This is a story of a young Lumbee Indian, Henry Berry Lowrie (Lowry) and his band of followers who were caught up and consumed by injustice around them. The story took place around 150 yrs. ago in lower Richmond Co. (now Scotland Co.) and Robeson Co., N.C. during and right after our Great Civil War. It goes down in local history as the bloody Lowrie War.
The story goes that the Lumbee Indians settled in the rich lowlands of Southeastern N.C. They had merged with several smaller Tuscarora Indian tribes from the coastal area of N.C. Legend has it that some of these same Indian tribes took in English survivors of the Lost Colony. Nobody can prove this but when the Scot-Irish settlers moved westward from the coast they encountered Indians that spoke in an English tongue and some had blue eyes and blond hair.
The lowlands that the Indians settled in were good hunting grounds, fish were abundant and the rich land grew good crops. Before the white man came all the tribe’s land was Common Land, that is to say, no particular person owned the land but was known as Tribal Land. This would change as the white settlers moved in and started claiming and registering the land in their names.
This land grabbing soon bought unrest between the local Indians and the whites. The Indians soon had to take on some of the white man’s ways to hold on to their own land. Treaties and land deeds had to be made up.
Until 1835, the Lumbee Indians were accepted as Freemen in N.C. Around that time southern whites were convinced that white supremacy was essential to the continuance of their way of life. The age of Jacksonian Democracy was the rule of the day. This was an age of suspicion hostility and subjugation for the South’s minority races.
The Lumbees felt the sting of these events and felt betrayed by the same people they had frequently helped. The Indians felt resentful toward the whites after 1835. This would manifest itself into open rebellion among the races in what was then Richmond and Robeson counties.
In 1840, the N.C. General Assembly passed a law prohibiting free non-whites from owning or carrying a gun unless they obtained a special permit from the local court systems (sounds like our own day). These permits were just about impossible to come by.
From an economic standpoint, the Lumbees were angered because the whites sought ways to use the Indians as free labor or worse, to obtain their land. If you talk to an older Lumbee today, he can probably recall what was referred to as the “Tied Mule” incidents. Such incidents occurred when a white farmer would tie his mule on an Indian’s land, free some of his cows in the Indian’s pasture or put one or two of his hogs in the Indian’s pig pen. Then the greedy white farmer would get the sheriff and claim the Indian stole his animals; knowing the Indians stood little chance in court. In most cases the Indian would agree to provide free labor for a period of time or give up a portion of his land as settlement.
As the Civil War started in our country, most of the young white men from the South joined the ranks of the Confederate Army. In a few cases young blacks and Indians joined also but as the war went on they weren’t treated as regular soldiers. They were used as common laborers to build fortification or other minimal jobs.
As the war dragged on, authorities began to conscript Lumbees for labor camps at Fort Fisher and other places along the coast. They were mostly used to build sand batteries and process salt along the coast.
The conditions at these labor camps were deplorable with food and medical care being non-existent. A lot of the Indians fled the camps and returned to the swamps of what was then Richmond and Robeson Counties. There they were joined by many others who wanted to avoid conscription and even Union soldiers who had escaped from the Confederate prison at Florence S.C.
With the local Confederate Home Guard always looking to capture these runaways, and for the lack of food, this all led to violent confrontations between the young Lumbees and the wealthy planters in the region.
In one instance a white planter, (James P. Barnes) accused several of Allen Lowrie’s sons of stealing two of his hogs, butchering them and feeding them to Union prisoners.
Allen Lowrie was a respected Lumbee Indian and land owner in the area, who could trace his ancestry back to some of the first people to settle in Robeson Co. He was also the father of several of these run runaways. One of which was Henry Berry Lowrie.
One thing led to another on both sides. Then on Dec. 21, 1864, while walking to the Clay Valley Post office; where he was a postmaster, James Barnes was shot from an ambush. He fell with a load of buckshot in his side. The dying man’s screams brought several neighbors and slaves to his side. Barnes lived just long enough to accuse William and Henry Berry Lowrie, two of Allen Lowrie’s sons, as his attackers.
With this murder, the tension and unrest really ramped up between the Lumbee and their white neighbors. This murder was simply the first of many to follow on both sides and would become known throughout local history as the Lowrie War.
In my next column I’ll tell you more about this tragic and trying time in our state’s history. Will the Lowrie Gang, as they were called by the local authorities, be branded as outlaws and murders or men trying to defend their families and way of life?