Catawba People

Catawba People

The Catawba — also known as Issa or Esaw, but most commonly Iswa — are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans, known as the Catawba Indian Nation. They live in the Southeast United States, along the border between North and South Carolina near the city of Rock Hill. The Catawba were once considered one of the most powerful Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes. The Catawba and other Siouan peoples are believed to have coalesced as individual tribes in the Southeast.

Primarily involved in agriculture, the Catawba were friendly toward early European colonists. They were at almost constant war with tribes of other major language families: the Iroquois, the Algonquian Shawnee and Delaware, and the Iroquoian Cherokee, who fought for control over the large Ohio Valley (including what is now in present-day West Virginia). They served during the American Revolutionary War with the colonists against the British. Decimated by earlier smallpox epidemics, tribal warfare and social disruption, the Catawba declined markedly in number in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The people ceded their homeland to South Carolina in 1840 by a treaty that was not approved by the United States and was automatically invalid.

Terminated by the federal government in 1959, the Catawba Indian Nation reorganized and in 1973 began its struggle to gain federal recognition. It accomplished this in 1993, along with a $50 million settlement by the federal government and state of South Carolina of its longstanding land claims. It was also officially recognized by the state of North Carolina in 1993. Its headquarters is at Rock Hill, South Carolina.

As of 2006, the population of the Catawba Nation has increased to about 2600, most in South Carolina, with smaller groups in Oklahoma, Colorado, and elsewhere. The Catawba State Reserve, located in York County, South Carolina, has a population of 124 (1990). The Catawban language, which is now being resurrected, is part of the Siouan family (Catawban branch).