian Institute ethnologists such John Reed Swanton (1930s), Dr. William Sturtevant (1960s), and Dr. Samuel Stanley (1960s); in conjunction with Anthropologists such as Gerald Sider and Karen Blu; describe the Lumbees as a Native American people.

In the first federal census of 1790, the ancestors of the Lumbee were enumerated as Free Persons of Color. The U.S. Census did not have an "American Indian" category for non-tribal Indians until 1870. Instead, it recorded tribal censuses separately from the federal census. Because the Lumbee ancestors were not formally organized as an Indian tribe until 1885, they were enumerated in the federal census, usually as "mulatto." Up until the 1960 census, census enumerators often categorized individuals themselves, thereby determining the race of a particular individual.

Genealogists Paul Heinegg and Dr. Virginia E. DeMarce have, using an array of primary source documents, been able to trace the migration of some primary Lumbee ancestral families from the Tidewater region in Virginia into Northeastern North Carolina and then down into present-day Robeson County, North Carolina. Taking historic racial classifications placed on these ancestral families at face value, Heinegg and DeMarce have theorized that ancestral Lumbees were the descendants of mixed-race unions of Europeans in Virginia, who then migrated south into North Carolina along common routes of colonial expansion.

In 1936, Carl Seltzer, a physical anthropologist engaged by the federal Department of the Interior, conducted an anthropometric study of several hundred Indian individuals in Robeson County. He determined that twenty-two were of at least half-Indian blood descent. In 1972, Dr. William Pollitzer published a combined anthropometric and serologic study of the Lumbee population. He estimated that the Lumbees have 47 percent African ancestry, 40 percent white, and 13 percent Indian. Many contemporary scientists question the validity of such studies for determining racial identities.

18th century

In 1754, a surveying party reported that Bladen County (which at that time contained what today is Robeson County) was "a frontier to the Indians." Bladen County abutted Anson County which at that time extended west into Cherokee territory. The same report also claimed that no Indians lived in Bladen County. Land patents and deeds filed with the colonial administrations of Virginia, North and South Carolina during this period reveal that Lumbee ancestors were migrating into southern North Carolina along the typical routes of colonial migration, and obtaining land deeds in the same manner as any other migrants.

In 1885, Hamilton McMillan wrote that Lumbee ancestor James Lowrie received sizeable land grants early in the century, and by 1738 possessed combined estates of more than two thousand acres (8 km²). Dial and Eliades claimed that John Brooks established title to over one thousand acres (4 km²) in 1735, and Robert Lowrie gained possession of almost seven hundred acres (2.8 km²). However, according to a state archivist, no land grants were issued during these years in North Carolina, and the first land grants to documented Lumbee ancestors would not occur until more than a decade later. On the other hand, author and historian Lew Barton notes that grants to Robert Lowry Sr. and Robert Lowry Jr. in 1694 and 1736 are recorded in The Colonial Records, Books I and III respectively. The Lumbee petition for federal recognition backed away from McMillan's claims.

Land records show that beginning in the second half of the 18th century, ancestral Lumbees took titles to land described in relation to Drowning Creek, and prominent swamps such as Ashpole, Long, and Back Swamp. The Lumbee settlement with the longest continuous documentation from the mid-eighteenth century onward is Long Swamp, or present-day Prospect, North Carolina. Prospect is located within Pembroke and Smith townships. According to James Campisi, the anthropologist hired by the Lumbee tribe, this area "is located in the heart of the so-called old field of the Cheraw documented in land records between 1737 and 1739." However, this appears to be pure conjecture on Campisi's part, as the Lumbee Siouan petition prepared by Lumbee River Legal Services in the 1980s clearly shows that the Cheraw old fields, which were sold to a Thomas Grooms in the year 1739, were actually located in South Carolina not far from the current day town of Cheraw, more than sixty miles from Pembroke.

