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UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Interviewee: Louise Pettus
Interviewer: Emma Echols
October 20, 1992
CAT 178
Louise Pettus grew up in Lancaster County and taught at Winthrop
College. In this interview she discusses her family history and
information she has gathered about the Catawba Indians. She has
done much research on the land leases written between the
Catawabas and the settlers during the 1800s. She discusses the
various books that have been written on the Catawbas,
specifically regarding the Catawba language, and she discusses
the settlement the Catawbas have applied for with the help of
Congressman John M. Spratt.
Interviewee: Miss Louise Pettus
Interviewer: Emma Echols
Date of Interview: October 20, 1992
CAT178a
E: This Emma Reid Echols, from Charlotte, North Carolina, 5150
Sharon Road. I am working on the oral history of the
Catawba Indians with the University of Florida [and] Dr.
Samuel Proctor. I am visiting in the home of Louise Pettus.
P: Louise Pettus, 708 Harrell Street, Rock Hill, South
Carolina.
E: Now tell me about your early life, where you lived [and]
where you went to school as a little girl.
P: Well I lived in Lancaster County, in the area that is
called Indian Land, and went to Bel Aire Elementary
School and then to Indian Land High School. After I
graduated from Indian Land High School, I came to
Winthrop College, and I think that is the first time I
ever really saw Catawba Indians. As I recall, they
came to sell pottery, and before the major vacations
when we could go home -- Thanksgiving, Christmas or the
end of the year -- there would always be one or two who
were there on campus. When the weather was bad they
were inside the entry way to the dining room, not
inside the dining hall itself, but there was a covered
way and they were outside with the blanket spread out
and the pieces of pottery that they were selling --
twenty-five cents, fifty cents. I remember buying
several for fifty cents, and one [that] I do not know
what I paid for it but it was a large one, a bowl with
three legs to it, and flat, and I gave it to my
grandmother for Christmas. She put on the back of
every gift (that she still had at that particular time
and still recalled the name of the grandchild that had
given it to her) a piece of tape and put the name, and
said she wanted them to have it back, whatever it was.
So I got back the bowl. She had used it to hold
walnuts. There was a walnut tree in their backyard and
they put walnuts in there with something to crack the
walnuts, and the usual nutcracker and a little pick.
It had sat on her back porch for many years, so I got
that one back, and another bowl that I had given her,
one that was almost solid black. It was a typical,
more vase-like bowl. So I did not have direct contact
with the Catawba Indians, I simply was aware of their
presence and their role. I later went West. I taught
in Arizona for nine years. I taught on two Indian
reservations. I got more interested in the Indian
culture, and I think part of that was getting to know
Pima and Papagos youngsters that I taught in class.
They were not as much Americanized (as they used to
say) as say the Catawba Indians. They were truly more
primitive, still speaking their language, still having
basically their same cultural characteristics that were
distinctly different from the Pima to Papagos. But I
was fascinated with some of their behavior and, [in]
trying to figure it out, [I] talked with teachers and
interviewed some of them about their experience with
some of these Pima and Papago children. I think that
caused me to have, besides being a social studies
teacher, sort of particular interest in the Catawbas
when I returned to this area, and returned to the
teaching faculty at Winthrop where I taught education,
trained student teachers, worked with student teachers
in the field, [and] also taught some history, all along
getting to know people in both departments. And I
think this often happens, if it touches us very
directly. An aunt of mine had wanted me to help her
get the family history together and so I had done all
kinds of research as I had worked at the South
Caroliniana Library [at the University of South
Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina], as a graduate
student. I found things that indicated that my
ancestors were among the first white settlers of the
Catawba Indian land. I found that my ancestor William
Pettus was one of the first of the agents for the state
to record the leases and renting arrangements and so
forth, and in 1808 the legislature decreed that all of
the lands and the Catawba Indian lands had to be
surveyed because they were getting so much contention
and differences over this. Because it was rented land,
there was no deed to it from the state whatsoever.
These people did not hold title and there was
contention, not only between some whites and Indians,
disputes over where boundary lines were, but between
white men as to where their leases started and where
they stopped. And frequently I have discovered that
the Indians were rather indifferent to those exact
lines on a piece of paper. So they were enriching
[sic] a few lawyers, and causing rather a great deal of
hard feeling. Well, they required that it be surveyed.
