The Lowry War

The Lowry Gang fought back against Confederate authorities during the U.S. Civil War and during Reconstruction they came to be viewed as either Robin Hood-esque folk heroes or as dangerous murderers and thieves, depending on who you were asking.

Research:

• Leland, Elizabeth. “Coming Home to the Land of the Lumbee.” Our State. 9/6/2017. https://www.ourstate.com/lumbee-american-indians/
• Currie, Jefferson. “Henry Berry Lowry.” Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 2000. https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/lowry-henry
• “Proclamation of Outlawry for Henry Berry Lowry and his band of robbers.” https://www.ncpedia.org/printpdf/13809
• North Carolina Museum of History. “Community Class Series: Henry Berry Lowrie, Lumbee Legend.” With Nancy Strickland Fields, Museum of the Southeast American Indian; Dr. Lawrence T. Locklear, University of North Carolina at Pembroke; and Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, Emory University. Via YouTube. Sep 23, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUALvny7DZ4
• Lowery, Malinda Maynor. “Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity and the Making of a Nation.” University of North Carolina Press. 2010. 
• Oakley, Christopher Arris. “The Legend of Henry Berry Lowry: Strike at the Wind and the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina.” The Mississippi Quarterly , Vol. 60, No. 1, Special issue on American Indian Literatures and Cultures in the South (Winter 2006-07). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26467042
• Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. “History and Culture.” 2017. https://www.lumbeetribe.com/history-and-culture.
• Lowery, Malinda Maynor. “The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle.” University of North Carolina Press. 2018.
• Kays, Holly. “Cherokee chief testifies against Lumbee recognition.” Smoky Mountain News. 1/7/2020. https://smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/28263-cherokee-chief-testifies-against-lumbee-recognition#
• Townsend, George Alfred. “The Swamp outlaws, or, The North Carolina bandits : being a complete history of the modern Rob Roys and Robin Hoods.” New-York : Robert M. DeWitt. 1872.
• “TESTIMONY OF PRINCIPAL CHIEF RICHARD SNEED EASTERN BAND OF CHEROKEE INDIANS.” https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110282/witnesses/HHRG-116-II24-Wstate-SneedR-20191204.pdf
• Harper’s Weekly. “The North Carolina Bandits.” March 30, 1872.
• McElroy, Jenny. “The Lowry War.” NCPedia. 3/1/2008.  https://www.ncpedia.org/history/cw-1900/lowry-war

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Way back
in our colleague Christopher Hassiotis sent Holly and meet a

(00:22):
note about the Lowry War as an episode suggestion. This
isn't our first Christopher hassi otis episode suggestion that we've
done on the show He's Got. He sends very good ideas,
but it has taken me this long to do it
because my short list of topics that I keep talking
about has about three years of episodes on it, and

(00:44):
then in addition to having a quote short list of
three years of episodes, I also just frequently get sidetracked
off of it into stuff that's not even on there.
So the Lowry War is named for a group of
outlaws that was headed by Henry Barry Lowry, and there
are lots of different spellings for his name and consequently

(01:05):
different spellings for the war, so you'll see it l
O w r Y, l O w r I E,
l o w r e Y, and l O w
e r Y A lot of potential options there. Henry
Verry Lowry though was Lumby and the Lowry Gang, as
it became known, included other members of the Lumbi tribe

(01:27):
as well as black and white men, and they fought
against Confederate authorities in southeastern North Carolina during the U
s Civil War and then during reconstruction. They came to
be known or came to be viewed as either kind
of Robin Hood esque folk heroes or dangerous murderers and thieves,
depending on who you were asking. The Lowry War took

(01:50):
place in and around Robinson County, North Carolina. That's in
the southeastern part of the state, in a swampy region
around the Lumber River. Although Lumber is the river's official
name today, too many locals, including the Lumbi tribe, it's
the Lumbi. The origins of that name are a little
bit hazy, but it's sometimes described as coming from the

(02:10):
Algonquian term meaning dark water, and locals were using it
for the river by the early nineteenth century. This part
of North Carolina has been home to indigenous peoples for
nearly fifteen thousand years, and the Lumbi have lived there
for centuries. The Lumbi traced their ancestry to indigenous tribes
and nations from at least three different language groups who

(02:32):
have lived in what's now eastern North Carolina, southeastern Virginia,
and northeastern South Carolina. And her books on Lumby history,
historian Melinda Maynor Lowry, who is Lumby, describes three hundred
years of migration and cultural exchange taking place within this region.
Indigenous people and people who had liberated themselves from slavery

