The Croatan Indians of Sampson County, North Carolina

Their Origin and Racial Status

By George Edwin Butler

A Plea for Separate Schools

94 pp., 6 x 9, 18 halftones

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-4181-2
    Published: June 2018
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-4182-9
    Published: June 2018
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-5723-1
    Published: June 2018

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The Croatan Indians of Sampson County, NC, written by George Edwin Butler (1868-1941) and composed only a year after Special Indian Agent Orlando McPherson's Indians of North Carolina report, was an appeal to the state of North Carolina to create schools for the “Croatans” of Sampson County just as it had for those designated as Croatans in, for example, Robeson County, North Carolina. Butler’s report would prove to be important in an evolving system of southern racial apartheid that remained uncertain of the place of Native Americans. It documents a troubled history of cultural exchange and conflict between North Carolina's native peoples and the European colonists who came to call it home. The report reaches many erroneous conclusions, in part because it was based in an anthropological framework of white supremacy, segregation-era politics, and assumptions about racial “purity.” Indeed, Butler’s colonial history connecting Sampson County Indians to early colonial settlers was used to legitimize them and to deflect their categorization as African-Americans. In statements about the fitness of certain populations to coexist with European-American neighbors and in sympathetic descriptions of nearly-white "Indians," it reveals the racial and cultural sensibilities of white North Carolinians, the persistent tensions between tolerance and self-interest, and the extent of their willingness to accept indigenous "Others" as neighbors.

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About the Author

George Edwin Butler (1868-1941) was co-superintendent of public instruction of Sampson County, N.C., and worked as a lawyer in Clinton, N.C. A trustee of the University of North Carolina, he became a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1905 and was an active member of North Carolina's Republican Party.
For more information about George Edwin Butler, visit the Author Page.