Aspects of Slavery and Freedom Seeking in North Carolina
North Carolina's Landscape, Native Americans and the Arrival of Europeans and Africans by Arwin Smallwood
General Landscape:
We are as much shaped by as we shape our landscape. Depending on whether that landscape is urban, suburban, or rural, who we are, and who we will become are all impacted by our surrounding landscape. The landscape and the human relationship to it tells us much about the history, life, and culture of this county and region of North Carolina.
Along the coast of North Carolina there is a broken chain of islands known as the Outer Banks which range in height from a few feet to a hundred feet above sea level. Among these islands is historic Roanoke Island, which was the site of the first English settlement in North America. The island is between two great sounds, the Albemarle and Pamlico. North Carolina’s five major rivers drain into these large sounds as well as several smaller sounds including the Currituck, Croatan, Roanoke, Boque, and Core.
These sounds, along with several inlets, including Currituck, Roanoke, Oregon, Hatteras, Ocracoke, Swash, Beaufort, Boque, and Topsail, are shallow and filled with shifting sands that make the waterways too treacherous for the large-scale commercial shipping the English desired when they arrived in the region in 1584.
However, the waterways were ideal for canoeing, which the coastal and inland Native Americans did in search for fish, crabs, clams, and an assortment of seashells. Trees found on the landscape were used to craft these canoes, make paddles, spears, bows, arrows and most importantly, to construct and protect their homes and families. They also used trees to make fires that were used to heat their homes, cook their meals, and to gather around for religious and social ceremonies.
Once cleared by slaves using slash-and-burn techniques, the county provided excellent land for large-scale farming that the English would introduce by the late 1600s. The soil was also ideal for growing wheat, tobacco and cotton in the 1700s and 1800s…
When the coastal region of North Carolina was settled by early colonists it became clear that heavily loaded ships would have difficulty navigating North Carolina’s coast. As a result, the Chesapeake Bay colony of southeastern Virginia drew more settlers than eastern North Carolina. Thus the North Carolina coast would retard the growth of the region throughout the colonial period.
Colonial traders preferred the ports of Virginia, and by 1690 South Carolina, to the treacherous waterways of the coast of North Carolina. In fact, because of its coastline, no attempt was made by the English to settle North Carolina after the failed 1587 colony at Roanoke Island, until the 1650s. They instead preferred the Chesapeake area of Virginia for establishing permanent settlements.
Nor were the swamps in Bertie County beneficial to the first English settlers. Two of the largest swamps in Bertie County were the Broadneck, located in the southern part of the county near present day Indian Woods on the Roanoke River, and the Roquist Pocosin swamp, located in northern Bertie County south of Piney Woods and near Roquist Creek. These swamps and the many others in eastern North Carolina were full of poisonous snakes, including water moccasins, cotton mouth moccasins, and rattle snakes. Snakes would remain a problem for residents of the county into the 21st century.
Landscape under Native Americans:
There were also large quantities of wild game including animals which were dangerous. These animals, countless before the arrival of whites, inspired names for the Native Americans and their clans. Even today there are still surviving members of the Turtle, Beaver, Deer, Wolf, Bear and the Snipe Clans of the Tuscarora who once lived in the county and the coastal plains of North Carolina.
Because the Native Americans who occupied these lands before whites did not farm the land on the same scale as later white farmers, the landscape was almost entirely covered with trees. However, there were occasional meadows that the Indians cleared and used for gardens and towns. The Native Americans also established a number of early roads that have been referred to as Indian paths. Many of these paths wound their way through thick forests over creeks and streams and on the high ground through swamps. These paths connected local Indians to their neighbors with whom they traded in eastern North Carolina, southeastern Virginia and other Indian nations to their north, south, and west.
These paths which became colonial roads, and eventually modern roads and highways received a mixture of Indian and English names, and are a lasting reminder of both groups’ influence in the development of the county. Many of these early paths and roads made by Native Americans would be improved, widened, and elevated by white settlers and their African slaves who would eventually be brought into the county.
The landscape of the county and region began to change radically as early as 1700 as better roads were built and new canals dug by Carolina’s new colonial government. More whites became interested in settling the county. These settlers, mostly from Virginia, moved into the county as they built plantations and grew tobacco.
Many of the early settlers used the county’s natural resources to sustain themselves just as Native Americans had for centuries before. The settlers used the Roanoke and Chowan Rivers to catch herring and other fish which spawned there, hunted deer, ducks, quail, and other wild game, and used the soft wood pine forest to develop a turpentine industry which devastated the forest during the early colonial period and altered the landscape.
There was also an abundance of hardwood trees which supplied timber to make houses, tools, and furniture. Natural materials were readily available to Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans. Animal skins were used to make hats, shoes, gloves, rugs and bed coverings; animal fat was used to make candles; and timber was utilized to build forts and homes. As more Europeans began to settle the region, the landscape and the inhabitants’ relationship to it began to change radically.
Unlike the Native Americans who lived in harmony with the landscape and took from nature only what they needed to survive, the English over used and radically altered the county’s landscape. They exterminated animals they viewed as pests. They introduced new domesticated animals into the landscape such as sheep, chickens, cows, horses, mules, and hogs. They also began to over-hunt and over-fish the rivers, streams and forests. The most dramatic change, however, was the clear cutting of whole forests to make way for large tobacco plantations.
Changing landscape under European:
As Europeans radically changed the landscape they also radically changed the way of life for the Native Americans living in the county and region. Surroundings to which Native Americans had grown accustomed for hundreds of years rapidly changed. Their food sources became scarce and some animals disappeared altogether. Their nations were systematically destroyed through war, disease, and alcohol introduced into the region by whites.
The Native Americans taught the whites their methods of fishing, trapping, and dressing skins and furs. They even introduced whites to their methods of clearing land for farming, hill cultivation, and fertilizing. They introduced tobacco to whites and during the first visit to North Carolina by the English in 1584 they introduced the potato into England and Ireland.
The labor required to clear forests and run successful tobacco plantations was provided initially by white indentured servants and Indian slaves. By 1730, however, large numbers of African and mixed African-Indian slaves were being utilized in and around the county. Throughout the early 1800s white farmers continued to clear land and cultivate tobacco and a new cash crop, cotton.
By the start of the 1800s there were far fewer trees than there had been a century before in [North Carolina]. Animals such as wolves, bears, hawks and snipe, that had threatened the crops and the domesticated English animals, had been hunted to extinction. Many fish were also fished to near extinction for sport and for their commercial value. Large plantation houses, churches, slave cabins, yeoman farmer’s houses, and one-room shacks dotted the landscape along with new bridges over creeks and streams. Ferry boats made crossings over rivers that were too large to have bridges and fields of corn, wheat, and tobacco grew next to gardens of fresh vegetables, fruits and nut trees. A number grist mills would also be constructed by the early settlers to grind their corn into meal and wheat into flour for the plantation owners who moved into the county.