the Tuscarora ("Mongoack") lived west of the Atlantic Ocean coastline and the Medano Hispanis ("Hispanic Dunes")
Source: Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Virginiae item et Floridae Americae provinciarum, nova descriptio (by Jodocus Hondius, c.1633)
The Tuscarora who lived in what became known as northeastern North Carolina spoke an Iroquoian language, as did the Meherrin and Nottoway to the north. Algonquian-speaking tribes occupied the territory to the east, south of the Dismal Swamp and stretching to the Atlantic Ocean.
The first Europeans encountered by the Tuscarora were Spanish sailors in the early 1500's. A map published around 1633 shows Medano Hispanis (Hispanic Dunes) between the Tuscarora and ocean. The English first started to establish the Roanoke colony in 1584. They explored up the Chowan River, and after 1587 some of the "Lost Colony" settlers may have found refuge with the Tuscarora.1
Tuscarora towns were concentrated on the Pamlico, Neuse, Roanoke, and Tar Rivers, with people living north to the territory of the Nottoway and south to the Cape Fear River. Their agricultural lifestyle was similar to other tribes living on the Coastal Plain and the Piedmont. In their Iroquoian language, the tribe was called "Skarureh" or "hemp people," referring to the milkweed which was used to make fibers. At the time of European contact, as many as 25,000 people may have lived in 24 towns.2
Rev. Morgan Jones claimed to have been captured by the Tuscarora in 1660. He had been sent by Virginia's newly-reinstalled royal governor, William Berkeley, to meet new colonists settling at Port Royal in what became South Carolina. The ship wrecked, and after months with no rescue Jones and his fellow travelers left the coastline and walked north through the forests and sandy plains. The Tuscarora were preparing to execute Jones until he exclaimed in his native Welsh language:3
Supposedly Welsh sailors had arrived in North America 300 years before Christopher Columbus, and among the Tuscarora Rev. Jones had encountered a visiting "Sachim of the Doegs" who still spoke the language. He claimed he was ransomed and spent several months with the Tuscarora and Doegs, speaking in that language and preaching three times a week, before returning home.
The myth of early Welsh settlement was popular in England because it established a Right of Discovery claim which preceded the Spanish claim to the land. The story told by Rev. Jones morphed over time, with the Doegs (a tribe from northern Virginia) placed at a later date on the Missouri River. How the shipwrecked group walked from the South Carolina coastline to the Missouri River, or even into Tuscarora territory, is not part of the tale.4
John Lederer met the Tuscarora in 1670 on his second journey westward and south into Carolina. On July 14, 1670 he entered town of Katearas (perhaps modern Raleigh, North Carolina) and met the Tuscarora "emperor" Kaskusara (also called Kaskou). He quickly left, fearing for his safety, and reached the town of Kawitziokan two days later. On July 18 he passed by the town of the Nottoway and returned to the Appomattox River.
John Lawson also traveled through the Tuscarora territory in 1700, coming north from Charles Town. At the time there may have been 1,600 warriors living in 16 towns.
Though both the Tuscarora and Cherokee spoke Iroquoian languages, they were fierce enemies and constantly at war. When the colonists tried to arrange a peace between them, the Cherokee responded that:5
The expansion of English settlement in northeastern Carolina disrupted the Tuscarora. The arrival of Quakers from Virginia, fleeing from Governor William Berkeley's religious oppression, caused fighting between 1664-1667. For the next three decades, the colonists remained east of the Chowan River. Starting in 1701, however, Virginia settlement expanded west of the Blackwater River and impacted the Meherrin tribe, who were allied with the Tuscarora.
The Tuscarora living in palisaded towns closer to Virginia on the upper Neuse, Tar, and Roanoke rivers, led by Chief Tom Blount, profited from trading furs with the Virginians. Those living further away from Virginia in the Lower Towns, led by Chief Hancock, experienced fewer benefits. The Lower Towns were six miles from the creek's confluence with the Neuse River, but later maps show Chief Hancock's Town far upstream near modern Wilson, North Carolina.
the Lower Towns led by Chief Hancock were further away from the colonists (but may have been located further downstream than shown on a 1733 map)
Source: East Carolina University, A New and Correct Map of the Province of North Carolina (by Edward Moseley, 1733)
The arrival of John Lawson and Baron Christoph von Graffrenreid with 400 Swiss colonists in 1710 exacerbated relationships. The colonists forced out the Native American residents in the town of Chattoka and started to build the town of New Bern. In response, the Tuscarora planned to move north to join the Haudenosaunee.
