1. North Carolina Native Americans
What area of the country we place these natives?
What are the features of the environment for these native Americans?

2. North Carolina Native Americans
People lived in NC for 10,000 years, wandering the land as Nomadic Hunters
2,500 years ago they started to settle
in permanent villages
Freed from hunting, these Native Americans became skilled craftsmen

3. North Carolina Native Americans
Using clay and stone, they created
pottery, pipes and cooking vessels
They also made woven baskets,
painted jars and bowls,
and jewelry from shells and copper
Crafts were so prized
that they were buried with them
when they died

4. What makes crafts so important to Native American people?
Why do you think it took North Carolina Native Americans so long to settle down

5. North Carolina Native Americans
No Written Records were left behind,
like with other Native Americans
Information learned through “oral history”
(Stories passed down from generation to generation)
Other Information comes
from early European explorers

6. North Carolina Native Americans
35,000 Native Americans lived in North Carolina when Columbus arrived in 1492
5 Major groups: Hatteras, Chowanoc,
Tuscarora, Catawba, Cherokee
(but thought to be at least 34 different groups)
European thoughts on Native Americans:
“Well shaped clean-made men.” Great strength
and endurance, dark skin and very little clothing.

7. North Carolina Native Americans
Native Americans left their mark on land of NC;
They used whatever the land offered:
Stone tools for working in gardens
Plants for food
Trees for building canoes and huts
Long gray moss for making fires, rope, clothing
Rivers for fishing
Forests for hunting deer, bear, wild turkey, etc.
Minerals (like quartz)

8. ` How and where do we find history of Native Americans?
What would a day in the Life of North Carolina Native American’s look like?

9. North Carolina Native Americans
Patterns of Life
Ways of life varied, but they all shared these traits:
Extended family was basis for life
Descendents traced through women
Clans (groups of related people)
lived in settlements together
Clans ruled by a chief, succeeded by sister’s son
Life was a web of relationships
between humans plants, and animals

10. Final Questions
How do North Carolina’s Native’s patterns of life differ from yours?
Explain web of relationships in your own words