Europeans Settle Into North Carolina

I'm prepping for our trip into North Carolina to visit the Chimney Rock area.  Now, the setting for "The Last of the Mohicans" story was in what would become New York, but the film was made in North Carolina.  The backdrop for the story was the French and Indian War, so that's kinda what I'm gonna focus on here.

Just after the death and resurrection of Christ people were known to have been living in the area we now called North Carolina.  By 1000 A.D. the Mississippian culture was established.  They were not nomadic Indians, and over the succeeding 600 or so years they built large cities.  They weren't sedentary, though, because they had huge networks of trading contacts they maintained.

Some of the individual tribes were the Chowanoke, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, Coree, and Cape Fear Indians.  These tribesmen spoke Algonquin.  The Meherrin, Cherokee, Tuscarora, Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamay and Catawba spoke Iroquois.

Then in 1584, ol' Sir Walter Raleigh shows up and establishes two settlements (one of those being the famous "Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island), but both attempts end in failure.  Over the next 50 years, European Virginias began moving south into the Albemarle Sound area along the coast.  In 1663 the King of England, Charles the II, granted a charter to begin yet another settlement named Carolina.

The population didn't start to grow until the 1730's when folks from other colonies up north began to look for more land to settle.  Getting into the Piedmont area of Carolina wasn't too easy, though, because the rivers were shallow and full of waterfalls.  They were good for farming and powering mills, but not for travel.  Most traffic was on the Great Indian Trading Path that started in Petersburg, in the colony of Virginia and ended in what is now known as Mecklenburg County in the Piedmont area of the Carolina colony.  Otherwise, settlers used the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road that came down through the Shenandoah Valley.  (See one of our earlier posts about the road.)  They were the American descendants of original German and Scotch-Irish immigrants.  They came to the Carolina colony in such numbers that six new counties were created in the Piedmont between 1746 and 1763.  Throughout the French and Indian War, the English descendants (Quakers and Baptists) also came from central Virginia to the Carolina colony.

The French and Indian War lasted from 1754 to 1763.  It was all about the King of France and the King of England trying to end up with the most land in America.  (They were already at war with each other in Europe in what is known as the Seven Years War.)  Right off the bat Carolina raised an army of 2,000 men to fight.  (That was a lot since estimates on the population of the Carolina colony was only 36,000-ish.)

On the 4th of July, 1754, George Washington had to surrender Fort Necessity in the Pennsylvania colony.  A force containing men from the Carolina colony marched north and joined up with Washington in the Maryland colony where they built Fort Cumberland.

By 1757, the English and colonists weren't faring too well against the French and those Indians that had chosen to side with the French.  The Cherokee sided with the English because the English promised to build and supply forts in an effort to protect the Cherokee settlements from Shawnee attacks.  One fort was built at Bethabara (see our earlier posts about Bethabara), and others built around Carolina were Fort Prince George, Fort Loudoun, two forts named Fort Dobbs, and Fort Granville.

Late in 1758, some Carolinians and Cherokee helped capture Fort Duquesne (what we now know as downtown Pittsburgh.)  The Cherokee felt wronged somehow in the way they were treated in that campaign and over the next several months decided to switch sides

1759, saw Cherokee raids on Carolina settlements on the Catawba and Yadkin Rivers.  Folks in the southern Carolinas made the Cherokee accept a treaty, but (duh) it didn't last.  (How can you force someone to make peace?  You can make them stop warring, but that's not the same as peace.)

1760 could be known as the year of massacres.  In January and February the Cherokee raided throughout the Carolina backcountry and killed everyone they found.  They laid siege to Fort Loudoun, and an attempt by English forces to reinforce the fort in July failed.  The fort was surrendered to the Cherokee in August - resulting in its commander and most of the garrison being massacred.  THIS sounds like the movie version of "The Last of the Mohicans."  (Again I say, all Native Americans were NOT kumbaya kinda Indians.)

Actions by the British in 1761 - like destroying 15 Cherokee towns and 1,400 acres of their corn - caused the Cherokee to want the peace this time, and by December they signed the treaty.

Ultimately, the British won the French and Indian War, and the Treaty of Paris in 1763 officially ended it and the Seven Years War in Europe.  The huge financial cost of these wars resulted in England levying what colonist's thought were unfair taxes on them - ultimately leading to the colonist's war for independence from England.