Pension records for veterans of the American Revolution list men with Lumbee surnames such as Samuel Bell, Jacob Locklear, John Brooks, Berry Hunt, Thomas Jacobs, Thomas Cummings, and Michael Revels. And in 1790, ancestral Lumbees such as Cumbo, "Revils" (Revels), Hammonds, Bullard, "Lockileer" (Locklear), Lowrie, Barnes, Hunt, "Chavers" (Chavis), Strickland, Wilkins, Oxendine, Brooks, Jacobs, Bell, and Brayboy are listed as inhabitants of the Fayetteville District, and enumerated as "Free Persons of Color" in the first federal census.

Antebellum history

The year 1835 proved to be critical for Lumbee ancestors in North Carolina. The state passed amendments to its original constitution ratified in 1776 that abolished suffrage for "free people of color." Free people of color were stripped of various political and civil rights that they had enjoyed for almost two generations and thus could not vote, bear arms without a license, serve on juries, or serve in the state militia.

Anthropologist Gerald Sider tells of "tied mule" incidents in which a white farmer had only to tie his mule to the post of a neighboring Indian's land or let his cattle graze on the Indian's land. The white farmer then filed a complaint for theft with the local authorities who promptly arrested the Native farmer. "Tied mule" incidents were resolved with the Indian agreeing to pay a fine, or in lieu of a fine, by giving up a portion of his land, or agreeing to a term of labor service with the "wronged" white farmer. Sider never documented the occurrence of such an incident, instead reporting stories he had been told in the late 1960s. Robeson County land records do show an appreciable loss of Indian title to land during the 19th century, but mostly due to failure to pay taxes and other more common reasons. No tied mule incident has yet been discovered in Robeson County records.

In 1853, the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of North Carolina's ban on firearms with the conviction of Noel Locklear in the State v. Locklear for the illegal possession of firearms. But, in 1857, William Chavers, another Lumbee ancestor from Robeson County was arrested and charged as a "free person of color" with carrying a shotgun. Chavers, like Locklear, was convicted. Chavers promptly appealed, arguing that the law only restricted "free Negroes," not "persons of color." The appeals court reversed the lower court, finding that "free persons of color may be, then, for all we can see, persons colored by Indian blood, or persons descended from Negro ancestors beyond the fourth degree." Two years later, in another case involving a Lumbee ancestor from Robeson County, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that forcing an individual to display himself before a jury was the same as forcing him to provide evidence against himself. Most of the charges were brought by other members of the proto-Lumbee community, who used the racist laws to settle petty disputes amongst themselves. Overall however, the ambivalent legal and political status of Robeson County's free people of color only increased in the years leading up to and during the Civil War.

Civil War experiences

As the war progressed and the Confederacy began to experience increasing labor shortages, the Confederate South began to rely on conscription labor. A yellow fever epidemic in 1862-1863 killed many slaves working on the construction of Fort Fisher near Wilmington, North Carolina, then considered to be the "Gibraltar of the South." North Carolina's slave owners resisted sending more enslaved African-Americans to Fort Fisher. Robeson County began to conscript young free men of color. A few were shot for attempting to evade conscription, and others attempted to escape from work at Fort Fisher. Others succumbed to starvation, disease and despair.

Some Lumbee ancestors served in the Confederate army. Others tried to avoid coerced labor by hiding in the swamps. While hiding in the swamps, some Robesonians operated as guerillas for the Union, sabotaging the efforts of the Confederacy, and sought retribution against their Confederate neighbors.

The Lowrie Gang War

Perhaps the most famous Lumbee ancestor is Henry Berry Lowrie, who organized an outlaw group. Most of the gang members were related, including two of Henry Lowrie's brothers, six cousins (two of whom were also his brothers-in-law), the brother-in-law of two of his cousins, in addition to a few others who were not related through kinship. The Lowrie gang included not only formerly free men of color, but also freed slaves and whites.

