The Catawbas Were Nice to Me, which Is Kind of Amazing

Beckee Garris, visitor coordinator at the Native American Studies Center of the University of South Carolina-Lancaster and member of the Catawba Nation, points to a photo of an old Catawba cabin.

As I work my way through my writing of the book version of A Delicious Country, I have the pleasure or reliving some of my favorite parts of my journey retracing Lawson, though also sometimes in focusing on things not so pleasant. I've just been writing about my visit to the Native American Studies Center of the University of South Carolina Lancaster, where I received exactly the kind of welcome and hospitality Lawson did, though at the time (it was late March 2015) it was one of the stories I skipped telling because of its complexity. So reinvigorating my notes into narrative for the book has reminded me of both some vastly pleasant interactions and a rather terrible story. I'll briefly tell you about both.

Jered Canty of the Catawba Nation stands by the Catawba River, where he took a memorable walk with me.

About the interactions I'll just say that Chris Judge, Brent Burgin, and Beckee Garris of the center were almost staggeringly helpful and hospitable. About Burgin I have told you a bit here -- he walked with me in some memorable territory where we learned about Piedmont geology and gave me a piece of Catawba pottery I cherish. Judge joined me on a walk on Ivy Place, where we discussed land use and a bit of Catawba history. Most important, though, he introduced me to a bunch of area tribal higher-ups, among whom was Jered Canty, economic development assistant at the Catawba Nation. Canty took a walk with me along the Catawba River on the Catawba Indian Reservation that I will not soon forget. 

We met in the Native American Studies Center on a day of chief's meetings and other presentations. I had lost myself among the pots in the display gallery, while various other conversations occurred, when I realized that in a separate gallery someone was speaking publicly, sharing her experiences with the Catawbas, discussing her feelings about the Catawbas’ relationship with the earth, with their crops, and to be honest she was laying it on a little thick, as non-Indians sometimes do in their descriptions of our brethren the noble savages. I hung around the edge of the crowd and was getting ready to drift away when a response stopped me. The speaker had been talking about the Catawba heart, and the land, and she had said that their spiritual relationship to something or other was the heartbeat of the country. And one fellow, also near the back, said, “No, that’s Chevrolet.”

That stopped the woman for a moment, nonplussed, and I looked at him. Wearing a denim shirt, tight black jeans, and turquoise earrings, he had his thick, shiny black hair done into twin tight braids, one cascading down over each shoulder, framing the necklace of turquoise beads that hung on his chest. He could not have looked more like the white person’s stereotype of an Indian if he had been gazing at roadside litter with a single tear coursing down his cheek. The woman looked at him, and he smiled. “Chevrolet is the heartbeat of America,” he said. “Haven’t you seen the commercial?”

The woman gave a wan smile and carried on with her presentation. As for me, I had a new best friend. That was Jered Canty, and he was at that moment engaged in a campaign to be elected Assistant Chief of the Catawbas. He shook my hand and happily agreed to meet me at the Catawba reservation the next day and walk with me along the Catawba River on his reservation and tell me stories.

Which he did, of course, and we had a large time. We walked along the old roads that had been sidling along the river since Lawon's time -- and long before, and he tole me how he wanted a new generation of leadership to emerge for his tribe. There's more to say, and in the book I say it. But though I was grateful at the time, only now, as I've been writing, have I spent any real time with Catawba history. Regarding which, oy. So just listen to this for a second.

According to various censuses either taken or calculated before Lawson’s time, the Catawbas were the biggest tribe in the Piedmont, numbering 6,000 or so members in the century before Lawson came. Nearby tribes -- the Sugeree, Wateree, Congaree, Waxhaw, all mentioned by Lawson as he moves through -- probably numbered another couple thousand, though all would have been depleted by the time Lawson showed up, victims of the four riders of the Settler Apocalypse: slavery, disease, dispossession, and alcohol.

By Lawson’s time the number may have dropped to below 2,000, according to a chart in the Native American Study Center. By the time of King Hagler, whose story we had learned in Camden, the number of Catawbas had probably diminished to less than a thousand. So when in 1760 Hagler managed to get the crown to cede title to 144,000 acres of land, fully supported by survey and deed, that seemed like a godsend to the remnants of the tribes that were by then fully banded together as Catawba. (The original name of the group was yeh is’wah h’reh, meaning people of the river; Lawson mentions the Esaws, which were probably a part of the people, though he talks of the Catawbas too; it was a complicated time.)    

Before European contact? Who knows. By 1600 or so smallpox had been around, but even so by Lawson's time many estimaes place the Catawba population at 2,000 or more. By 1781? A hundred or so. Hey, welcome to our territory, new settlers!

Of course, though, the lingering Catawbas could never defend their land against Europeans who wanted to settle on it, so they began, trusting that power of ink on paper, to lease portions of it to settlers, in the hope they could coexist in that way. Yeah, right. As more settlers leased more land and the time of Indian Removal came in the early 1800s, Catawbas had less and less control of their land and less and less likelihood of regaining it. In 1840 what was left of the tribe agreed to a treaty with the state of South Carolina, yielding all claim to their territory for $5000. “They are, in effect, dissolved,” said then-governor David Johnson.

Importantly, the federal government never bothered to ratify the treaty. In 1934 with the Indian Reorganization Act the United States began trying to develop a reasonable Indian policy, though by the mid-1940s the country had reverted to old habits and adopted the aptly if horrifically named Indian policy of termination. Indians were encouraged to leave reservations, tribes were declared dissolved, and their land was absorbed by the federal government. In 1959 the United States officially ceased to recognize the Catawba tribe. In 1973 organized Catawbas began to fight back -- emerging from hiding, from diaspora, and from poverty much like the Santees' Peggy Scott described to us and filing for recognition. And in 1993 the Catawbas once again attained federally recognized status -- and a settlement of $50 million for the government’s failure to protect the tribe when the 1840 treaty came around. The current reservation, across the Catawba River and northwest of Lancaster, contains less than 5 square miles.

So how's that for backstory? Given which I can scarcely categorize Jered Canty's willingness to walk with me along the river as anything other than an act of hopefulness and belief. 

And, meanwhile, the Catawbas are tough customers. Their pottery remains beautiful as far as I can see, and they don't give up easy. Beckee Garris, who works at the Center, told me stories about her family growing up Catawba, and she told me about her experiences teaching Catawba language to kids on the reservation. Sometimes you meet people and you just don't even know how much you can admire them. It was some time ago, but thanks, Catawbas. And keep holding on. Maybe the rest of us can learn from you.