6 things to know about the Lumbee Indian Tribe

• Lumbee Indians are recognized as the largest-known Native American tribe in North Carolina, the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River and the ninth-largest tribe in the nation. The Lumbee take their name from the Lumber River, which winds its way through Robeson County.

•  The Lumbee origin is coalesced and has different theories attached to it, including a theory that connects the tribe to the Hatteras Indians on the Outer Banks. The Lumbee appear to have descended from Siouan-speaking tribes, and primarily from the Cheraw people, who intermarried with whites and free African Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries.

• Lumbee Indians all speak English and have spoken English for a very long time. In the past, their ancestors spoke Carolina Algonquian, Carolina Siouan and/or Iroquoian languages like Tuscarora.

• In 1887, the Indians of Robeson County petitioned the state legislature to establish a normal school to train Indian teachers for the county's Indian schools. Robeson County's Indian Normal School eventually developed as Pembroke State University and subsequently as the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

• During the 1950s, the Croatan Indians (as they were then called) made nationwide news when they came into conflict with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan headed by Klan Grand Dragon James W. “Catfish” Cole. Cole had begun a campaign of harassment against the Lumbee, claiming they were “mongrels and half-breeds” whose “race mixing” threatened to upset the established order of the segregated Jim Crow South.

• The Battle of Hayes Pond occurred on the night of Jan. 18, 1958, when members of the KKK were told to show up against the Lumbee people at a Klan rally near Maxton. As few as three dozen KKK were reported to have shown up, while the Lumbee numbered 500. Four Klansmen were injured in an exchange of gunfire as the Lumbee soundly routed the KKK in the armed confrontation. The Battle of Hayes Pond made national news, and the Klan never harassed the tribe again. 

— Compiled from various sources