The gang committed two murders during the Civil War, and were suspected of a number of thefts and robberies. After an interrogation and informal trial, Robeson County's Home Guard killed Henry Berry Lowrie's father and brother as Union General Sherman's army entered Robeson County. Shortly thereafter, Henry Berry Lowrie and his band stole a large stockpile of rifles intended for use by the local militia from the Lumberton courthouse.

Lumbee Jamie Oxendine and U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur during the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian.

Lowrie's gang avenged the deaths of his father and brother by killing several of the men responsible, one of whom was the sheriff of the county. The band stole two safes (one of which belonged to the sheriff), plundered the plantation storage bins and smokehouses of local elites, and gave the spoils to the poor Robesonians who had suffered at the hands of local elites.

In 1868, Lowrie and his band were outlawed and the reward for his capture climbed to $12,000, second only to that offered for Jefferson Davis. Robeson's elites and the governor of North Carolina requested the aid of Federal troops and federal detectives in the attempt to apprehend North Carolina's most famous outlaw. These efforts proved useless. Lowrie enjoyed wide support and he and members of his band were seen at public events. Reports of the Lowrie band's derring-do received national coverage; their exploits were featured in the New York Times and in Harper's Magazine. Lowrie's last-known feat occurred on February 16, 1872 when he and his band stole $20,000 worth of goods from a Lumberton, North Carolina store. They also managed to take the store's safe which contained approximately $22,000 in cash.

Most observers believe that Henry Berry Lowrie accidentally killed himself while cleaning his gun. Some members of the community, however, claimed to have seen Lowrie in various town locales long after news of his death was broadcast. The true cause of his death remains controversial, and thus a popular subject among local historians, gossips, and conspiracy theorists, to this day. All the members of the Lowrie band, save one, suffered violent deaths. One cousin and member of the gang, Henderson Oxendine, was publicly executed by the state of North Carolina]

The war that Lowrie gang waged against the Democrats in Robeson County had far-reaching consequences: the mulatto community developed a sense of itself as unique, possessed with a unique identity and history, while Henry Berry Lowrie became a culture hero to the Lumbee people.

Education and state recognition

North Carolina established its public education system in 1868. The following year, the state legislature approved a measure that provided separate schools for whites and blacks. Many Lumbee ancestors complied with the legislation and sent their children to Freedman's Bureau schools. Other formerly free people of color refused to enroll their children in schools for freed slaves. In Robeson County, this racialized impasse came to a halt when, in 1885, North Carolina formally recognized the formerly free people of color in Robeson County as "Croatan Indians." With state recognition, the Croatan Indians were able to petition for a school system for the exclusive use of tribal members where tribal members could exercise control over enrollment. That same year, the North Carolina General Assembly approved legislation which authorized a public school system for Indians.

Within the year, each Croatan Indian settlement in the county established a school "blood committee" that determined students' racial eligibility. Moreover, in 1887, tribal members petitioned the state legislature once again, this time requesting the establishment of a normal school to train Indian teachers for the county's tribal schools. North Carolina granted permission, and tribal members raised the requisite funds, along with some state assistance that proved woefully inadequate. Several tribal leaders donated money and privately-held land to the tribe on which to build their schools. In 1899, the first bill was introduced in Congress to appropriate funds to educate the Indian children of Robeson County. Another bill was introduced a decade later, H.R.19036, 61st Cong., 2d Sess., and yet another in 1911, S.3258, 62nd Cong., 1st Sess. In 1913, the House of Representatives Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing on S.3258 where the Senate sponsor of the bill reviewed the history of the Lumbee and concluded that they had "maintained their race integrity and their tribal characteristics.

Robeson County's Indian normal school eventually evolved into Pembroke State University and later still, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. By century's end, the Indians of Robeson County established schools in eleven of their principle Indian settlements.