(02:54):
and white indentured servants and others all eventually settled and
what's now Robinson County for various reasons, including fleeing from
wars and diseases and persecution, and then together they formed
one tribe that is deeply connected to the ideas of
kinship and place. This tribe has been known by a

(03:15):
series of names over the years. During the period of
the Lowry Wars, they were often just called Indians or
described as a combination of multiple races. The state of
North Carolina first recognized the tribe under the name croaton
in five Okay, if you're thinking, wait, isn't that a
lot like Croatoan? The word that was found carved into

(03:37):
a tree at the former site of the lost colony
of Roanoke. Yes. Hamilton McMillan, who introduced the legislation for
the state to recognize the tribe with this name, had
concluded that they were descended from survivors of the Lost Colony,
and that was based on his own research. Two other
formal name changes followed this before members of the tribe

(03:59):
chose the name name Lumby in ninetift two, drawing that
name from the place that the tribe calls home. There
are also people within this group who trace their ancestry
back to the Tuscarora and continue to use that name.
The Tuscarora were living mainly in what's now North Carolina
when Europeans started arriving in North America, and many of

(04:21):
them moved northward to join the Hood and Ashawnee Confederacy
in the eighteenth century. That was after the Tuscarora War.
In this episode, we're just going to stick to the
name Lumby, even though we are mostly talking about a
period before the tribe had chosen that name. This part
of North Carolina is isolated, which made it a good
place for people who were fleeing from wars or disease outbreaks,

(04:44):
or enslavement, or any number of other things to take
refuge and recover. It's also swampy, so it really wasn't
very appealing to European colonists. So during the Revolutionary War era,
a lot of Lumby ended up formally owning the land
that they are already living on and considered there's This
included being granted land by either the crown or the

(05:06):
State of North Carolina, sometimes in exchange for service to
one or the other, or for military service. By their
early nineteenth century, many Lumby owned their land outright as individuals,
rather than living on land that belonged to the tribe
collectively or was outlined in a treaty with the United States.
From about the eighteen twenties through the eighteen fifties, the

(05:29):
US government systematically removed indigenous peoples from the eastern part
of the country to land west of the Mississippi River.
We have talked about this in some of our previous episodes,
including our twenty eighteen episode on the Georgia gold Rush
and our twenty nineteen two part on the occupation of Alcatraz.
This process involved federal laws such as the Indian Removal

(05:53):
Act of eighteen thirty and multiple Supreme Court cases and
exploitive treaties between the United States and indigenous nations, and
forced displacements. During this period, multiple indigenous nations that had
historically lived in what's now North Carolina were forced to move,
sometimes literally at gunpoint. This included the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek,

(06:17):
and Seminole nations, who were forced to move more than
two thousand miles to what's now Oklahoma. Although some resisted
and stayed behind. This removal was an active genocide, and
nearly a quarter of the people who were forced to
move died as a result of it. The Lumby, however,
were largely protected from this removal. Many of the nations

(06:39):
that the federal government forcibly removed during this period were
living on land that was valuable in some way, so
there was gold there or timber or prime farming land.
But the Lumby were mostly living among the swamps on
land that wasn't considered particularly valuable, and as we've said,
a lot of them owned that land outright as individuals

(07:03):
through documentation that the government recognized as legal. That didn't
make it impossible for anybody to take their land, but
it did make it more challenging to do so, and
also from a legal perspective, at this point, the Lumbie
weren't legally classified as Indians. North Carolina revised its constitution

(07:24):
in eighteen thirty five, and under that constitution and various laws,
the Lumby were considered free persons of color. So even
though they weren't forced off their land as many other
tribes were, they also were not treated as equal citizens
of the state. For example, free people of color were
not allowed to vote in North Carolina, and although this

(07:45):
law didn't specifically mentioned the indigenous people of Robinson County,
a lot of people interpreted this provision as applying to them.
In eighteen fifty four, North Carolina also passed a law
that voided marriages between a white person and a free
person of color if that marriage had taken place since
eighteen thirty nine. That applied to a lot of Lumby marriages.