However, Pennsylvania officials did not endorse having the North Carolina tribe settle among the Shawnee and Conestoga. The colonial officials said that North Carolina would have to certify that the Tuscarora were good neighbors. North Carolina officials had no desire to lose the economic benefits of the fur trade with the Tuscarora, so the tribe's plans for moving north in 1710 were not successful.
The Tuscarora and other tribes in the Albemarle region being impacted by the colonists, including the Corees, Mattamuskeets, and Bear River Indians, attacked the town of Bath and settlements along the Cape Fear River starting on September 22, 1711. Timing of the attack was triggered by the Cary Rebellion earlier in 1711, when Governor Thomas Cary refused to relinquish his position to newly-appointed Governor Edward Hyde. Cary led the faction of Quakers centered around Bath, while Hyde represented the Anglicans who lived around Edenton in the Albemarle region. Governor Spotswood had to send Virginia militia to end the conflict.
At the start of the Tuscarora War, Baron Christoph von Graffrenreid was captured but released. Graffenried reported that Lawson was tortured before he was executed. De Graffenreid blamed the war on:6
the Tuscarora tortured and killed John Lawson in 1711 at the start of the Tuscarora War
Source: Wikipedia, Tuscarora War
The small militia in the Albemarle region called on Governor Alexander Spotswood in Virginia to provide assistance. He insisted in return that the lands south of the Virginia-Carolina border down to Albemarle Sound be transferred to control of the Virginia colony. That forced the Carolina settlers to ask for help from the population centered at Charles Town, in what was developing into South Carolina. They responded favorably and recruited an army of Native Americans from various tribes to attack the Tuscarora, led by Colonel John Barnwell.
In two phases, the Tuscarora were defeated in the 1711-13 Tuscarora War. The most significant battle was the colonists capture of the fort at Nooherooka, in which 950 Tuscarora were killed or captured:7
Source: Tryon Palace, The Tuscarora War: The Indian War that Reshaped Eastern North Carolina
Source: North Carolina Museum of History, Community Class Series: The Tuscarora War
During and after the war, about 1,500 Tuscarora moved north into Virginia before returning to their traditional lands along the Neuse River east of modern Raleigh, North Carolina. Most of the remaining Tuscarora who were not sold into slavery, also about 1,500 people, migrated north to New York. They settled next to the Onondaga and Oneida. In 1722 they were admitted to the council fire and the Five Nations became the Six Nations.
the Tuscarora lived between the Chowan and Neuse rivers, until they were displaced after the 1711-1713 Tuscarora War
Source: East Carolina University, A New and Correct Map of the Province of North Carolina (by Edward Moseley, 1733)
The group led by Chief Tom Wood was granted a 53,000 acre reservation in Bertie County, later known as Indian Woods. The Tuscarora Reservation was created officially on June 5, 1717.
The Tuscarora remaining in North Carolina were seen more as a resource rather than a threat. Chief Tom Blount died in 1739, but George Washington sent a letter to "King Blunt" in 1756 seeking to recruit men to fight the French. At the time, there were only 100 Tuscarora men remaining in North Carolina, but Washington managed to recruit several (plus Meherrin and Nottaway men) to come to Winchester.
In his appeal, he wrote:8
the Tuscarora reservation established for Chief Tom Blount's band was on the Roanoke River
Source: Library of Congress, To David Stone and Peter Brown, Esq.: this first actual survey of the state of North Carolina taken by the subscribers is respectfully dedicated (by Jonathan Price and John Strother, 1808)
Those remaining in North Carolina moved north in stages. In 1766, a delegation from New York walked to North Carolina and led most of those remaining to the Haudenosaunee lands. The Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department, William Johnson, reported that the group was threatened and robbed by colonists on the way north.