Attempts to gain federal recognition

When the Croatan Indians petitioned Congress for educational assistance, their request was sent to the House Committee on Indian Affairs. It took two years for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, T.J. Morgan, to respond to the Croatan Indians of Robeson County, telling them that, "so long as the immediate wards of the Government are so insufficiently provided for, I do not see how I can consistently render any assistance to the Croatans or any other civilized tribes." The government's rejection of assistance to the ancestors of the Lumbee was based solely on economic considerations. For Commissioner T.J. Morgan, services would have been readily extended to "civilized" tribes like the Croatan were it not for the Commission's unhappy insufficiency of funds.

By the first decade of the twentieth century, congressional legislation was introduced to change the Croatan name and to establish "a school for the Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina." Charles F. Pierce, Supervisor of Indian Schools, investigated the tribe's congressional petition, reporting favorably that "a large majority [were] at least three-fourths Indian" as well as law abiding, industrious, and "crazy on the subject of education." Pierce also believed that federal educational assistance would be beneficial, but opposed any such legislation since, in his words, "[a]t the present time it is the avowed policy of the government to require states having an Indian population to assume the burden and responsibility for their education, so far as is possible. A later committee report undertaken in 1932 explicitly acknowledged that the federal bill of 1913 was intended to extend federal recognition on the same terms as the amended state law. Moreover, while the bill passed the Senate, but not the House, the chairman of the House committee also abrogated any assumption of direct educational responsibility to the Indians of Robeson County by the federal government since he felt that they were already eligible to attend Indian boarding schools; that the federal government was already meeting its responsibility to the Indians of Robeson County through Indian boarding schools such as Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

The next year, Special Indian Agent, O.M. McPherson, who investigated the tribe under the auspices of the U.S. Senate found that the Indians of Robeson County had already developed an extensive system of schools and a complex political organization to represent their interests. While he, like Pierce before him, noted that Robeson's Indians were eligible to attend federal Indian schools, he also doubted that these schools could meet their needs. Despite McPherson's recommendations, Congress decided not to act on the matter.

The Indian New Deal

With passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, the Indians of Robeson County redoubled their interrelated efforts at access to better education and federal recognition. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) sent the eminent anthropologist from the Bureau of American Ethnology, John R. Swanton, and Indian Agent Fred Baker to determine the origins and authenticity of the Indians of Robeson County. Swanton speculated that Robeson's Indians were of Cheraw and other eastern Siouan tribal descent.

At this point, the Lumbee population factionalized into two groups. One group supported the Cheraw theory of ancestry. The other faction believed that they were descended from the Cherokee tribe. North Carolina's white politicians threw up their hands, and abandoned the recognition effort until the two factions agreed on an identity.

The Lumbee Act

The "Lumbee Act," or HR 4656, which recognized the Lumbee as a tribe of Native Americans was passed by the U.S. Senate on May 21, 1956, by the House on May 24, 1956, and signed by President Dwight David Eisenhower on June 7, 1956. With ratification of the Lumbee Act, Congress designated the Indians of Robeson, Hoke, Scotland, and Cumberland counties as the "Lumbee Indians of North Carolina." HR 4656 also stipulated that "[n]othing in this Act shall make such Indians eligible for any services performed by the United States for Indians because of their status as Indians."

Petitioning for federal acknowledgment

In 1987, the Lumbees petitioned the U.S. Department of the Interior for federal acknowledgment, seeking full access to federal monetary benefits reserved for Native Americans. The petition was denied due to language in the Lumbee Act of 1956. The group then introduced a Recognition bill which also failed due to opposition from the Department of Interior, as well as opposition from recognized tribes. The Lumbees do receive funds from some federal programs; however due to language in the 1956 Act, they do not have full access to the funds granted to other recognized Native American tribes. The Lumbees continue to seek federal recognition today.