Now it was three years before they actually did the
survey, but in 1808, [they did]. [In] the same year
that it was decided to appoint somebody to keep a rent
book and better records than ever before, my ancestor
William Pettus was not only one of the superintendents,
but was elected to represent the white people who lived
inside the Catawba Indian land in the state
legislature. He went to Columbia [South Carolina] and
they refused to seat him [in the legislature]. Now,
Mrs. Brown mentions this in her book and so that is
where I discovered that fact. At that point I did not
even know that William Pettus was my direct ancestor,
but I did [find that out] when I started hunting for
the information and the history around it. They
refused to seat him. And the only thing that I have
ever found now in some twenty years of looking for it,
and also going to the state archives about this, is
that there was such a hue and cry up here in the
Catawba Indian land that they threatened in some
fashion. I am not sure how. But, anyway, they re-
elected him in the year 1810, and he was seated the
second time around and stayed in the legislature until
his death in 1818. Now, that part of it got me
interested in the process of leasing land; I found [it]
fascinating. James Merrell in his book on the Catawba
Indians [James Hart Merrell, The Catawbas, 1989], and
in his dissertation makes a statement that the Catawbas
were the only people who leased lands to an individual.
There are other tribes who leased their land, but they
always leased it en masse (or to a group), not to an
individual, by an individual. And if you look in the
old records, that second record book that was kept that
records the various leases from 1811 to 1829, you can
see that the rents were paid from a particular white
man, such as William Pettus, to a particular Indian.
It might be Prissy Red Head, or Jamie King or Sally New
River or General New River, or James Bulling or any
number of individually named Indians. Sometimes it was
a particular name of a mother and her children and it
would list who they were. And that kind of system,
which was really a personal thing, must have been a
trial because the individual Indians had to go to the
white man that they rented it to to get that little dib
of money, maybe even as low as a $1.50 even, or $2.50
rent per year for as much say as 100 acres. You find
some examples of them paying $10, but then you find
that they are renting about 500 to 600 acres for that
$10 rent. They had to individually collect it. Well
of course that got burdensome, and you will find many
examples in history where they will try to change that
sort of thing.
That was one thing that I discovered, and that got me
interested in the collective family history. Then I found
that William Pettus married a daughter, Mary Knox, of a man
named Samuel Knox, who lived in Mecklenburg county, North
Carolina. William's brother George married another Knox,
Jane the sister of Mary. Not to get into my family history
except to say that even more recently I have proof that I am
descended from both George and William Pettus, who married
sisters, which makes me about four times descended from the
Samuel Knox. Well, I found an original lease in a court
case. I was looking for something else. It was in a court
case called Sutton vs. Jackson in 1831, and I was reading it
on microfilm. In the course of it, it was about a land sale
of a man named Alexander Cannlish, who took his twenty-five
year lease that had been willed to his daughter by her
grandfather Samuel Knox, and he had sold it contrary to the
will of the grandfather. It was a very interesting case in
many different aspects, but a part of the evidence given was
a copy of the lease of Samuel Knox. It was court evidence,
it was sworn to by various superintendents of the Indian
tribes, there were a lot of testimonies regarding the
Indians in the process and how it was done, and it was so
fascinating because it was the first, and it was testified
in court by one Hugh White that he knew that it was the
first one recorded in a book that has since been lost for a
long time. See, Mrs. Brown and her book on the Catawba
Indians [Douglas Summers Brown, The Catawba Indians: the
people of the river, 1966] just simply notes that there was
an earlier one but does not know how it was lost or when.