(08:08):
These and other laws followed Nat Turner's Rebellion of eighteen
thirty one, which was an uprising of enslaved people in Virginia.
Authorities were deeply fearful of a similar uprising taking place
in other slave states, and so they passed a lot
of laws to restrict any kind of rites that free
black people might have, and then more broadly free people

(08:31):
of color. When the US Civil War started in eighteen
sixty one, North Carolina was a slave state, but the
state and the people living in it were divided over
whether to secede and support the Confederacy or to remain
part of the United States, and this included the Lumby
Although at least one Lumby family had historically owned slaves,

(08:53):
most Lumbi supported the Union, even though free people of
color had to have a special permit to carry web
in North Carolina. Lumby people served on both sides of
the war. Some went to another state or passed for
white to enlist, and some may have just found a
recruiter who didn't know or didn't care about that prohibition.

(09:14):
In eighteen sixty two, the Confederate Army started fortifying Fort
Fisher at the mouth of the Cape Pier River as
protection for the nearby port of Wilmington's. This was an
earthen fortification, so it's construction and maintenance were both labor
intensive and dangerous. At first. A lot of this work
was done by Confederate soldiers and enslaved Africans. Diseases were rampant,

(09:39):
especially malaria, dysentery, and yellow fever, which could be deadly. Eventually,
landowners started refusing to send their enslaved labor to work
on the fort because of all this, and at that
point the Confederates started conscripting indigenous people to do it,
particularly the Lumbi. Although there were a few you lumby

(10:00):
who willingly went to work on the fort, most did
not want to be forced to travel to the coast
to do difficult, dangerous work for a military they didn't
even support, and possibly get sick or die in the process.
So many responded by lying out in the swamps. As
we said earlier, the swamps were easy to hide in,
especially if you had lived there your whole life and

(10:22):
had your own ancestral knowledge to help you navigate. But
this made life difficult for the men who were lying
out and for their families. Whether you usually worked your
on your own land or somewhere else, you couldn't if
you were hiding out from the Confederates. All this fed
directly into the Lowry War, which people gets you after
a sponsor break. During the Civil War, Alan and Mary

(10:53):
Lowry were two of the most affluent and prominent of
the Lumby people in Robinson County. Their family was large.
They had twelve children, almost all of them were sons.
Allan was a church leader and also ran a successful farm,
but he was also under a lot of suspicion from
the Home Guard. The North Carolina General Assembly had established

(11:16):
the Home Guard in eighteen sixty three, and it was
made up of men who for whatever reason, were exempt
from military service. The Home Guard was tasked with things
like finding deserters and guardings strategic points within the state,
helping to protect the local people, but in some areas
they really had a reputation for harassing or even terrorizing

(11:37):
the local community. This is a big plot point in
the book and movie Cold Mountain if anyone is familiar
with that. The Home Guard accused Alan Lowry and other
Lumby of harboring Union sympathizers and Confederate deserters and of
things like stealing, and some of this really was going on.
For example, Lumby Territory wasn't far from a stockade in Florence,

(12:00):
South Carolina, and Union soldiers who escaped from there often
wound up with the Lumby, including with the Lowry's. In
December of eighteen sixty four, someone stole two pigs from
James P. Barnes, who was a wealthy landowner and a
slaveholder and a Confederate official. Barnes didn't live far away
from Alan and Mary Lowry, and he thought one of

(12:22):
the Lowrys had done it. Basically they didn't have food
because they were lying out in the swamp, and said
they stole his pigs. Possible culprit in Barnes's mind was
their son, Henry Barry Lowry, who at about eighteen, was
one of their youngest children. Barnes supported the Home Guard
and trying to round up the Lowry's, many of whom

(12:43):
were lying out in the swamp. On December one, eighteen
sixty four, Barnes was shot in an ambush, and before
he died he said that Henry Barry Lowry and two
other men had done it. Not long after Barnes was killed,
j Brantley Harris, known as Brandt, shot and killed Jarman Lowry,
who was one of Henry Barry Lowry's cousins. Harris was

(13:06):
a conscription officer for the Home Guard, and while the
details on all of this are a little fuzzy. He
seems to have mistaken German for one of the other Lowry's.
Two of Jarman's brothers, Wesley and the Lalon, had been
working at Fort Fisher and they came home on furlough.
Harris claimed that they were both deserters, and so when

(13:27):
both of them were killed, most people thought Harris was
the person responsible. Although a grand jury charged Harris and
their deaths, he wasn't arrested for it, so the Lowry's
and a lot of the other lumby were outraged. Then
on January sixty five, Brant Harris was killed, presumably Henry