Ku Klux Klan conflict

Shortly after the Lumbee Act was passed, the Ku Klux Klan sought to wage a campaign of terror throughout the American South. The Klan primarily targeted African-Americans, but in 1957, Klan Wizard James W. "Catfish" Cole of South Carolina began a campaign of harassment against the Lumbee whom he felt had overstepped their place in the segregated Jim Crow South. Declaring the Lumbee to be "mongrels," a group of Klansmen burned a cross on the lawn of a Lumbee woman in the town of St. Pauls, North Carolina. The Klan issued their tell-tale "warning" because the woman was dating a white man. For two weeks, the Ku Klux Klan continued to attack the Lumbee community by burning crosses while Cole planned a massive Klan rally to be held on January 18, 1958, near the small town of Maxton, North Carolina. Cole predicted that 5,000 rallying Klansmen would remind the Lumbee of "their place." However, Cole's rhetorical attacks against the Lumbee and now, the plan to hold a Klan rally within the Lumbee homeland finally provoked enough anger in the Lumbee that they decided to meet the Klan.

Known today in Robeson County as the "Battle of Hayes Pond," or "the Klan Rout," the rally wherein 50 Klansmen (not the planned 5,000) were forced to flee the tribal homeland of 500 armed Lumbees made national news. Before Cole had a chance to begin the Klan rally, the Lumbee suddenly appeared, fanned out across the highway, encircled the Klansmen, and opened fire. Four Klansmen were wounded in the first volley – none seriously – while the remaining Klansmen panicked and fled. Cole reportedly escaped through a nearby swamp, but was later apprehended, charged, and convicted for inciting to riot for which he served a sentence of two years.

The Tuscarora Hypothesis

A significant minority of the Robeson County people today claim descent from the Tuscarora tribe. In the early 18th century, the Tuscarora tribe lived in what is today northeastern North Carolina. After the Tuscarora tribe lost a major war with the colonial forces in 1713, the Tuscaroras began an emigration north to New York, where they joined the Iroquois League. By 1802, the northern Tuscarora leaders felt that the emigration was complete, and that while some of their relatives had stayed behind, those people had intermarried with other races and ethnicities and were no longer tribal members. The position of the federally-recognized Tuscarora Nation since then has been that there are no Tuscaroras remaining in North Carolina, although it acknowledges that there may be some people of Tuscarora descent still living in the state.

There are several pieces of evidence showing that there are Tuscarora descendants among the Robeson county population. First, the migration trail of some of the Robeson families passed through counties in which the Tuscaroras had lived. This makes intermarriage with Tuscarora stragglers a possibility. Second, while the Henry Berry Lowrie gang was operating during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, several observers labeled the Lowrie family as being of partial Tuscarora descent. One local observer extended this label to additional unnamed families.

By the 1920s, some Robeson Indians who would later be recognized under the Indian Reorganization Act, had made contact with individual members of the Mohawk tribe, which is politically related to the Tuscarora tribe. A rural faction of the Robeson Indians began to express a Tuscarora identity. This faction split off from the Lumbee political entity, and strongly objected to the Lumbee name and to the Cheraw theory of ancestry. Various Tuscarora groups have formed, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs has declined to evaluate their petitions for federal recognition, on the grounds that the Lumbee Act precludes them from processing any petition from local Indian groups, regardless of their Tribal claims.

By the early 1970s, the last eight living individuals recognized by the United States as, "half or more Indian" in the 1930s, began the attempt of finalizing what had begun 40 years earlier, which was to form the nucleus of a "recognized tribe". This is when the BIA began to cite the Lumbee Act as reason to deny their requests, which caused the "22" to file a federal lawsuit. After two years, and an initial dismissal by the U.S. District court in Washington D.C., the "22" won in the Court of Appeals, what is now known as Maynor v. Morton. Since then, the government has once again taken it's "pre" Maynor stance, and has once again disallowed any Tuscarora petitions to be reviewed.

