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A Note from the Author
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211 A Note from the Author This was the first time biography played a major role in my historical writing. So as I got closer to these eight men—Christopher de Graffenried, King Hancock, Core Tom, William Brice, Col. John Barnwell, Thomas Pollock, King Tom Blount, and Col. James Moore—the more my preconceived notions about them changed. Of course, the most mysterious of all of them are the Indians—King Hancock, Core Tom, and Tom Blount. The problem is one facing all historians writing Indian history in that the Indians left few written records, and what is written about them was by Europeans, who were often their enemies. The little information we have on Hancock and Core Tom mainly comes from De Graffenried. Fortunately, he was an eyewitness to the events. Even then, his memoirs and reports seem to have been written later in his life. The only information on Blount comes from the official records written on the spot by Pollock or Spotswood. But rarely do these officials delve deep into the man’s psyche. So I have tried to read between the lines and call on the many studies done by ethnohistorians, anthropologists, and archaeologists about Indian life and culture. After all, this is as much an Indian story as it is a North Carolina colonial story. The more I read, the more I came to see King Hancock as a conflicted leader, a man trying to keep both the peace and his standing, but eventually unable to do either. Core Tom, the most puzzling of them all, bound by his hatred of the English , was ready to fight, even if it brought destruction to his people. Though the evidence is circumstantial, I am ready to believe he was performing Seneca diplomatic manipulation at the trial of Lawson. Blount faced the dilemma that almost every Indian leader up to 1890 faced: war or accommodation? Hancock, Core Tom, Tecumseh, Sitting Bull, Geronimo all went with war—and look where it got them. Blount, John Ridge, Red Cloud, Spotted Tail all went with accommodation, essentially tributary status. Their people survived, but just barely and often in poverty and ill health. Who made the better choice is up for interpretation. Maybe it was like the Old Man’s response in Catch-22 when Lt. Nately asked him if he had ever heard the saying “better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees.” Nately had it backward, the Old Man chided, “it is better to live on one’s feet than die on one’s knees.” De Graffenried’s own writings reveal him as a sour man who did not work well with others. Failures were never his fault. Still, he led his Palatines and Swiss to North Carolina, suffered all the same privations they did, tried to fight for them, lived through a terrifying Indian captivity, sacrificed his reputation to help his colony , and even then found he could not protect his charges. Despite his best efforts and absolutely no support, he eventually gave up and went home. Abandoning his 212 / A Note from the Author colony does not endear him to us. But by that time his colonists and North Carolina were glad to be rid of him, and he of them. That his last years were peaceful ones and he died at home in Switzerland among his family is a tribute to him. Col. John “Tuscarora Jack” Barnwell was an intriguing person. It is mainly through the letters he wrote during his Tuscarora campaign that we get to know him and how that part of the war played out. On one hand, he is friendly and often softhearted. On the other, he is hot-tempered, a slave-taker, given to violence and murder. His burning alive the Kenta captives and dismembering Harry the runaway black slave seems sadistic. Of course, the biggest question about Barnwell is whether he was the one who attacked and enslaved the Indians at Core Town after he had made a truce with them. Historians differ. That the Indians at Core Town were attacked after the truce is beyond dispute. I went into my research willing to believe it was Barnwell. But now I think it was done by North Carolinians, and probably William Brice had a hand in it. I just have to think that those four hundred Indian captives Governor Hyde crowed about in late May 1712 had to come from the Core Town attack. Had Barnwell...