First Inhabitants

Dr. Joe Sutton

Challenges and risks awaited early eighteenth century settlers who arrived in the unsettled Bucklesberry Pocosin of then old Craven County. According to historian and author Dr. Lindley S. Butler, PhD, "The backcountry was the last area of the State to be settled and, consequently, the most volatile region of North Carolina society for many years." 

Fueling the volatility was unrest among native Indians, who were indisputably the first inhabitants of the backcountry. Long before European settlers began migrating inland from the coastal areas, native Indians occupied North America. To them, settler encroachment represented an unwarranted land grab. Further, they viewed settlers as interlopers who threatened their societal culture and mores.

"The European discovery and settlement of the Carolina region," wrote historian William G. DiNome, "signaled an era of radical change for local Indians, one marked by the toppling of the previous Indian way of life..." In an effort to protect their culture and the land they believed was theirs, the Indians fought back. 

The most populous and powerful Indians in eighteenth century North Carolina were the Cherokee and the Tuscarora, both Iroquoian tribes. The Cherokee occupied the Blue Ridge Mountain region in the western part of the State while the Tuscarora dwelled along the coast and in the central Piedmont areas, which included the Bucklesberry area.

Tuscarora resistance against encroachment came to a head with the Tuscarora War of 1711-1713. The culminating battle occurred a few miles north of Bucklesberry in present-day Snow Hill, NC. "The once great and powerful Tuscarora Nation was broken into pieces when their final stronghold, Fort Neoheroka, was burned to the ground," explained Sara Whitford, "a major blow to the Tuscarora, one from which the nation would never fully recover."

Although approximately 950 Tuscarora Indians were killed or enslaved in the defeat, according to Roberta Estes of the Native Heritage Project, "about 1,500 Tuscarora fled to NY to join the Iroquois Confederacy [while] as many as 1,500 additional Tuscarora sought refuge in the colony of VA, " Further, "perhaps as many as 3,000 by some counts, fled into the swamps of NC...to hide out for many years to save their families."

A remnant of Tuscaroras remained in their hunting territory villages along the Neuse and Cape Fear Rivers after the war. They had a continued presence in Johnston County, which was carved out of old Dobbs County in 1746, and from which Wayne, Lenoir, and Jones Counties were eventually formed:

"From time immemorial to the eighteenth century, there were Indian villages and Indian trails in the upper Neuse River region of North Carolina that became the land of Johnston County. Early English explorers and settlers who penetrated this region in the middle 1700’s or earlier moved along Indian trails even as they were guided by the course of the Neuse River in traveling west from New Bern." (Johnston County Visitors Bureau)

Since the Bucklesberry Pocosin was located on the north side of the Neuse River, some aging and next-generation Tuscarora Indians doubtless were living in or near there when early settlers began trickling into the area. Not in great numbers, they resided in isolated villages. As colonization was well underway in the backcountry by the mid-1700s, settlers remained on alert for lingering Indian attacks, although most had ended by 1725.

Next month's article will focus on the Suttons, early settlers of Bucklesberry. Interested readers can access a previously published Bucklesberry article titled "Trouble in Paradise" at https://t.ly/RX02k.