Many stories this year on the United States’ 250th birthday have focused on the people — Washington, Jefferson, Franklin — and places — Boston, Philadelphia and Yorktown — etched into national memory that you would expect. But in Kings Mountain, about 45 minutes west of Charlotte, an exhibit highlights a story that’s often overlooked: the role Native Americans played in the Revolutionary War, particularly the Catawba Nation, who lived in the Charlotte area and supported the patriots at every major battle and skirmish that took place in the South.
The air conditioning is blasting on a hot July morning in the small Kings Mountain Historical Museum downtown. Displays showcasing weapons, pottery and a typical Catawba Nation dwelling take up the main room. The exhibit is called “Choosing Sides: The Catawba Nation and the Fight for Independence.”
At the time of the Revolution, the Catawba were a small tribe, thought to number around 300 people living on a reservation near present-day Rock Hill, South Carolina.
“There had been over 1,000 in 1759, but due to a vicious smallpox epidemic that summer, literally from 1759 to 1760, their population went from 1,000 to about 300,” said Ensley Guffey, the archivist for the Catawba Nation.
The Catawba were surrounded by colonists in what was then the Carolina backcountry. Since most of those colonists sided with the patriots, the Catawba did so as well, believing it was best for their survival. The nearby rival Cherokee tribe backed the loyalists. In early 1775, the Catawba sent a delegation to Charleston, then called Charles Town.
“They were met by the Committee of Safety, who offered them regular pay as militiamen, pledged to honor the reservation borders, and to stop the price gouging,” Guffey said. “All of these were problems the Catawba at the time were having with the colonial government.”
The Catawba warriors mostly didn’t participate in the fighting the same way many patriots did.
“They weren’t your stand-in-a-line-and-fight, kind of, traditional at that time European and American military,” Guffey said. “They served as scouts, as skirmishers, as backcountry guides.”
It’s not clear how many Catawba warriors became casualties. At the entrance to the exhibit, museum director and curator Michael Turner Webb points to a banner emblazoned with about 60 names — all Catawba who fought alongside the patriots.
“They don’t sound like Native Americans,” Webb said. “You see names such as Peter Harris, Billey Williams, Pattrick Brown, John Nettles, regular American names. They were already acclimated to the lifestyles of living amongst new European settlers in this area.”
Webb says it’s important for the museum to use the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding to highlight the contributions Indigenous people made during that period in history.
“Not too often do we hear stories of these groups that also participated during the American Revolutionary War,” Webb said. “Here we highlight and commemorate, not only the birth of the nation, but also other groups that we tend to not really think about.
“One of the reasons I would say is it’s still ongoing research as far as the many roles that people played, we have been able with the research here at the museum to uncover these stories.”
Some of the promises made to the Catawba by the colonial government were later undone. By the 1790s, settlers were encroaching on Catawba land, but the warriors who had served alongside the patriots in the Revolutionary War remained proud of their contributions.
Today, the tribe is based in Rock Hill and has more than 3,300 members.
The exhibit “Choosing Sides: The Catawba Nation and the Fight for Independence” is on display at the Kings Mountain Historical Museum through late October and is free to the public.
