The Tuscarora- The Hemp People

Tribe:  The Tuscarora is the Sixth Nation of the Haudenosaunee, aka the "Six Nations of the Iroquois," the "People of the Longhouse," the "Iroquois Confederacy" and the "Iroquois League."  There are only two federally-recognized Tuscarora tribes: the Tuscarora Nation of New York, and as part of the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in Canada.  The Tuscarora people who are not in New York or Ontario in Canada are not federally recognized as Tuscarora.  

Meaning of Name: "Tuscarora" means "Hemp-Gatherer" in Iroquoian. The Tuscarora, particularly those residing in North Carolina, sometimes refer to themselves as the "Skarure" meaning "Long Shirt People" because they wore long shirts made of hemp, a fibrous member of the cannabis family.

Location:  The Tuscarora originally lived in the Northeast with the other Iroquois-speaking tribes, and then, in about 1000 AD, before the formation of the Haudenosaunee, and probably because of the brutal and never-ending wars between the Iroquois tribes, moved down to the Carolinas and Virginia. In 1713, they lost the Tuscarora War with the British and their allies, were thrown off their land and many of them moved to New York State, where the Oneida tribe allotted them some of their land.  In 1722, most of the Tuscarora joined their ancestral and cultural kin as the Sixth Nation of the Haudenosaunee.  Those who did not become part of the Haudenosaunee either had remained or returned to the Carolinas and Virginia.  The Tuscarora people, as a genetically-related group, now live in Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Ohio.

Original Language: Skarureh, a branch of the Iroquoian language tree.

Tribal Affiliations:  When the Tuscarora were still living in the Carolinas and Virginia, they allied themselves with the Pamlico, the Cothechney, the Core, the Mattamusett, and the Matchepungo tribes to wage war against the encroaching British and European settlers and their own Native American allies. After the Tuscarora lost the war, a portion of them traveled north and joined the Iroquois League, and their allies now included the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Oneida, the Onondaga and the Cayuga.

Traditional Enemies: The British, the Dutch, the Germans, the Yamasse and the Cherokee.

Traditional Style of Housing: The Tuscarora, both those who lived in New York and those who lived in the Carolinas and Virginia, lived in permanent wood-frame buildings called "longhouses" which were made of elm bark, rounded on top and could be up to one hundred feet long, but were probably about fifty feet long, on average. These longhouses were partitioned, with storage areas and a stone hearth or fireplace for cooking and baking.  They could hold up to maybe thirty extended family members. The entire Tuscarora village of ten to twenty longhouse was protected against other tribes and wild animals by a palisade, a tall wooden wall that  may have also enclosed their vegetable and herb gardens, their orchards, their smokehouses, their town halls, their sweat-lodges and their menstrual lodges. During the hunting and warring seasons, the Tuscarora lived in somewhat temporary small dome-like round wickiups, as did the Cherokee, another Iroquois-speaking tribe who at the time lived in the Carolinas and were their mortal enemies. The longhouses and the wickiups were owned by the women.

Traditional Attire: The Tuscarora tribes seem to pride themselves on distinguishing themselves from their Iroquois brothers and sisters, and toward that end, they have made and worn hemp shirts for several hundred years. Hemp clothing is sustainable, comfortable, lighter than deerskin and is easier to clean. Tuscarora moccasins went higher up on the leg, almost to the shin, as compared to the shorter Iroquoian moccasins. The Tuscarora women wore rounded, not pointed, decorated yokes over their shin-length dresses. When they did not wear dresses, they wore undecorated full-length halter-style aprons over their wraparound skirts and leggings. Their high beaded tiaras (think "Russian empress") were worn lower on the forehead, almost like an Apache headband, and their fancy clothing often had very long fringes.  The Tuscarora men went around in breechcloths and high moccasins during the long sweaty months, but otherwise wore comfortable hemp shirts, leggings or trousers, and, for ceremonial occasions, feather-covered gustowehs but without long upright or downcast eagle feathers. The raised beadwork of the Tuscarora, which is evident on their caps, yokes and collars, is particularly lovely. The Southern Tuscarora are also said to have dyed their hair bright red in order to remain different-looking from the other Iroquois and their tribal neighbors.

Traditional Foods: The Tuscarora were a settled, agrarian people, so the New York Tuscarora women grew their own corn, beans and squash. They also grew herbs, carrots, turnips and rutabagas, fiddleheads, onions, cabbages, pumpkin, Jerusalem artichokes, sunflowers, Indian potatoes, and strawberries.  They foraged for mushrooms, leeks, ramps, wintergreen, walnuts, hickory nuts, chestnuts, and greens.  They had community-owned crabapple, plum and cherry orchards, and gathered wild blueberries, cranberries, honey, mulberries, elderberries and serviceberries. They made maple syrup, cornbread, corn soup and stews, and dried the surplus of their produce. The men, on the other hand, hunted or trapped deer, elk, bear, rabbit, muskrat, beaver, grouse, pheasant, turkeys, and geese, and fished for salmon, trout, bass, perch and whitefish.