See also

• Native Americans in the United States
• Timeline of Lumbee history
• List of famous Lumbees
• Genealogical DNA test
• Roanoke Colony

References

Primary sources

Recognition

• Baker, Fred A. Report on Siouan Tribe of Indians in Robeson County, North Carolina. [National Archives and Records Administration RG 75. Entry 121. File no. 36208-1935-310 General Services].
• McPherson, O.M. Report on Condition and Tribal Rights of the Indians of Robeson and Adjoining Counties of North Carolina. 63rd Cong., 3rd sess., 5 January 1915. S. Doc. 677. Complete text at: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/mcpherson/menu.html
• Merrell, James H. to Charlie Rose, 18 October 1989, in “U.S. Congress, House Committee on Natural Resources,” ‘’Report Together with Dissenting Views to Accompany H.R. 334, 103rd Cong., 1st Sess., 14 October 1993, H. Rpt. 290.
• Pierce, Julian, J. Hunt-Locklear, Jack Campisi, and Wesley White, ‘’The Lumbee Petition’’, (Pembroke, NC: Lumbee River Legal Services, 1987).
• Seltzer, Carl C. "A Report on the Racial Status of Certain People in Robeson County, North Carolina." 30 June 1936. [NARA. RG 75, Entry 616, Box 13-15, North Carolina].
• Swanton, John R. "Probable Identity of the 'Croatan' Indians." [National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. MS 4126].

Conflict with Klan

• "Bad medicine for the Klan: North Carolina Indians break up Kluxers’ anti-Indian meeting." Life 44 (27 Jan. 1958): 26-28.
• "Cole Says His Rights Violated." Greensboro Daily News, 20 Jan. 1958: A1.
• Craven, Charles. "The Robeson County Indian Uprising Against the KKK," The South Atlantic Quarterly LVII (1958): 433-442.
• "Lumbee Indians put Klansmen to rout in ‘uprising’." The Amerindian [American Indian Review] 6.3 (Jan.-Feb. 1958): [1]-2.
• "The Lumbees Ride Again." Greensboro Daily News, 20 Jan. 1958: 4A.
• Morrison, Julian. "Sheriff Seeks Klan Leader's Indictment: Cole Accused of Inciting Riot Involving Indians and Ku Klux." Greensboro Daily News, 20 Jan. 1958: A1-3.
• "‘The Law’ Treads Lightly to Avert Maxton Violence." Robesonian, 20 Jan. 1958: 1.
• Ryan, Ethel. "Indians who crushed rally were mature tribesmen." Greensboro Record, 21 Jan. 1958: A1.

Miscellaneous

• Hariot, Thomas, John White and John Lawson (1999). A Vocabulary of Roanoke. Evolution Publishing: Merchantville, NJ. ISBN 1-889758-81-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) This volume contains practically everything known about the Croatan language spoken on Roanoke Island.
• McMillan, Hamilton. Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony: An Historical Sketch of the Attempts of Sir Walter Raleigh to Establish a Colony in Virginia, with the Traditions of an Indian Tribe in North Carolina. Indicating the Fate of the Colony of Englishmen Left on Roanoke Island in 1587. Wilson, NC: Advance Press, 1888. Text available at: http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/historyfiction/item.aspx?id=mcs
• Thomas, Robert K. "A Report on Research of Lumbee Origins." Unpublished manuscript. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Archives, 1976.
• U.S. Bureau of the Census. The First Census of the U.S.: 1790. Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States: North Carolina. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908.
• U.S. Bureau of the Census. We the People: http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html
• U.S. Congress, Senate. Recognition as Siouan Indians of Lumber River of certain Indians in North Carolina. 73rd Cong., 2d sess., 23 January 1934. S.Rpt. 204.
• ______. Relating to Lumbee Indians of North Carolina. 84th Cong., 2nd sess., 16 May 1956. S. Rpt. 2012.
• U.S. Bureau of the Census, ‘’2000 Census of Population, Social and Economic Characteristics: North Carolina’’ (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2002).

