The 55,000 members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina reside primarily in Robeson, Hoke, Cumberland, and Scotland counties. The Lumbee Tribe is the largest tribe in North Carolina. They take their name from the Lumbee River which winds its way through Robeson County. The ancestors of the Lumbee were mainly Cheraw and related Siouan-speaking Indians. One of the favorite activities of the many Lumbee families was sharing stories around the fire at night. More recently, Lumbee storytellers such as Barbara Braveboy Locklear, Barbara Locklear, Mardella Lowry, and Nora Dial-Stanley, carry on this ancient storytelling tradition to a much broader audience. The ancestors of the Lumbee tribe shared many stories with other local tribes such as the Cherokee, Creek, and Catawba. As the Lumbee people shared stories, they found that their sister tribes also told tales about "little wild spirit people", animals, the afterlife, and how our world came to be.

Jamestown, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, and Plymouth Rock are central to America's mythic origin stories. Then, we are told, the main characters--the "friendly" Native Americans who met the settlers--disappeared. But the history of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina demands that we tell a different story. As the largest tribe east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the country, the Lumbees have survived in their original homelands, maintaining a distinct identity as Indians in a biracial South. In this passionately written, sweeping work of history, Malinda Maynor Lowery narrates the Lumbees' extraordinary story as never before. The Lumbees' journey as a people sheds new light on America's defining moments, from the first encounters with Europeans to the present day. How and why did the Lumbees both fight to establish the United States and resist the encroachments of its government? How have they not just survived, but thrived, through Civil War, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and the war on drugs, to ultimately establish their own constitutional government in the twenty-first century? Their fight for full federal acknowledgment continues to this day, while the Lumbee people's struggle for justice and self-determination continues to transform our view of the American experience. Readers of this book will never see Native American history the same way.

"There's nothing happens to a person that can't be cured if you get what it takes to do it. We come out of the earth, and there's something in the earth to cure everything ... I don't fix a tonic until I'm sure what's wrong with a person. I don't make guesses. I have to be sure, because medicine can do bad as well as good, and I don't want to hurt anybody.... Maybe it takes some herbs. Maybe it takes some touching. But most of all, it takes faith"--Vernon Cooper, Lumbee healer. The Lumbee Indian tribe has lived in the coastal plain of North Carolina for centuries, and most Lumbee continue to live in rural areas of Robeson County with access to a number of healing plants and herbs used in the form of teas, poultices, and salves to treat common ailments. The first section of this book describes and documents the numerous plant and herbal remedies that the Lumbee have used for centuries and continue to use today. There are remedies for ailments relating to cancer (external and internal), the circulatory and digestive systems, the heart, hypertension and hypotension, infections and parasitic diseases, asthma, pregnancy, sprains, swellings, and muscle, skeletal and joint disorders, to name just a few. The second portion of this work records the words, recollections and wellness philosophies of living Lumbee elders, healers, and community leaders. The information presented in this book is not intended to be a substitute for the advice or treatment from a physician. The authors do not advocate self-diagnosis or self-medication, and warn that any plant substance may cause an allergic or extremely unhealthy reaction in some people.

With more than 50,000 enrolled members, North Carolina's Lumbee Indians are the largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi River. Malinda Maynor Lowery, a Lumbee herself, describes how, between Reconstruction and the 1950s, the Lumbee crafted and maintained a distinct identity in an era defined by racial segregation in the South and paternalistic policies for Indians throughout the nation. They did so against the backdrop of some of the central issues in American history, including race, class, politics, and citizenship. Lowery argues that "Indian" is a dynamic identity that, for outsiders, sometimes hinged on the presence of "Indian blood" (for federal New Deal policy makers) and sometimes on the absence of "black blood" (for southern white segregationists). Lumbee people themselves have constructed their identity in layers that tie together kin and place, race and class, tribe and nation; however, Indians have not always agreed on how to weave this fabric into a whole. Using photographs, letters, genealogy, federal and state records, and first-person family history, Lowery narrates this compelling conversation between insiders and outsiders, demonstrating how the Lumbee People challenged the boundaries of Indian, southern, and American identities.

With more than 40,000 registered members, the Lumbee Indians are the ninth largest tribe in the United States and the largest east of the Mississippi River. Yet, despite the tribe's size, the Lumbee lack full federal recognition and their history has been

In the summer of 1864, sixteen-year-old Rhoda Strong lives in the Lumbee Indian settlement of Robeson County, North Carolina, which has become a pawn in the bloody struggle between the Union and Confederate armies. The community is besieged by the marauding Union Army as well as the desperate Home Guard who are hell-bent on conscripting the young men into deadly forced labor. Daughter of a Scotsman and his formidable Lumbee wife, Rhoda is fiercely loyal to her family and desperately fears for their safety, but her love for the outlaw hero Henry Berry Lowrie forces her to cast her lot with danger. Her struggle becomes part of the community's in a powerful story of love and survival. Nowhere Else on Earth is a moving saga that magnificently captures a little-known piece of American history.

Includes "Index to The Carolina Indian Voice" for January 18, 1973-February 4, 1993 (p. 189-248).

Chicora, a young Lumbee girl, is awakened from her sleep by gruff giggling and little hands reaching through the flap of her home lodge. She attempts to tell the villagers of the appearance of the little people and the new corn. How can Chicora convince her tribe of the truth?

During the Civil War many young Lumbee Indians of North Carolina hid in the swamps to avoid conscription into Confederate labor battalions and carried on a running guerilla war. To Die Game is the story of Henry Berry Lowry, a Lumbee who was arrested for killing a Confederate official. While awaiting trial, he escaped and took to the swamps with a band of supporters. The Lowry band became as notorious as their contemporaries Jesse and Frank James, as they terrorized bush-whacked leaders of possses and military companies. For more than five years, with the support of local Indians and Negroes, they eluded capture. In 1872, Henry disappeared and some of his other followers were eventually hunted down and killed by bounty hunters.

Examines the history, culture, and current situation of the Lumbee Indians of the southeastern United States.