The Tuscarora women in the south grew beans, corn and squash, including pumpkins. They also grew or foraged for hazelnuts, filberts, black walnuts, acorns, chestnuts, sunflowers, a wild grain called "chechinquarnins," mulberries, paw paws, persimmons, huckleberries, wild grapes, muskmelon, peaches, melons, cucumbers, peas, peanuts, Indian potatoes, goosefoot, marsh-elder for quinoa, wild barley, maygrass, a kind of grain, and grew tobacco and hemp. The Southern Tuscarora men fished for or netted oysters, crab, scallops, clams, flounder, stingray, skate, crayfish, bear, beaver, panther, skunk, wildcats, possums, rabbits, squirrels, deer (including unborn fawns), wasp larvae, turtles, turtle eggs, water-fowl, and turkey. Once the Europeans arrived in the early 1600's, the Tuscarora added beef, mutton, lamb, and pork to their diet.

Position of Women: Extremely high, almost matriarchal. Like most of the nations in the Iroquois League, the Tuscarora were matrilineal and matrilocal. Tuscarora men moved into the longhouses that belonged to their wives' grandmothers or mothers. Tuscarora women could inherit and bequeath property and were the heads of household, and their husbands could do nothing without consulting their wives first. The six Clan Mothers of the northern Tuscarora tribe had the final say regarding matrimony, and had naming rights regarding their grandchildren.  They were completely responsible for the selection of the six male chiefs, called "Teethhe," who would serve as the Representatives of not only the Tuscarora but the Iroquois people before the Grand Council meetings of the Iroquois League.  Tuscarora women were also responsible for establishing the social status of their families, for the fate of captives taken in war, in charge of child-rearing, food production, clothing production, rope production, housework, the healing arts, the usual domestic chores and served as tribal judges. The men, on the other hand, managed to get out of the house and away from the women by clearing fields, making houses, fishing, hunting, waging war (with the permission of the women), and playing sports.

Among the Southern Bands of the Tuscarora, there are still Clan Mothers, and clan membership is still reckoned through the mother's line, but because times have changed since the Tuscarora are no longer an agrarian society, a lot of the old matriarchal ways of the Tuscarora have been lost.

Tuscarora Courtship: If a young Tuscarora man wanted to court a Tuscarora woman, provided that she were not a member of the same clan, he would play sweet flute music outside of her mother's longhouse. If she peeked outside, saw who was playing, and accepted his suit, she would invite him in, at which time, he was probably mercilessly grilled by her mother, her grandmother and her aunts. If they all agreed that it was a good match, preparations would be made for a big fancy wedding complete with a reception in which the tribe would give the happy couple everything that they would need for their lives together. Their marriage was expected to last forever, so divorce was uncommon. But, if a Tuscarora wife did feel that her husband were worthless or lacking in some way, all that she would have to do would be to put his blanket and few belongings outside the longhouse, and he had to go, so divorces, while rare, were very simple.

Interesting Tidbits:

The ancestors of the Iroquois had lived on the eastern side of the Great Lakes probably since 15,000 BC.  They all spoke the same language, lived in the same kinds of houses, wore the same kinds of clothes, headdresses and hairstyles, belonged to the same kinds of clans drawn from the same maternal lines, and their tribes were all headed by women. They worshipped the same Creator, and grew the same Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash). They were brothers and sisters and cousins of each other. And as it is with all families, arguments broke out between them and they separated into many tribes: the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Oneida, the Cayuga, the Tuscarora, the Cherokee, the Huron, the Erie, the Wyandot, the Meherrin, the Nottaway, and many others. But in 1142 AD, the Great Peacemaker, Dekanawida and his disciple, Hiawatha, formed the Haudenosaunee, the "People of the Longhouse," which is the "Iroquois League" and the "Five Nations" that were and are still bound together by The Great Law of Peace, a common law, allegiance, truce and trade agreement. These five tribes were the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Oneida and the Cayuga. In 1722, sponsored by the Oneida, the Tuscarora, who had just returned from North Carolina, were allowed to join the Iroquois League as the Sixth Nation....

The Tuscarora had every reason to be unhappy with the encroachment of white settlers in the Carolinas and Virginia. They were overcharged for goods and services, denied use of the ferries to cross rivers, restricted in the use of their traditional hunting grounds, cheated in trade and treaties, timber was illegally logged on their land, and bit by bit, the land that had been reserved for them (the reservations) was being swindled out from under them. Furthermore, in the many wars with the settlers, their villages and orchards were burned to the ground and their women and children were enslaved and sent off to work in the plantations of the Caribbean....