We still do not know how it was lost but we know it was lost
a long time before 1831, according to the court case
evidence. Well, the first one, he said, was Samuel Knox and
the year was the fifteenth day of November 1785 and the
lease was made between John, Colonel Ayers, Major Brown,
Major John Thompson, Captain Squash, and Pinetree George,
all of the Catawba Indians, with the consent of General New
River, chief of the Catawba Indians, and Samuel Knox of the
county of Mecklenburg, North Carolina. It does not say how
many acres, but if we take the measurements of some later
land deeds, it shows that he had at least as much as the
legendary Thomas Canowus Bratt and maybe even more. It does
say at least that it was to run from one branch of Steel
Creek across to the other branch of Steel Creek in upper
Fort Mill area. It names some of the people. But I think
the fascinating thing is what he paid for it. Colonel
Ayers, for nine silver dollars and a black horse, delivered
to Tom Cross by the order of the said chiefs, in the year
1784, being for five years rent of the said land; and again
one black mare to said Indians for seven years rent; and in
the month of July 1785, a rifle gun and one silver dollar to
Colonel Ayers; and in 1785 in October for four years rent,
one bay mare; and he continues with this to bring it up to a
twenty-five years lease; and finally, he will pay 10 silver
dollars yearly after 1785. Now, he will die in 1800, and I
presume that is what he paid. Now, what is fascinating
about this lease is it is not like any later leases. In the
first place, they will eventually standardize it; they will
even standardize the language of it to finally have it
standardized by having it printed off by somebody and just
filling in the blanks. But this was hand written as were
all the early ones. All the ones before about 1815 were
hand written. And, it is for twenty-five years. After
1808, by law, all leases had to be ninety-nine years; three
life times is what they called it. So this is a difference
but I have found them as early as even a year or two out of
the 1780s yet. [I have] xerox copies of them. I collect
these things. [They are] early 1790s, and before 1800 they
were all hand written. They were all highly individual, but
none of them are so individual as this one which does not
have any standard length of time and sites a various number
of goods and money in an odd fashion. So I found that and I
was really fascinated by it and it was sworn as a true copy
of a lease. It had the signatures of New River, and Ayers,
and Brown, and Thompson and so forth, and they are just
marks. But New River made his name look like a capital N.
Colonel John Ayers made his look like a zero and so did
Major John Brown, you might say it was the same one. John
Thompson had a rather fancy [one] that looked like a
hieroglyphic mark, and Captain Squash just does a little
rolling w-look to make his mark. They took these leases,
evidently, quite seriously, but I do not think the Indians
really understood what they were leasing and they certainly
did not have any concept of this being forever in the sense
as I understand it. Almost universally among Indians when
they made a contract the contract was made between the
individuals who were present at the time and who shook hands
over it. The Indians tended not to think of this in terms
of "how can I say what my son, my grandson, and so forth
would want done?" They did not divide up the land because
they used it commutal fashion as a tribe. I think they must
have assumed that the white man was somewhat doing the same
thing until they eventually find out differently, and the
white man takes a great stake in what is put down on paper.
E: It is fascinating to hear you tell these things. Now where
is any of this written down that you are telling me?
P: Well, nothing other than in the documents. As I said I
have not gotten into books. I have written articles.
I have mentioned the first lease in an article, and I
wrote an article about Sally New River and her very
unusual lease that I like to tell you about in a little
bit. It was published in the newspaper and not just
one newspaper because it was distributed by Winthrop
[College] as a part of a public service, a set of
columns that I did with Ron Chepsick. Winthrop
[College] sent these out to all the weekly and bi-
weekly newspapers, [the] small town newspapers in South
Carolina. There were about 120-some of those and on an
average around 60-some of these newspapers printed
these columns every week. So I think the Sally New
River column that I wrote was probably printed in more
than sixty newspapers including the Rock Hill Herald
the Rock Hill Times (the newspaper existed at that
time), the Fort Mill Times, and the Lancaster News and
the Chester News, those are all very local [South
Carolina] newspapers that a Catawba Indian, for
example, might have read, or anybody else who was
interested in it. I made reference to a claim that I
think is probably the most valid claim that the Indians
ever had, [I] published it after the lawyer for the
land owners' association had already read it, and
nobody ever called me about it nor wrote a single word
about it or seemed to be interested in it. After I
mentioned it, because I gave my source, I had asked
(the workers in the courthouse in Lancaster) at the
time [that] if anybody comes in here and wants to see
that particular book I would be interested in who
follows up.
