Lumbee people also attained new leadership positions. Placing great value on family is one key characteristic of the Lumbee, who typically maintain frequent (often daily) contact with extended family members. To obtain our permission, please email us at, If you come across a third party using the Tribal Seal, and you question whether that use has been approved by the Lumbee Tribe, please email us at. In 1992, for example, Lumbee Purnell Swett was offered the position of superintendent of the merged public schools of Robeson County. In 1978 a set of seven mandatory criteria for federal acknowledgment of tribes was published in an attempt to make the process of recognizing additional tribes uniform, rigorous, and systematic. Mary W. Norment, in an 1875 book, also proposed descent from the Tuscarora. According to his anthropometric measurements, only 22 qualified. According to the 2000 United States Census report, 89% of the population of the town of Pembroke, North Carolina, identify as Lumbee; 40% of Robeson County's population identify as Lumbee. During the 1980s, drug trafficking and racial violence were the cause of several unsolved murders in the county. From 1988 through 2003, the Lumbee introduced 12 bills asking for complete federal recognition. Linguistic features of Lumbee Vernacular English include perfective “I’m” (“I’m got to do it”), finite “bes” (“sometimes it bes that way”), and consonant cluster reduction (“ol’” for “old,” for example). The Lost Colony theory gained considerable credence among Lumbee people as well as non-Indians when Lumbee historian and author Adolph Dial argued in favor of it during the latter half of the twentieth century. Most Lumbees marry within the tribe; a sampling of the tribal roll in 2002 showed that 70 percent of Lumbees were married to another tribal member. References: Karen I. Blu, The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People (1980; rev. It designated the Indians living in Robeson and adjoining counties as “Lumbee Indians of North Carolina” (the state of North Carolina had recognized the Lumbee name three years earlier). The Lumbee have always had a deep love for Robeson County and the Lumber River—often calling it the “Lumbee”—and a desire to own and hold onto their land. Meaning of Lumbee. Lumbee oral tradition reveals no fewer than four other migration theories, documented by anthropologist Robert K. Thomas in an unpublished 1976 report. By virtue of state recognition, they have received aid from other federal programs for Indians. A planned Ku Klux Klan rally, announced by Klan grand wizard James W. “Catfish” Cole of Marion, S.C., received heavy advance publicity. "Lumbee Indians." The Lumbees are the largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi River with 55,000 members. The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina is a state-recognized tribe in North Carolina numbering approximately 55,000 enrolled members, most of them living primarily in Robeson, Hoke, Cumberland and Scotland counties. Faith, church attendance, and love of church and gospel music are also central to Lumbee culture. The court denied relief, but in 1975, in Janie Maynor Locklear v. North Carolina State Board of Elections, the U.S. … The writings of anthropologists, Lumbee scholars, and a diverse array of “ordinary” Lumbee people illustrate several aspects of tribal culture. Definition of Lumbee in the Definitions.net dictionary. The earliest and perhaps most famous theory of the Lumbee tribe’s origins is the so-called Lost Colony theory, proposed in 1885 by Robeson County legislator and local historian Hamilton McMillan and later expanded upon by North Carolina historian Stephen B. Like most of North Carolina’s American Indian people, the Lumbee lived in relative obscurity for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Lowry Band, outlawed in 1868, killed 18 men and was pursued by local, state, and federal militia, detectives, and bounty hunters. The Lumbee Tribe is the largest state tribe in North Carolina, the largest state tribe east of the Mississippi River, and the ninth largest non-federally recognized tribe in the United States. Knick argues that Indians from tribes of three eastern Carolina language families (Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Eastern Siouan) interacted with the Indians already living in the area. The Lumbee endured many privations and injustices during the Civil War, including forced conscription to serve as laborers building fortifications at Fort Fisher near Wilmington, starvation, and harsh treatment by the Home Guard. The Lumbee spent seven years preparing their three-volume petition and submitted it in 1987. 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