Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

At the time that this book was published, 35,000 Lumbee Indians lived in the southern part of North Carolina, leading to the area being one of the most impoverished areas in the United States of America. Because of that, the Lumbee and their descendants did not have much to pass down to their children and worked hard-labor jobs.

According to Lowrey, 75 percent of the tribe were share croppers for white men, 15 percent were skilled laborers, and only 10 percent owned farms and/or small businesses.

It is thought that many of the Lumbee tribe have colony blood from European colonists inside them. Long ago, the Hatteras Indians, which ended up being renamed Lumbee, and a group of colonists moved inland to avoid confrontation with other European settlers, near what is now Washington, North Carolina. They settled and established Pembroke around the year 1650.