Six months later after the column came out I went back in
there and one of the clerks in the clerk of court's offices
said, "I remember what you said and nobody ever came to look
for it." So, you know, it makes you wonder just how vitally
interested people are. The lawyer Dan Byrd for the Tri-
County Land Owners Association said that the court case at
that particular time, the time that I wrote this article,
had gotten to such a point that this would no longer would
be valid as evidence. It would not make a difference in the
court case to expose this, but what happened, I think, is so
fascinating. Sally New River had recorded 550 acres of
prime land inside the Catawba Indian land known as the Kings
Bottoms. (I thought I had something else here, but it does
not matter right here this moment.) This is in Indian land
in Lancaster County; it is where the spiritual home of the
Catawbas is. It is where the first Catawbas were located
when John Lawson came through on his famous trip up the
Catawba River and he talks about the Waxhaw Indians [an
extinct Siouxan people of north central South Carolina] and
then he mentions going to the Catawba Indians, and he says
he saw a field seven miles long. Now that is the distance
from present day Van Wyck up to the place where Sugar Creek
empties into the Catawba River, and it was right there at
the Sugar Creek entry on the Lancaster County side that they
had the major village, and this is where Sally New River's
cabin was supposed to have been. She, in 1796, reserved
this area called the Kings Bottoms, which was a lot more
than 550 acres, but that was the last land that had not been
leased out in 1796, 550 acres. She reserved it for the
women and the children of the nation -- themselves, their
heirs, successors or assigns, forever. She had the document
signed by General New River and the other head men of the
tribe just like Samuel Knox had had it signed by a group of
Indian chiefs, and four of the five state appointed land
commissioners in the year 1796 signed that particular
document. Her husband was still living and it was not until
he died in 1804 (General New River) and four years after
that in 1808, [that] she had it recorded in old book N in
the land deeds of Lancaster County. That particular deed,
for 550 acres to the women and children of the Catawba
Indians forever, was put in a courthouse. And I do not
think you can find another single deed of that fashion which
was signed by the chiefs which was recorded exactly like
that in a courthouse.
E: What has happened to that land?
P: Well, the land now is owned by white men, of course. A
few years after she died, sometime in the winter of
1818-1819, something begins to happen to it because the
last of the land is leased out to a man named John
Dobie in 1825, and it shows on a deed which is in the
surveyor's rent book of the Catawba Indians. It still
survives.
E: There were two of those Dobies, I believe, and Mr. Nisbet is
descended from one of them.
P: No, he is not descended from him, he has the house that
was built by John Dobie. John Dobie himself went out
to Arkansas. [He] left here in about 1856. But it was
rented out by a Dobie. The other Dobie, his brother
William Dobie, coincidentally [had his] land is on the
other side of the river where the current reservation
is. Doby Road bridge out there in the Fort Milt area
is named for the both of the Dobies; I could not be
positive exactly how that goes, but it does not matter.
It gets leased. So whoever must of leased it within a
few years after her death. ([They] must have been the
Sally New River's heirs, whoever they were.) That
stayed there in the courthouse, but now I have not told
you really why it would have been so hard to find.
When I said you would find it in book N, it happened
that I was looking through that book. I was looking
for the name of somebody whose name started with an R
in an early period. These deed books were cross
indexed. I was going down the Rs in one of the books
and I saw a last name that said River and that was the
way it was filed, River. My eye went on across the
page. On the far side of this rather wide page was the
first name, and the first name was New, New River.
Now, if I had not known about Sally New River and
General New River and something about the Catawba
Indians, that would not have meant anything to me. But
I had already gotten interested in that part of it. So
I found the page number for the index in the book.
When I got down the book, that is when I found the
particular deed that I had been talking about that is
so unusual. Sally New River's deed of 550 acres [of]
prime river land. You know the Catawba river on the
Lancaster County side tended to flood periodically.
The banks were higher, or something of that kind on the
York County side [so that] they did not get flooded
nearly so frequently. So the rich soil went on the
Lancaster County side and that still is the richest
spot on the Catawba River all up and down, down to
Camden.
E: [Regarding] the status of the treaty today, how do you think
it is going to come out and how it is going to affect the
Indians that are living on the reservation?