(13:47):
Barry Lowry or one of his brothers, in retaliation for
Harris having killed Jarman. Wesley, and little Allen Lowry had
done it. In some accounts, this all circled back to
the pigs that had been stolen from James p Arns,
and Harris had been investigating that theft when he was killed.
After this, Henry Barry Lowry and some of his brothers

(14:08):
stole some guns and ammunition, and they turned their attention
to the wealthy white farmers of the area, especially wealthy
white farmers who were clearly supporting the Confederacy. On February
eighteen sixty five, a group of Flowers, along with some
escape Union soldiers, raided one of the wealthiest farms in
the area, which belonged to the McNair family. Some of

(14:30):
that family were at home, along with several Confederate soldiers,
and although there was an exchange of gunfire during all
of this, it doesn't appear that anybody was killed. The
McNair's and their guests eventually surrendered, and then the gang
stole things like food, blankets, and other supplies from the
farm and then distributed them to the poorest people in

(14:51):
the area where they lived. At this point, that area
had been given the derisive nickname of Scuffletown, although the
lumby usually called it the Settlement. On March three, the
Home Guard rallied a mob of about one hundred people
and went to Alan Lowry's home. The Home Guard claimed
to find stolen property there, and they put Alan Lowry

(15:11):
on trial along with his sons, Calvin Sinclair and William,
and one of their neighbors. The Home Guard held Allan's wife,
Mary and some of the other women in the family
captive in a smoke house. During and after the trial,
questioning them about the whereabouts of other Lowry's. After this
sham trial, everyone but Allen and William was allowed to go,

(15:34):
but the Home Guard executed Allen and William by firing
squad Henry Barry Lowry reportedly witnessed this execution from the bushes.
At this point, General William T. Sherman and the Union
Army were moving north. This was after Sherman's march to
the Sea at the end of eighteen sixty four and
his capture of the South Carolina capital of Columbia in

(15:56):
February of eighteen sixty five. Around Mark ninth, the army
was near Lumby Territory, bogged down by heavy rain in
the swampy terrain, some of the Lumbi, including some of
the Lowry gang, guided Sherman's troops through the swamp and
across the Lumber River. After the army had moved through,
a Lumbie man named Hector Oxendine was murdered by White

(16:19):
planters for having helped them. General Robert E. Lee surrendered
on April ninth, eighteen sixty five, which is often marked
as the end of the Civil War, even though the
fighting continued for some time. After that, Henry Berry Lowry
and his gang continued to rob wealthy planters and raid
their farms, and they evaded capture for months. On December seven,

(16:41):
eighteen sixty five, Lowry got married to Rhoda Strong, whose
father was Scottish and whose mother was Lumby, and the
militia tried to take him into custody at his own wedding,
falsely claiming that they had a warrant for his arrest.
There were about two hundred guests at that wedding and
a lot of people left after the militia five, but
this still turned into a standoff in front of a crowd.

(17:04):
It ended when the Justice of the Peace, who was
officiating the wedding, that was a white man named Hector McLean,
offered to be arrested along with Lowry, and both of
them were escorted away. The militia did not think the
local jail was secure enough, so they took Lowry to
nearby Whiteville. Turned out that jail was not secure enough either,

(17:24):
because he escaped from it. According to some accounts, Rota
brought him a cake with a file in it. At
this point, the United States was moving into the post
war reconstruction period with attempts to both recover and rebuild
after the war and to rectify the inequities that resulted
from the institution of slavery. Congress passed laws and constitutional

(17:47):
amendments to try to protect the civil rights of previously
enslaved people and others of African descent. Since North Carolina
had seceded from the United States, it was required to
write a new state constant tuition and to ratify the
Thirteenth and fourteenth Amendments to the U s Constitution before
it could be readmitted to the Union. A lot of

(18:08):
the indigenous people living in and around Robinson County thought
their lives would get better during this process. A lot
of them, even most of them, had supported the Union
even after North Carolina had succeeded. People in the tribe
had also sheltered escaped Union prisoners of war. They directly
aided Sherman in his move through the area, and there

(18:30):
were some changes. The Reconstruction Acts of eighteen sixty seven
required the new state constitutions to include universal manhood suffrage,
so North Carolina's eighteen sixty eight constitution restored voting rights
for Lumbie men. There was a pause in the Lowry
Gang's raids around this time. The general conclusion is that

