To the Editor:

Prior to contact with Europeans, the Tuscarora made a living by hunting and gathering, farming, and periodically operating fishing camps along the Carolina coast in seasonal and cyclical patterns.

According to local tourism guides, “Before the English Settlers arrived in the Cape Fear area in the 1700s, Carolina Beach, like many stretches of the southeastern NC coastline – was inhabited by small pockets of the Tuscarora Indians.”

As settlers moved west of the Cape Fear River, the ancestors of the Tuscarora Nation were driven off former treaty lands and territories into the swamps and creeks in regions unoccupied by settlers and hostile Indigenous rivals.

This encroachment from settlers disrupted the typical ecological systems and infrastructure making up Tuscarora lifeways and alliances with neighboring nations.

Since the end of the Tuscarora Wars, the NC Assembly has intentionally restricted, altered and oppressed the basic human rights of the Tuscarora People.

Furthermore, prominent historical Tuscarora families were targets of these abuses and disenfranchisement during the late 1800s and its history is rooted in Fort Fisher, Wilmington.

The infamous family and extended relatives of Tuscarora Nation ancestor, Henry Berry Lowry, that lived in what was then known as Scuffletown, experienced discrimination and physical abuse at the hands of the local Confederate Home Guard.

In 1864, Allen and William Lowry, the father and elder brother of Henry Berry, had their home forcibly entered, were arrested on unfound charges, and belongings seized and plundered while their family was held against their wills on a nearby estate.

Firsthand accounts by members of the family and other eyewitnesses explain that the Lowrys were served a hasty trail of sorts and then forced to dig their own graves at gunpoint before being shot execution style.

Mary and Sinclair Lowry testified that this altercation occurred because the Home Guard resented their family for resisting the clutches of the Confederate conscription camps at Fort Fisher.

In retaliation for the discrimination displayed by the Home Guard, Henry Berry and his relatives and allies took up arms and performed a series of raids to enact justice for crimes against Tuscarora families in Robeson County.

One of the end results of the Lowry War was the reinstatement of rights that had been disenfranchised decades prior as part of the state’s attempt to appropriate Indian land and open it up for settlement.

Today, the Tuscarora Nation continues to strive to reverse historical and modern state legislation that marginalizes its communities that have remained in NC to the present.

House Bill 699 was introduced to rectify the legacy of challenges, historical trauma and prejudice placed upon the Tuscarora People of North Carolina by prior state and federal laws.

With your open mind and support, the Tuscarora Nation could one day open the door to reconciling past and ongoing injustices.

Donnie Rahnàwakęw McDowell

Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina