From Warriors to Mercenaries: Tuscarora Serving as Tributaries in North Carolina 1715-1761

Abstract

Following the end of the Tuscarora War in 1715, the Tuscarora Nation's influence in North Carolina had shrunk. The war the Tuscarora fought ended in the diaspora of their people, with hundreds killed and hundreds enslaved by militiamen and Yamasee warriors. Tuscarora families scattered; some hid further in the pine barrens and swamplands of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Other families relocated to the North to take shelter with their Haudenosaunee kin. However, a significant population relocated onto reservation territory under the rule of Chief Tom Blount, selected as the “King of the Tuscarora,” by the North Carolina Council. The Tuscarora were in a new state of existence that they had never experienced before. With their power lessened and needing to rebuild from years of war, the Tuscarora found themselves as a tributary nation at the behest of North Carolina. Although this was a foreign concept to the Tuscarora, their leadership, under Chief Blount, understood that they had to use their position to maintain some level of autonomy under the oppressive thumb of colonial power. From 1715 to 1761, the Tuscarora served the Colony of North Carolina as tributary mercenaries, fighting alongside, defending, and working with the colonists in three separate wars. Between wars, they brought gifts and reaffirmed their position as tributaries to North Carolina. The Tuscarora on the Indian Woods Reservation were the last nation in eastern North Carolina to hold out against the wave of Manifest Destiny, securing their lands until 1828. The objective of this thesis is to examine the tributary work conducted by the Tuscarora and how, through it, they navigated this new world.