(18:52):
Lowry and others hope that by being able to vote,
they would be able to make the changes they wanted
to see in the government and in their own line house.
But at the same time, the Lumbi were also largely
excluded from the Reconstruction era policies, programs, and assistance that
were meant to help bring racial, economic, and political equality
to the newly freed people. Overall, radical Republicans who were

(19:16):
driving these kinds of programs were focused on people of
African descent rather than on indigenous people, and even though
some of the Lumbi did have some African ancestry, and
there were people living at the time who thought that
the tribe as a whole were mixed race or even black,
they were largely overlooked. So by late eighteen sixty seven,

(19:37):
as North Carolina's new constitution was still being drafted, the
Lowry Gang, presumably frustrated by this lack of progress, went
back to rating. Or at least somebody started robbing stores
and plantations in the area, and most people thought it
was the Lowry's. People started demanding that the Lowry Gang
be declared outlaws and brought to justice Henry Berry. Lowry

(19:59):
events we agreed to turn himself in after being promised
a fair trial, but soon there were rumors that he
was going to be killed, that basically a lynch mob
was going to get him out of his cell and
drown him. Somehow he managed to get a knife and
a gun and he broke out of jail on December twelfth,
eighteen sixty eight, when he was brought his evening meal.

(20:21):
After Lowry's escape, the situation became increasingly violent after the
deaths of James P. Barnes and Brant Harris in late
eighteen sixty four. In early eighteen sixty five, no one
had been killed in the gang's raids, but between January
of eighteen sixty nine and June of eighteen seventy one,
multiple prominent people in and around Robinson County were killed,

(20:44):
and those murders were pinned on the Lowry Gang. This
included Robinson County Sheriff Reuben King, who was killed in
March of eighteen sixty nine, and Colonel Owen Normant who
was killed in March of eighteen seventy. At least twenty
deaths are attributed to the regang during this period, the
vast majority of them Democrats or former Confederate officials, Although

(21:06):
many were believed to have been involved in the execution
of Allen and William Lowry, or we're bounty hunters trying
to bring the Lowry's in, or were spies trying to
infiltrate the gang. A few were essentially bystanders. We get
to how the Lowry War ended after another sponsor break.

(21:32):
By eighteen sixty nine, opinions about the Lowry Gang were divided. Too.
Many of the poorest people in Robinson County they were
Robin hood asked heroes, not only robbing from the rich
and giving to the poor, but also exacting vengeance from
people who had been oppressing them. Wealthy white landowners, on
the other hand, generally thought they were murderous thieves. The

(21:55):
Republican Party, which was in charge of the North Carolina
legislature at this point, was divided as well. Some vehemently
denounced the violence and especially the killing, while others saw
it more as the inevitable outcome of the long history
of oppression in the area, and even as something that
might be necessary for the lumby to reach their political goals.

(22:17):
In the end, though, the Republican Party took a law
and order approach, focusing on the need to end the
violence and to bring the Lowry Gang to justice, and
they made their arguments with some false equivalence, drawing parallels
between the Lowry Gang and the Ku Klux Klan, equating
the gang's targeting of former Confederate officials with the clan's
campaign of intimidation and terror against the state's non white population.

(22:43):
On March five, eight sixty nine, Judge Daniel L. Russell Jr.
Issued a proclamation of outlawry. It declared that quote one
Henry Barry Lowry one, Andrew Strong one Boss Strong, one,
Shoemaker John one, John Dial one William Chavis of Robinson
County have committed sundry and diverse murders, burglaries, robberies and

(23:07):
other felonies. And that said Henry Berry, Lowry, Andrew Strong,
Boss Strong, Shoemaker, John John Dial and William Chavis do
conceal themselves and evade arrest and service of the usual
process of law. Now Therefore, I the said Daniel L.
Russell Jr. Judge, as aforesaid, by virtue of the authority

(23:27):
vested in me by an Act of the General Assembly
in such case made and provided, do issue this my
proclamation hereby requiring the said Henry Berry, Lowry, Andrew Strong,
Boss Strong, Shoemaker, John John Dial, and William Chavis, and
each and every one of them forthwith to surrender themselves
to the Sheriff of Robinson County or to any other

(23:50):
sheriff or lawful officer of the state. And I do
also empower and require the Sheriff of Robinson County or
of any other county where the said felons are to
lurk and conceal themselves, to search for and pursue with
all power of the county and effectually apprehend said fugitives
from justice. It went on to say, quote, and I