P: Well, I am hoping that this December it will be
settled. This is a terrible burden for both sides of
the controversy and it should be settled. As you know,
they started with suits, and it has been in courts, and
it has been to the supreme court several times, and
[to] various federal and appellate courts, and they
have not been able to settle that, though they have
made considerable progress in that direction. Anyone
would be impatient at this particular time to get it
settled in order to get things -- like bringing in
industry and football teams or whatever. All of these
local, present day economic concerns have caused them
to want to settle this particular thing. They
pressured the governor to appoint enough appropriate
people to a committee, and made Congressman John M.
Spratt, Jr. [from South Carolina, Fifth District], the
chairman of that committee to settle it, and this is an
out of court type of settlement. I hope that John
Spratt will be successful for a lot of reasons. One, I
think that this will bring it to an end quicker,
perhaps fairer. I cannot say. I am a great admirer of
Congressman Spratt. I will add that. I cannot think
of any one who is better suited or more capable of
taking over a situation like this and using his skills
to bring it to an end. They hoped to have a settlement
ready in December. I hope that it works out equitably
and satisfactorily to both sides.
E: You were suggesting once for me to interview [him]. You
think John Spratt would be an excellent one for me to talk
to, do you not?
P: Certainly, if you can catch him. He is so busy.
E: I will try that. I am a great admirer of him as you are
too.
P: Right now, particularly, he is running for reelection,
and this is a reelection burden for him because some
people think that he is [End of tape side, thought is
never finished.]
E: You [have] picked up things that happened in the
revolutionary war from the activities that tribes and people
had together. So let us see what you want to tell us about
that.
P: All right. In the history of the Catawbas there is one
boast that we hear continually right down to the
present time: that the Catawba Indians always sided
with their white neighbors in the course of war. That
is almost true, I guess it is about 95 percent true.
There was one war so early in the state's [South
Carolina's] history that we were still under the lords
proprietors [eight noblemen who were given a charter in
1663 by Charles II that included South Carolina, North
Carolina, and Georgia and extended westward to the
Pacific Ocean]. In the Yemassee War in 1715, the
Catawbas started out on the side of the Indians against
the Englishmen, but they switched sides, dropped out of
the war, were not happy with it, and we can say that
after about 1718, the Catawbas did always fight on the
side of their neighbors. First their neighbors were
Englishmen, of course, until we declared independence
in 1776 from England, at which time the Catawbas joined
with their neighbors fighting against the English. The
Catawbas have gotten a lot out of the English. They
have been used by the English for tracking runaway
slaves, bringing in dear skins, just hunting and
bringing in all kinds of things, and had been treated
quite well. They were a buffer group against some of
the invasions of northern Indians. They fought with
Thomas Sumter [an American Revolutionary officer who
organized an irregular force in South Carolina after
the English captured South Carolina in 1780] when he
came up in this particular area. They were largely
noted for performing intelligence: spying on the
English, coming and telling Sumpter where they were,
[reporting] any kind of troop movement. There is one
story about a Catawba who waited until the English
officers were sleeping at night, he had climbed up a
tree and he was listening to what they had to say from
the tree. They went to sleep. He climbed down and
went back [and] told Sumter what it was [they were
planning], how many there were, what their plans were
and that kind of thing. Somebody said that the
Catawbas absolutely refused to stand up against cannon
[fire], which might show their intelligence not do that
kind of thing. They had an admirable record. Now,
while the Catawba men, about forty of them, were
fighting, the Catawba villages were simply evacuated
and the women and children went to live in Virginia
with the Pamunkey Indians all during the coarse of the
war. When they came back they found that their fields
were, of course, in disarray, many of their houses had
been torn down by apparently white neighbors or
whoever, maybe other Indians. No one is really quite
sure on that. [These people] had pretty much destroyed
whatever they had; they had to rebuild. One of the
Pamunkeys came back. Well, he married a Catawba woman.
[He] had a pretty good education. His name was
variously spelled Mursh or Marsh or Mush, Robert Mursh
is the most common name that is used. He came down and
he joined with the founder of the Flint Hill Baptist
Church north of Fort Mill [South Carolina], fairly near
Pineville, [in] 1792 with a revolutionary war veteran
by the name of Reverend John Rucker who founded that
particular church. Now, I keep adding my ancestors; in
the course in all of this I found out that Reverend
Rucker was my ancestor too. So that made a third
person who was very much involved. Mursh was made
assistant pastor. [He] joined the Flint Hill church
[as] assistant pastor. They were scattered about in
different places and if one could not reach out to a
church, the other one would go. He preached to both
whites and to Indians. He hoped to convert the Indians
to the Baptist religion, but he failed to do so.
