Waxhaw
The Waxhaw (also Waxhau ) were a small tribe of Native American people who lived in the Catawba River valley near the present-day city of Charlotte in Counties Union and Mecklenburg in North Carolina , and in Lancaster County in South Carolina in the southeastern United States . The Waxhaw used an indigenous language from the family of Siouan languages and were closely with their neighbors, the Sugaree and the Catawba , related. The origin of the name is not certain, but possibly comes from the trading language of the Indians and means people from the reeds .
The Indians of the Waxhaw tribe were also referred to as Flatheads (English: "flat heads") because they not only shared various rituals with their neighbors, the Catawbas, but also shared the custom of skull deformation in childhood. They already flattened their foreheads in infancy with the help of boards or small sandbags, which gave them a typical appearance with widely spaced eyes and a flat forehead.
In 1566 the conquistador Juan Pardo met the Waxhaw, the first known contact between Europeans and Indians in this region. After this encounter, trade developed between the Indians and the Europeans. John Lederer met them in 1670 and described them as Wisacky , according to his description they were controlled by a more powerful Catawba tribe. In 1701 the researcher John Lawson describes the Waxhaw as a friendly people, he also mentions the tradition of the flat forehead. Historical estimates suggest a population of around 2000 in two villages at the time. By 1720 the tribe was largely wiped out, most of them fell victim to a smallpox epidemic , the rest was decimated during the Tuscarora War . It is believed that the survivors Waxhaw were accepted into the culturally and linguistically similar tribe of the Catawba; others may have joined the tribes of the Seminole tribes in Florida .
Today a town called Waxhaw in North Carolina is a reminder of the Indians. The Waxhaw massacre , which took place during the American Revolutionary War , is named after the region, the Waxhaw themselves were not involved.
literature
- Mooney: Siouan Tribes of the East , 1894.
- John Lawson: A New Voyage to Carolina , 1712 ( available online in Project Gutenberg)
See also
List of North American Indian tribes