(24:12):
do further declare that if the said fugitives, or any
of them continue henceforth to stay out, lark, or conceal themselves,
and do not immediately surrender themselves, any citizen of the
State may capture, arrest and bring them or him to justice,
And in case of flight or resistance, after being called
on and warned to surrender, may slay them or any

(24:36):
one of them, without accusation or impeachment of any crime.
Bounties were announced for the Lowry Gang, including one of
twelve thousand dollars for Henry Barry Lowry, who was to
be brought in debt or alive. The Governor of North
Carolina also asked for help from federal troops, and those
troops arrived in November of eighteen seventy A posse was

(24:59):
also formed hunt for the gang, and there was a
series of shootings, ambushes, and other violence. In February of
eighteen seventy one, Henderson Oxendine was captured within the Lumbi community.
He's believed to have intentionally allowed himself to be caught
with the hope that he could take the blame for
the gang's activities. He was tried, convicted, and executed for

(25:21):
killing a man named Steve Davis, who had been killed
during a confrontation with the gang. Later in eighteen seventy one,
Francis Marion Wishart captured the wives of several members of
the Lowry Gang, basically holding them hostage unless the gang
surrendered themselves. Henry Berry Lowry and some of the other
men replied to this threat with a note on July fourteenth,

(25:44):
demanding that the women be released by that Monday morning,
otherwise quote, the bloodiest times will be here than ever
was before, the life of every man will be in jeopardy.
And the end the women were all let go, and
to like that attempt to arrest Henry Berry Lowry at
his own wedding. This whole incident wound up bringing the

(26:06):
Lowry Gang even more popular appeal. On February sixteenth, eighteen
seventy two, there was a raid on Pope in McLeod's
store in Lumberton, North Carolina, and thieves also stole a
safe from the sheriff's office. Together they got away with
about twenty thousand dollars and Henry Berry Lowry disappeared. Not
long after that, word spread that he had died, possibly

(26:30):
by an accidental self inflicted gunshot, but there were also
a lot of stories about a possible escape and where
he may have gone afterward. In one he went all
the way to the West coast, was part of the
Modoc War between the Modoc people in the U. S.
Army in eighteen seventy two. In eighteen seventy three, regardless,

(26:50):
he was never captured, and that twelve thousand dollar reward
went unclaimed, although the violence continued in North Carolina after
Henry berry Low's disappearance. Over time, most of the rest
of the gang either disappeared or were killed or captured.
Francis Wishart was killed in May of eighteen seventy two
after having agreed to a meeting with Stephen Lowry and

(27:13):
Andrew Strong. The end of the Lowry War is usually
marked us sometime in February of eighteen seventy four, when
Steve Lowry was killed by a bounty hunter. A year
after that, Mary C. Normant, who was the widow of
Colonel Owen Norman, who the gang had previously killed, she
published a history of the Lowry Band, which is both

(27:35):
the earliest written account of all this uh and also
really unfavorable in the treatment of the Lowry's, unsurprisingly given
that they murdered her husband. Over these years, the Lowry
Gang had become famous notorious outlaws. Frank and Jesse James
claimed to be members. At some point their activities were

(27:55):
covered in national newspapers like The New York Times and
Harper's Weekly published a write up on March thirtieth, eighteen
seventy two. In more recent years, The musical drama Strike
at the Wind made its debut on July one, nineteen
seventy six, after years of work on it. It was
written by a white playwright, but it involved the work

(28:15):
of a tri racial organization and planning committee, and it
was a mostly Indigenous production. There were other dramatic productions
before this point, but most of them were biographical treatments
focused on Henry Berry Lowry, and this was focused more
generally on the Lowry War. The hope was that this
play would provide a sense of cultural cohesion and pride

(28:36):
among the Lumby and educate non Lumby about Lumby culture
and history, and there were hopes that it would become
an ongoing tourist attraction, like some of North Carolina's other
outdoor historical dramas. This includes The Lost Colony, which started
in the thirties, and Unto These Hills, which is about
Cherokee history up through the removal, and that was first

(28:56):
performed in the fifties, although that didn't happen, and the
play was performed annually for about ten years, and then
it returned in seventeen after a ten year hiatus. Yeah,
I think if either is being performed or has been
performed for some showings this year. Um I do not
remember if that was before or after this episode will