The Northern Tuscarora clans seem to include the Bear Clan, the Turtle Clan, the Beaver Clan, the Deer Clan, the Eel Clan, and the Snipe Clan. They are led by the Clan Mothers. The Southern Tuscarora tribe, which still lives in North Carolina and Virginia, has their own Grand Council and seven clans: the Bear Clan, the Deer Clan, the Eel Clan, the Mud Turtle Clan, the Sand Turtle Clan, the Snipe Clan and the Wolf Clan. The Clans can be represented at the Grand Council by either Clan Mothers (women) or Clan Chiefs (men).  The Southern Tuscarora also have a generous food pantry program for tribal members....

According to Iroquois legend, the Clan system came about this way: The grandmothers of the ancestral Iroquois tribe were told by the Great Peacemaker to step out of their longhouses on a designated morning and to report to him the first animal that they saw. One grandmother saw a bear, another saw a turtle, another saw a beaver, another saw a deer, another saw an eel, another saw a sandpiper or a snipe, and another saw a wolf, another saw a hawk and another saw a heron. Once the grandmothers reported their findings to the Great Peacemaker, he told them that these animals were to serve as their family's totems, the emblems of that family. Therefore, the grandmother who had seen the bear, for instance, was the Bear Clan Mother, and her daughters would be members of the Bear Clan, and her granddaughters would be members of the Bear Clan, and so forth, through the maternal line. Boys, on the other hand, were born into their mother's clan, but became members of their wives' clans when they married, and they could not marry anyone from their own clan, which was, genetically and socially, a very good idea....

The Southern Tuscarora tribe used, and may still use, a Turtle (or lunar) Calendar, noting that a turtle (the mythological version of whom carries the earth upon his back, and upon whom the Sky Woman fell) has thirteen large interior sections on his shell and twenty-eight smaller exterior sections on his shell. Therefore, their year has thirteen months, with twenty-eight days per month. In English, these months are as follows: (starting with January) Blizzard Moon, North-winds Moon, Maple Syrup Moon, Planting Moon, Flower Moon, Strawberry Moon, Summer Moon, Ripening Corn Moon, Harvest Moon, Moon of Fallen Leaves, Cold Weather Moon and Snow Moon. Almost every month has a festival attached to it....

Hemp, a member of the Cannabis family, was indigenous to China, and was probably brought cross the Bering Strait when the waves of First People came to this continent beginning in 50,000 BC. It was then spread by human hands or by bird droppings across North and South America. In the Spring, its flowers can be battered, deep-fried and eaten like broccoli tempura. Immature seed pods can be cooked in stews as vegetables, and its thick fibers, once processed and dried, can be used for making cords, ropes and coarse material. Parts of the cannabis plant were also either smoked or used as a tincture by the Tuscarora, who considered it their own special gift from the Creator, and who were led to it by deer, the animal symbolic of peace.  They consider it the "seed of life" and "the seed of peace" and as medicine.

The Southern Tuscarora, which includes the Tuscarora Indian Nation of North Carolina, the Southern Band of the Tuscarora Indian Tribe, the Tuscarora Nation One Fire, the Tosneoc Tuscarora Community, the Skaroreh Katenuaka Nation and the Tuscarora Tribe Indians (which has been accepted into the National Congress of American Indians) do not consider themselves to be part of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League, nor does the Iroquois League consider them to be truly Tuscaroran. These six groups do not have federal or state recognition as tribes. Federal and state recognition is desirable because without them, there can be no sovereign nation, no self-determination, no self-respect or self-identity, no eligibility for special programs like educational grants, scholarships, food programs, health services, no reservations, and their tribal land, which they'd been on for hundreds or thousands of years, can be sold out from under them in some white corporate takeover.

Traditional Religion: Christianity, Longhouse, Handsome Lake, and traditional tribal religions.

Slavery and the Tuscarora: The Tuscarora, especially those who remained in the Carolinas and Virginia, were captured by the British and sent as slaves to the British plantations in the Caribbean. The Tuscarora who moved north and became part of the Iroquois League probably served as messengers and conductors for escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, especially in or around Lewiston, New York, which was on or near Tuscarora land. 

Current Population: There are more than 17,000 registered Tuscarora living in New York and Ontario, and less than 300 are living as non-registered Tuscarora in North Carolina.

Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Tuscarora living in New York State earn a nice living from the fishing industry, the tourism industry, casinos, small businesses (woodwork, roofing and siding, crafts, consulting, paper doll manufacturing, and an art gallery) and work at saving the environment. The Tuscarora who live in North Carolina are very, very poor.

Famous Tuscarora: None that I have heard of.