Secondary sources

• Anderson, Benedict . Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso; Revised edition, 1991.
• Anderson, Ryan K. "Lumbee Kinship, Community, and the Success of the Red Banks Mutual Association," American Indian Quarterly 23 (Spring, 1999): 39-58.
• Barth, Fredrik, ed. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969.
• Beaulieu, David L. "Curly Hair and Big Feet: Physical Anthropology and the Implementation of Land Allotment on the White Earth Chippewa Reservation." American Indian Quarterly 7: 281-313.
• Berry, Brewton. Almost White: A Study of Certain Racial Hybrids in the Eastern United States. New York, NY: MacMillan Company, 1963.
• Blu, Karen I. “Lumbee.” Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 14, Southeast. Ed. Raymond D. Fogelson. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004. Pages 319-327.
• ______. "'Reading Back' to Find Community: Lumbee Ethnohistory." In North American Indian Anthropology: Essays on Society and Culture, ed. by Raymond DeMallie and Alfonso Ortiz. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. 278-95.
• ______. The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
• ______. '"Where Do You Stay At?" Home Place and Community Among the Lumbee." In Senses of Place, ed. by Steven Feld and Keith Basso. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996. 197-227.
• Boyce, Douglas W. "Iroquoian Tribes of the Virginia-North Carolina Coastal Plain," in Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, vol. 15. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. 282-89.
• Brownwell, Margo S. "Note: Who Is An Indian? Searching For An Answer To the Question at the Core of Federal Indian Law." University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 34 (Fall-Winter 2001-2002): 275-320.
• Davis, Dave D. "A Case of Identity: Ethnogenesis of the New Houma Indians," Ethnohistory 48 (Summer 2001): 473-94.
• DeMarce, Virginia E. "Looking at Legends - Lumbee and Melungeon: Applied Genealogy and the Origins of Tri-Racial Isolate Settlements." National Genealogical Society Quarterly 81 (March 1993): 24-45.
• ______. "Verry Slitly Mixt': Tri-racial Isolate Families of the Upper South- A Genealogical Study," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 80 (March 1992): 5-35.
• Dial, Adolph L. ‘’The Lumbee (Indians of North America book series).’’ New York, NY: Chelsea House Publications, 1993.
• Dial, Adolph L. and David K. Eliades. The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee Indians. San Francisco, CA: Indian Historian Press, 1975.
• Dominguez, Virginia. White By Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.
• Evans, William McKee. To Die Game: The Story of the Lowry Band: Indian Guerillas of Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971.
• Feest, Christian F. "North Carolina Algonquians," in Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, vol. 15. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Insititution, 1978: 277-78,.
• Forbes, Jack D. Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
• Galloway, Patricia K. Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
• Garoutte, Eva M. Real Indian: Identity and the Survival of Native America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
• Hauptman, Lawrence M. "River Pilots and Swamp Guerillas: Pamunkee and Lumbee Unionists." In Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1995.
• Heinegg, Paul. Free African Americans oF Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina: From the Colonial Period to about 1820. Baltimore, MD: Clearfield, 2001. Available in its entirety at: freeafricanamericans.com
• Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. New York: Delacorte Press, 1969.
• Hudson, Charles M. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.
• Maynor, Malinda, “Native American Identity in the Segregated South: The Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina, 1872-1956,” ‘’PhD Dissertation’’. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2005.
• McCulloch, Anne M. and David E. Wilkins. '"Constructing' Nations Within States: The Quest for Federal Recognition by the Catawba and Lumbee Tribes." American Indian Quarterly 19 (Summer 1995): 361-89.
• McKinnon, Henry A. Jr. Historical Sketches of Robeson County. N.P.: Historic Robeson, Inc., 2001.
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External links

• Lumbee Language and the Lumbee Indian Culture
• The Lumbee Indians: An annotated bibliography
• "Lumbee for Kids"
• Strike at the Wind Outdoor Drama