Rucker hoped to Christianize them, and also Rucker
tried setting up a school over in the Indian land. So
far as I know, it was the first school that Indian land
ever had. It was one for the Catawba Indians, and [he]
hired a person named James Lewis to teach in that
particular school. With Lewis and with Mursh, the
dream was that the Catawbas would come in to the
church. Now, they had some members at Flint Hill and
there were at least four known Catawba Indians buried
in the Flint Hill cemetery.
E: Are there markers on those graves?
P: There are no markers, but the names still exist in the
church records. Flint hill fortunately had records
from the very beginning.
E: Mursh then would be an Indian from Virginia. Was he full
blooded?
P: He was a full blooded Pumunkey Indian. He later will
get a revolutionary war pension and it gives a lot of
details of his life, his background, his children, and
the reasons for his services. It is a very lengthy and
very interesting record which is in the national
archives.
E: I am interested in following through that question of
religion, because the Methodist and Presbyterians tried to
reach the Catawbas here on the reservation and they failed.
P: Yes.
E: But here at Flint Hill, and I know that area, they are
making some headway.
P: Well, they made some. That is, they apparently
converted a few who did attend. But it was not as much
as Rucker hoped for because I have a quote. I think it
is from David Hutchinson who was one of the very early
superintendents of Indian affairs and who was very
interested in all of this. Hutchinson gave a little
thumb nail sketch of the personality and the ideas of
John Rucker, [and] about his loving to hunt. He would
go hunting with the Indians [for] long periods of time,
and enjoyed it tremendously. [He] learned most of
their skills and their knowledge in such things as
that. He said that Rucker confided with him that in
spite of all of his efforts he was beginning to feel
[he] may have done them more harm than [he] did good.
This was in his old age; he did not die until about
1840 or 1842 something like that, very old age. So, I
think what happened there, and I think back to my own
experience with the children I had in Arizona. It is a
very difficult thing to be torn between two cultures.
Neither completely one nor the other, or to be in one
and tempted by the other to change, and then what to
do. I think Rucker with his long association with them
finally realized that probably they were happier and
healthier living their own particular lifestyle than
what he was seeing by the 1840s, which was a lot of
people who had rented out their land had nowhere to go.
They were nomads. They were worse off than the first
records of them by the white men. So, I think that is
what Rucker was talking about, and, of course, Rucker
lived long enough to see the land go from the hands of
the Indians into the hands of the white men by title.
His son was one of the surveyors that actually surveyed
in 1841.
E: What happened to the language and the blending of those two
cultures together?
P: Well, gradually the language just actually simply
disappeared. We have some testimony from ethnologists
[and from] Smithsonian people. Well, the best actual
vocabulary list of words, [the] longest most extensive
one, was done by Oscar Lieber, who was a state
geologist and he did it in 1856. And I do not see many
references of that. That is why I bring it out here.
That is one of the best sources that is not frequently
known about, yet I have seen the list in the Winthrop
College library. You have to get into the State
Archives to get [record of] what Lieber did as a
geologist, as he was going around looking for gold
mines and all. But he got interested in the Catawba
Indians. He was the son of the president of the South
Carolina College. [His name is spelled] L-i-e-b-e-r.
Dr. Frank Speck came here in the 1890s and on into the
1920s, or was it early 1930s. I cannot remember, but it was
a long period and I know some of the writings. Some of the
best were pre-World War I. He had attempted to take down
the words known at that particular time, especially for
objects that he would point to. From the way he wrote it, I
gathered that was what he was doing, [pointing to] physical
objects [and asking], "What do you call this?" [He asked
the names of] objects, names, words related to medicine,
[words related to] to hunting and fishing and trapping,
various practices like that.
