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The Catawba – River People – were located along the North/South Carolina border. This was the boundary that separated them from the neighbours, the Cherokee. The Catawba referred to themselves by the name of Iyeye meaning ‘people.’ Prior to the coming of the white man, the Catawba numbered as many as ten thousand people. From first contact with the British in the mid 1600’s, however, the tribe was hit by disease. Warfare and the introduction of the demon drink also took their toll. A smallpox epidemic in 1738 wiped out nearly half of the Catawba people. Twenty years later a second epidemic further decimated these people. By the 1820’s they were down to only about a hundred people. That number has grown until now there are about 2,600 Catawba who live in and around Rock Hill, South Carolina.

The Catawba speak a variation of the Siouan language. However, the language of the Catawba is so different from other Siouan languages that it wasn’t recognised as belonging to that family until the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The Catawba were originally two tribes – the Catawba and the Iswa. Prior to the 1700’s the Tribes lived in small scattered villages. Around 1760 the Catawba absorbed the Iswa and the people began to live together in larger villages. By the 1780’s there were two main Catawba settlements, Newton and Turkey Head, both of which lay along the Catawba River.

The Catawba lived in bark covered long houses. Religion was a prominent part of their lives. Large temples structures were prominent parts of their villages. The Catawba were farmers, with maize being the main crop. They were also hunters and fishers as well as fierce warriors. Their traditional enemies were the Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware and the Iroquois. The Catawba warrior presented a fearsome sight. Their faces would be painted for war, with a black circle pattern around one eye, a white circle around the other and the rest of the face painted black. Their hair style was in pony tail style. The Catawba also practiced the custom of flattening the foreheads of their infant males, which added to the fearsome appearance of their warriors.

The Catawba soon allied themselves to the interests of the English colonists of the mid 1600s. From the British the Catawbas got a hold of guns with which they could take on the many invading tribes. The Iroquois were the greatest enemies of the Catawba and warfare between them continued for over a hundred years after the Catawba allied with the British. The problem for the English was that they were also allied with the Iroquois, which put them in a very delicate situation. In 1706 the British brokered a peace between the Catawba and the Iroquois. This was to prove only temporary, however. After fifty more years of bitter rivalry peace was again established between the two tribes in 1759. The Shawnee, however, still loomed as a major threat to the Catawba people. The Catawba also fought against other native tribes and, of course, the Americans for the British. During the French – Indian War of 1755-63 the British employed the Catawba as scouts against the French. This association with the British inevitably led to the adoption of many European ways and the loss of some aspects of their own culture.

In 1760 the treaty of Pine Hill established a fifteen square mile reservation along the Catawba River. Almost immediately, however, this small apportionment of land suffered white encroachment. Although the Government of South Carolina agreed to evict all white settlers within the Reservation territory, nothing was done to enforce these promises. By 1826 nearly all of the reservation area was gone. 110 Catawba were crammed into an area just one square mile in size.

In 1840 the Catawba sold their land to the State of South Carolina. They tried to relocate in North Carolina, but no land was available to them there. They moved back to South Carolina, where they resettled on just 600 acres of their old reservation lands. In the 1880’s Mormon missionaries moved into the Catawba region. They were able to convert nearly all of the people to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. The Catawba did not receive Federal recognition until 1941.