LEARN NC

8 Conflicts in North Carolina colonial history: Tuscarora War

By Lara Willox

Provided by UNC Libraries / Documenting the American South.

In this lesson, the class will work together to examine primary source documents and secondary sources to answer questions about the Tuscarora War. It is helpful to complete this lesson prior to teaching the lesson Conflicts in North Carolina Colonial History: Culpeper’s Rebellion.

Learning outcomes

Students will:

  • use primary source documents to find specific information about a specific colonial conflict.
  • be able to identify who was involved in the Tuscarora War, what the war meant to the colonial people and Tuscarora, when and where the war occurred, and why there was a war.

Teacher planning

Note: The first primary source document listed under Technology Resources includes a graphic account of a violent incident. Teachers are encouraged to consult the article “Teaching Controversial Issues” for useful strategies in discussing this source. You may wish to use the excerpt provided in the Supplemental Information section instead.

Time required

45 minutes

Materials needed

Technology resources

  • Computer with internet connected to a multimedia projector
  • Access to the following documents from the North Carolina Colonial Records collection:
    • Explanation of the war: This document explains how the war started, as well as where and when it happened. The document is explicit in its description of the cruelty. An excerpt is provided under the Supplemental Information section.
    • Motives of the war: This document details the motives and causes of the Tuscarora (Indian) War.
    • Peace treaty: This document discusses the peace treaty created at the end of the war.

Activities

  1. Ask the students if they have ever witnessed a conflict. (It would be best if the majority of students had seen the same incident, or as a teacher, you could have a colleague pretend to come in and argue.) Have the students think about who was involved in the conflict, what the conflict was about, why it occurred, where it happened and when. Explain that these are important questions to investigate when exploring a conflict.
  2. Explain that the class is going to explore a colonial conflict between an American Indian tribe and the colonists. Tell them that they are going to use different sources to answer questions of who, what, when, where and why surrounding this event.
  3. Explain that some of the best sources to explore events are primary sources because they were written by people actually engaged in the event. The North Carolina Colonial records are a compilation of documents detailing the earliest inhabitants of North Carolina. Secondary sources can also help fill in missing information.
  4. On chart paper or on the board, write “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “why,” providing space to record answers for each. You may also want your students to record on their own paper.
  5. Project one of the primary source documents on the screen. Together with the students read through the document.
  6. While reading, help the student paraphrase what the document is saying. Remind them that words were often spelled differently back then, and they should try not to get stumped by the unusual spelling.
  7. Remind the students of the questions they are trying to answer. If the document provides an answer to a certain question, record it on the chart paper. Continue to read through each of the primary documents. If after using the three documents there are still unanswered questions, refer to the secondary sources.
  8. Repeat this process with the other two primary source documents.
  9. After the chart has been completed and you have read all three documents, facilitate a whole-class discussion about what the students read and learned regarding the Tuscarora War.

Possible extension

The students could write a newspaper article about the Tuscarora War using their notes recorded during this lesson.

Assessment

This lesson is designed as a whole-class activity to model for students how to find important information within primary sources. The next lesson will provide an opportunity for assessment because the students are expected to take what they learned in this lesson and apply it to the content in that lesson. The extension activity could be used as an assessment of this lesson.

Supplemental information

The first primary source document listed in this lesson is very explicit in regards to the way the colonists were killed at the hands of the Tuscarora. You may wish to use the following excerpt from the document, instead:

In September, 1711, occurred a terrible massacre of the colonists on the Neuse and Pamplico by the Indians, the Tuscaroras being the chief instigators thereof, that, with the Indian war that followed, blighted the colony for years, and would have destroyed it entirely but for the prompt and generous action of South Carolina in coming to its assistance. Governor Spotswood of Virginia made a very eloquent speech to his Legislature, appealing to its members by all the considerations of humanity, kinship, neighborhood and self-interest for help for their brethren in Albemarle, and succeeded in getting an appropriation of £1,000 in their behalf; but the appropriation was not expended, the security required by Governor Spotswood for repayment being such as the North Carolina authorities said they could not give. The security required by Governor Spotswood was a mortgage upon the territory north of the Roanoke, that is to say, the inhabited part of the territory, then in dispute between the two colonies. South Carolina voted £4,000 and sent troops at once, without asking for a mortgage, or other security for repayment.

What was the character of the previous intercourse between the colonists and the Indians does not fully appear, though it was doubtless much like that between other colonists and Indians. We know that there was an Indian invasion in Albemarle in the early fall of 1666 of sufficient magnitude to prevent the transmission of the act of Assembly of that year for the cessation of tobacco-planting to Maryland by the last of September, the time agreed upon for it to be there, and from the common use of the term “enemy Indians,” it would seem that hostilities with the Indians were not infrequent.

But even if there had been an unbroken peace hitherto, the massacre of 1711 was horrible enough to make the Indian annals of Albemarle of the bloodiest and cruelest kind. One hundred and thirty people were massacred in the space of two hours.

The entire document can be found here.