Catawba Indian Pottery: The Survival of a Folk Tradition

2. A Family Economy Based on Pottery

2 A Family Economy Based on Pottery With the coming of the white man the Catawba faced immediate economic disaster based ¤rst on disease. When Hernando De Soto visited the Nation in 1540, contagion had already begun a catastrophic population decline (Robertson 1993:83). Most of the epidemics the Catawba Nation endured are barely recorded (Dobyns 1983), but we do know that in the smallpox visitation of 1759, the Catawba lost half their population. Periodic disasters began in 1539 before de Soto’s arrival at Co¤tachiqui and ended with the in®uenza epidemic of 1918 (South Carolina Gazette, 15 December 1760:1; Record, 7 October 1918:5; Evening Herald, 10 October 1918:3). Children were orphaned and women were left to raise families alone. Peter Harris’s family fell victim to the 1759 epidemic and he was taken in and raised by the Spratt family (Spratt n.d.:64). Other examples of this sort abounded but went unrecorded as families struggled to care for their own as best they could. By the time the Catawba in the eighteenth century ¤rst visited the Virginia Colony to settle a business deal, their fate had already been long sealed. Yet, even though the Indians had endured much in the way of tragedy, the European settlers met con¤dent men (Passport 1715). Although greatly reduced in number by the introduction of European disease, the Catawba still possessed a culture that satis¤ed all their basic needs. Their huge land holdings included much of the territory from South Carolina through Central North Carolina into Southern Virginia in the area around modern Danville. The Catawba Nation staved off attacks from their Native American neighbors but they had undoubtedly heard that strife also occurred between the Powhatan Confederation and the English. Potential struggles aside, eagerness to improve their material culture led the Catawba to journey north to trade for a wondrous new commodity—iron (Richter 2001:41–63). A business deal was soon made between the Virginians and the Catawba Nation (Brown 1966:48–58), and the fate of the Catawba was sealed. The Catawba had little that the Europeans wanted and a truly equitable balance in trade was never established. The woodland resources the Indians offered, mainly animal skins, were soon depleted. A second resource that came into full play was the trade in Indian slaves. This traf¤c had a devastating effect on the Catawba and their neighbors. The Native American population was quickly decimated beyond the losses suffered from 1521 to 1690. The erosive forces of the slave trade were combined with repeated epidemics and the demoralizing effects of another new commodity, alcohol. In time, the Catawba men were left unemployed, and a profound feeling of hopelessness set in. Despair intensi¤ed when the Indian wars began to reach genocidal proportions. This was especially true when the Catawba faced the fury of the Iroquois (Brown 1966:262 ff), when, for the ¤rst time in Catawba history, the Catawba defenses were inadequate. The destruction of the Nation’s con¤dence was nearly complete when the unemployed Catawba men were occupied in the ignoble pursuit of runaway Negro slaves for cash (Gazette of the State of Georgia, 10 May 1787:2). As the Native American economy was destroyed, it was replaced by a European emphasis on money and production (Richter 2001:41–53). At the end of the French and Indian War, the land of the Catawba Nation was surrounded by settlers (Hewatt 1961). In a valiant attempt to save their resources, the Catawba signed the Treaty of Pine Tree Hill in 1760 and the Treaty of Augusta in 1763. The Indians surrendered millions of acres to the Europeans, but they retained their ancient hunting rights to all of South Carolina. They naively thought their economy was safe, and that they could manage with their 144,000acre reserve. The eighteenth-century record is replete with accounts of white farmers attacking Catawba hunting parties (Bull, A Proclamation . . . , 1770; Bull, A Proclamation . . . , 1771). The Indians were beaten, their forest products destroyed or stolen. As a result, the Catawba could no longer follow their old occupation of hunting. Fishing took up some of the slack, but the Catawba had long depended on a mixed hunting and gathering economy supplemented by some farming. The traditional Indian farming methods could not compete with the young and hearty plantation system. So dismal was the situation that many Catawba despaired of farming. The Catawba slipped into a long economic decline. Fortunately for...