Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

Evocative and affecting, “Swamp Posse” incorporates a number of themes and stylistic elements related to Lumbee people and contemporary Robeson County. The story’s protagonist, Vince, is a Lumbee graduate student who has returned home to Robeson County to work on oral history recordings of Lumbee elders. The action unfolds when he accepts his friend Harley Oxendine’s invitation one night to hop on his motorcycle, ride down to a knoll on the Lumbee River, and hang out drinking and talking with friends from high school. The events that follow interweave Lumbee folk beliefs; the Lumbee River and swamps; insider-outsider tensions faced by Lumbees who have gotten advanced degrees; racial tensions; and social and economic conditions in twenty-first-century Robeson County. The story’s characters see that Lumbee history and Lumbee identity have power to help them cope with present-day problems; yet, paradoxically, problems keep presenting themselves. Locklear’s dialogue effectively uses Lumbee words and expressions such as cuz, juvember, and mommucked, as well as Lumbee pronunciations and distinctive linguistic features such as bes.