Most of the Tuscarora still living at Indian Woods migrated in New York in 1803. The North Carolina legislature negotiated a deal (later ratified by the US Senate) to confirm the legitimacy of leases on the reservation that had been signed by the Tuscarora until July 12, 1916. On that date the ownership of the land would officially transfer to the state. In 1831 the Tuscarora sold all remaining rights to that land.9
In New York, the Senecas arranged for the Tuscaroras to have a two square mile reservation on the Niagara River. The Seneca also arranged to use some of their annual annuities from the Federal government for construction of a sawmill on that site. The Tuscarora Reservation in Niagara County, New York is governed by a traditional Council of Chiefs and still includes the parcel from the Senecas.10
Not all Tuscarora migrated to New York. Those who remained in Robeson County, North Carolina faced continued discrimination as people of color. After the Civil War, state officials classified them as "Croatan Indians" but they managed to avoid ben lumped in with those given the Lumbee designation.
The Federal census in 1900 and 1910 classified people as "Indian," establishing the basis for modern acknowledgement on Tuscarora identity. By the 2000's, there were four communities in Robeson County: Tuscarora Nation East of the Mountain, Tuscarora Tribe of North Carolina, Southern Band Tuscarora Indian Tribe, and Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina. The Maxton, Prospect, and Saddletree longhouses in North Carolina have banded together as the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, but each longhouse continues to operate as an individual organization. Membership in the United Katehnuaka longhouse is open to any Eastern North Carolina Native American, regardless of tribal affiliation.11
Within North Carolina there was one Federally-recognized tribe (Eastern Band of Cherokee) and seven state recognized tribes, but none of the Tuscarora communities are officially recognized. The North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs rejected a request for state recognition in 2019. State officials consider those claiming to be Tuscarora as members of the Lumbee Tribe that North Carolina recognized in 1885. The Lumbee have opposed official acknowledgement of the Tuscarora as a "splinter group."
In 2025, in another attempt to get state recognition, the Tuscarora Indians of Kahtenuaka Territories was created. The four longhouses initially agreed to join and create a unified government because it was most likely to lead to state recognition. The effort failed after several longhouses objected to the primacy of the United Katehnuaka longhouse and the involvement of a General Assembly legislator who championed state recognition. In the end, the 1,200 Tuscarora in the state were invited to join and create a "nation of individuals."12
the Tuscarora migrated from North Carolina into territory of the Onondaga and Oneida
Source: Smithsonian Institution, Haudenosaunee Guide for Educators
During the American Revolution, the Oneida and Tuscarora supported the rebelling Americans while the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca allied with the British. The 1783 Treaty of Paris made no provision for ending hostilities with the Native American allies of the British. The United States signed a peace treaty with the Haudenosaunee in 1784. The state of New York then signed several separate treaties with various tribes. In a treaty with the state signed at Fort Herkimer, the Oneida and Tuscarora ceded land in southern New York.
Because they had been allies during the American Revolution, the 1784 Treaty With the Six Nations did not require the Tuscarora to move in order to live on the first reservation established by the national government in the United States:13
Many of the Haudenosaunee moved north to Canada after the American Revolution. In 1784 Sir Frederick Haldimand, the governor of the Province of Quebec, set aside land in southern Ontario "six miles deep" on the Grand River as a reservation for those who fled from New York.
The Six Nations of the Grand River reservation today includes 46,000 acres, a small percentage of the original 950,000 acres identified in the Haldimand Treaty of 1784. With 29,000 people, it is the "the most populous First Nation in Canada" in Canada.
Three of the six tribes are defined as Elder Brothers for discussions in council. The Cayuga and Oneidas are Younger Brothers, and the Tuscarora can speak only through the voice of the Cayuga.14
in 1784 Sir Frederick Haldimand set aside land six miles deep on either side of the Grand River for the Haudenosaunee who had supported the British in the American Revolution
Source: Six Nations of the Grand River, The Haldimand Treaty of 1784
the Tuscarora Reservation on the Roanoke River was created for Chief Blount's band after the 1711-1713 Tuscarora War
Source: University of North Carolina, A Compleat map of North-Carolina from an actual survey (by John Collet, 1770)