Shaping Tuscarora Identities and the Backcountry in the Eighteenth Century

Stephen Feeley 

Despite their dispersal at the end of the Tuscarora War in 1713, for much of the eighteenth century contacts continued between Tuscaroras living in a reservation in North Carolina and another band living among the Iroquois in New York. These ties took the form of two streams: one, of warriors journeying south in the company of Iroquois war parties striking against Catawba-allied tribes in Virginia and the Carolinas; the second, of emigrants who journeyed north to rejoin their kin living in Iroquoia. These contacts helped perpetuate a shared Tuscarora identification between the separate bands, but also exacerbated and created tensions. The existence of such links, and the flow of people that they represented, created problems and opportunities for colonial officials attempting to order frontiers.

[WP# 04CR005]