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Tuscarora Trails: Indian Migrations, War, And Constructions Of Colonial Frontiers, Stephen D. Feeley

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Over a century before the Cherokees' Infamous "Trail of Tears," uprooted refugees already made up a majority among Indians in many regions of the American backcountry. Using the Tuscarora Indians as a case study, I take a new look at the role of refugee Indian groups in the construction of colonial frontiers and examine the ways that Indians thrown together from varying regional and cultural backgrounds wrestled with questions of collective identity. Although the Tuscaroras had once been eastern North Carolina's most influential Indian nation, after devastating military defeat, in the words of one contemporary, they "scattered as the wind …