Lewis Scaife wrote a monogram about 1896 in which he
gave a history and condition and he called it "Of the
Catawba Tribe," which also is interesting. It includes a
little bit of language, not much. Speck was better at that
particular thing. Then of course on up to the present,
there are snatches of things. I have heard Gilbert Blue
make his talks and he usually makes his initial greeting to
his audience in Catawba language. Some phrases, sentences,
perhaps, but not a great deal has survived of it. I think
that is perhaps the major indicator of how much the Catawbas
have adapted to the white culture.
E: I can tell from talking to you that you admire and respect
the heritage, the history of these Indians, and you see
something wonderful, I hope, for the future of them. Do you
think they will be complete assimilated into our society or
do you think they will retain their culture, their history,
their pottery making, [and] all their crafts that they have.
P: Well, I think they will have to do both. [They] need
to do both, and I think that is rather hard to do. I
certainly would hope that they would be as interested
in their past history, which is very hard to research,
much harder to research than it is for me to do my own,
[as I am in mine]. But they do have an interest, and I
understand that they have projects in which Wenonah
Haire and Roger Trimnal and some of those are
interested in.
E: Frances Wade is another one.
P: Frances Wade, absolutely. The things that those people
are doing, I think, is very valuable. Someone asked me
what I thought would be fair for the Catawbas to get
out of this settlement, and I said what I think is fair
is enough money, I cannot put a particular dollar sign
on the particular amount of money, but enough money
that there would be established a tribal fund that
could be administered by an appropriate group. I
presume that they would be all, or nearly all, Catawba
Indians, but not necessarily so. There might be some
government agencies that would have to have
representatives there. But that it would be earmarked
for the two most important things that they need, and
that is education and health care. Whatever else that
they might have -- and maybe this also relates to
education in a way but it also relates to heritage and
pride -- I would hope there would be an appropriate
Catawba museum (if that is what it is), a facility that
would include museum display areas, pottery making
areas, areas in which they could display the artifacts,
as well as whatever is related to their history and
whatever might be available to them. They could take
their children to see [this], and others too, as a part
of education.
E: Have you seen any of the dances that they are trying to
revive, the dancing of the young people, the children.
P: Yes. I think that they ought to have video equipment
and whatever it takes to record all of these types of
things, these programs that are going on today, and
keep that into a kind of archives. I am thinking about
a large facility and well staffed. I think that should
exist. I think there should be scholarships for any
Catawba youngster. I am like Bill Clinton here. He
says for any American who is capable of going to
college, there should be some way that the government
can offer assistance if it is needed to see that those
minds are not wasted. I think there should be funds
for these Catawbas for that, and other educational
materials and programs that might exist. These might
be summer course and weekend things, but also I would
like to see these children go out into the community
and perform at such things as the Museum of York
County, the things that Winthrop or any school might
invite them to do, where ever they happen to bring
together large groups of people. So I think all of
those things, health care. (I hope it is better for
all Americans.) I am hopeful it will get to be well
enough that we would say that there would not have to
be anything special for the Catawbas; they would just
simply share in the same kinds of things that all the
rest of us do. But until that time, I think there
ought to be a medical clinic out there.
E: I can tell from talking with you, you are impressed with the
leadership that is coming from the Catawbas themselves to
carry on their work. And they seem to be cooperating, which
is very fine.
P: Yes. Sometimes I hear things contrary, that there are
spats and differences over pottery making, and over
some other things, and I think that would be true in
any small community. Or at least any that I have ever
lived in, there has never been any complete agreement.
But I do think their leadership has been good. I think
Gilbert Blue's leadership has been outstanding. He has
had a terribly difficult task. He has impressed me as
a genuinely good person with a great deal of integrity.
I have heard him speak to audiences who are not
antagonistic, but certainly not aware of and have never
heard of a hearing before or anything like that, and
you can tell from the expressions on their faces that
they are impressed. It is not just myself, but I have
seen this in a number of audiences, so.
E: Other leaders that have come to the front are Fred Sanders
and Carlson Blue. They are outstanding. You know, I feel
that Rock Hill [South Carolina], Winthrop College and this
whole area of Catawba Indians are very fortunate to have you
with your knowledge and your interest in them. We are very
fortunate to have you.
P: Well, thank you.
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