Adshusheer
The Adshusheer were a North American Indian tribe from the Sioux language family . They were linguistically and culturally related to the tribes of the Eno , Shakori and other eastern peoples of the Sioux, whose traditional habitat was in the Piedmont region of the Appalachians in what is now the states of Virginia and North Carolina . Scientists suspect that the Sioux once formed a single large group in the Ohio River valley , which later separated and then moved either east or west. The last survivors of the Adshusheer were probably taken in and integrated by other Sioux-speaking tribes around 1720. The tribe has therefore been considered extinct since that time.
history
The Eno, Adshusheer, and Shakori were first mentioned in 1654 by Governor Sir George Yeardley of Virginia. Yeardley was visited on his plantation by a Tuscarora man who told him about an inland tribe belonging to a great nation called the Cacores (Shakori), whose members were dwarfed in stature, no taller than a boy of fourteen. But they would be extraordinarily brave and fierce in battle and cunning in retreating, so that even the mighty Tuscarora could not defeat them. In their vicinity there would be a second important nation called Haynoke (Eno) by the Tuscarora . They would have successfully resisted the advance of the Spaniards north.
The only report about the Adshusheer and their village of the same name comes from John Lawson . Lawson was the chief surveyor of the North Carolina colony and visited the Eno and allied tribes on behalf of the government in 1701. He was on a journey along the traditional Native American trade route from South Carolina to the North Carolina coast. Lawson was first served in the village of Occaneechi , which was on the Eno River near what is now Hillsborough . He then visited the village of Adshusheer , 22 km to the east , which was shared by members of the Eno, Shakori and Adshusheer. According to Lawson, the chief of these three tribes was called Enoe Will with his residence in Adshusheer. The Adshusheer seemed to be different from their neighbors in physique and lifestyle. However, since not a single word of their language has been handed down, scientists cannot distinguish them as a tribe from other Sioux-speaking peoples.
The concentration of several previously separate tribes in Adshusheer suggests that their number had decreased dramatically due to wars and European diseases against which they had no defenses. Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia wanted to settle the 750 survivors of the three tribes permanently in Eno Town in 1716 in order to protect them from hostile tribes by a fort , but the governors of North and South Carolina were against and foiled the plan. Like many other Indian villages in the region, Adshusheer was abandoned around 1715. The reason was probably the campaign of Colonel James Moore against the Tuscarora in the Tuscarora War around 1712 and their alliance with hostile tribes in the Yamasee War 1715-1717, which led to retaliatory actions by the colonists.
Very little is known of the Adshusheer and since 1720 they have not been mentioned as an independent tribe in any report. It can be assumed that the last members of the family were either taken up by the Catawba or the Saponi and integrated into their tribes. Scientists believe that the village of Adshusheer was southwest of what is now Durham on New Hope Creek in the Piedmont of North Carolina. Archaeological excavations took place there in the 1930s and 1940s, and most recently in 2006.