Catawba

Member of an American Indian people of Sioux origin who lived in North and South Carolina. They were the foremost Siouan‐speaking peoples in the southeast. The Catawba set up villages, often along riverbanks, and grew maize (corn), beans, and squash; they fished the rivers, and hunted deer and other wild game. Raids on other peoples were a way of life, and they frequently warred with the Cherokee, Iroquois, and Shawnee. In 1738 and 1758 smallpox outbreaks wiped out more than half the Catawba population. Today, many descendants of the surviving Catawba live on reservation land in South Carolina.

The Catawba believed in avenging the death of killed Catawba by killing and taking the scalp of the enemy. They wore clothes of deerskin, and lived in rectangular barrel‐roofed houses made of wood and bark. They made pottery and baskets, and developed good trading relationships with the English colonists, whom they assisted in a war against the Tuscarora people from 1711 to 1713, and later in the French and Indian War (1756–53). During the American Revolution (1775–83) the Catawba fought with the Americans against the British.

In 1853 the Catawba were given the right to settle among the Choctaw nation in Indian territory, but the majority of the Catawba remained in York County, Carolina. The Catawba lost their federal status as a unified tribe from 1962 until 1993, when South Carolina paid them $50 million for a land claim and their tribal status was reinstated.