(29:17):
be out there. Some historians have concluded that the Lowry
Gang and the government's response to the gang had an
enormous impact on North Carolina politics towards the end of
the nineteenth century, with the Republican Party's division over how
to handle it, and then the ultimate decision to take
a law and order approach, leading the Lumbi vote to

(29:37):
swing towards the Democrats and then hastening the Democrats returns
to power in North Carolina, and the Lumbi tribe continues
to be influential in North Carolina politics. North Carolina is
a swing state, and the tribe has been described as
a group of swing voters within that state. In there
were so many news reports about how Robinson County had

(29:59):
been quote a Democratic stronghold before voting for Donald Trump
in and electing Trump by an even larger margin in
One of the factors that was cited in this Trump's
announcement that he supported the Lumby Recognition Act. That's an
act that would grant the tribe full recognition by the
federal government. Because currently the Lumbi tribe is not fully

(30:23):
federally recognized. In ninety six, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a
law that recognized the Lumbi as an Indian tribe, but
quote nothing in this Act shall make such Indians eligible
for any services performed by the United States for Indians
because of their status as Indians, and none of the

(30:44):
statutes of the United States which affect Indians because of
their status as Indians shall be applicable to the Lumbi Indians.
This makes the Lumbi the largest non federally recognized tribe
in the United States, with fifty five enrolled members and
seventy thousand people identifying as Lumby or part Lumby in

(31:05):
census records. Although many Lumbi live in and around Robinson
County today, there are also significant Lumby communities in other
parts of the US, including Baltimore, Detroit, and Philadelphia. Although
that nineteen fifty six legislation barred the Lumby from most
federal programs, many took part in the Urban Relocation Program

(31:27):
that was a federal program to move indigenous people out
of reservations and into cities. This was another attempt to
get Indigenous people to assimilate with white society. Today, Baltimore
is home to the largest Lumbi community outside of North
Carolina as a result of that program. The idea of
federal recognition for the Lumbi tribe has been controversial. Legislation

(31:51):
has been reintroduced at the federal level a couple of
times over the last few years, and each time there
have been vocal opponents to it, including in some cases
from the leaders of other indigenous nations. For example, in
twenty Principal Chief Richard's Need of the Eastern Band of
Cherokee Indians argued against federal recognition for the Lumbi before

(32:12):
the House Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples. Sneed cited a number
of reasons for this opposition. One of the tribes earlier
names that we talked about in the top of the
show was the Cherokee Indians of Robinson County, a name
that was outlined in a law introduced by a white legislator,
but also had the support of some members of the tribe.

(32:32):
Another reason is that federal law generally recognizes indigenous nations
that have a governing body and political structure that predates
the establishment of the United States, but the Lumby have
described themselves as an amalgamation of multiple tribes and language
groups that came together in one geographic area. Sneed's testimony

(32:52):
before the House also contends that the Lumby have no
indigenous ancestry. Obviously very complicated. Sneat is not the only
person who has um spoken out against this recognition. That
is just the congressional testimony that I had access to.
Most recently, this legislation to recognize the Lumbie has passed

(33:13):
the House. It was received in the Senate in November one.
This legislation would strike out section two of that act
that had been signed into law in nineteen fifty six.
That was the section that specified that the recognition didn't
extend to the tribe receiving any benefits as an indigenous nation.
So this would extend federal recognition to the tribe and

(33:36):
quote all laws and regulations of the United States of
general application to Indians and Indian Tribes shall apply to
the tribe and its members. As a side note, something
else that has been on Tracy's shortlist forever is the
Battle of Hayes Pond. That is the name given to
a nine eight incident in which the ku Klux Klan
was planning a rally in Maxed in, North Carolina, which

(33:59):
is partly local aided in Robinson County. Fifty or so
klansmen arrived for the rally, where they were vastly outnumbered
by hundreds of Lumbie, many of them armed. After someone
shot out the one light bulb the clan had for illumination,
they fled and although other gunfire was exchanged, no one
was killed. Yeah. One of the reasons that's never made

(34:20):
it into a full episode is that, um that's without
all the context that we just covered here. That is, uh,
that's most of the story. But it is one that
the Lumby take a whole lot of bride in and
is generally described as like the Lumby running the clan
out of North Carolina. So that is the Lowry War.

(34:40):
Do you have a listener, Manil as well? I do.
I have listener mail from a net. Annette wrote and said, Hi,
Holly and Tracy, my husband and I have the good
fortune but to be traveling to Germany in Austria in September,
and I wondered if there are a past podcast related
to Munich Salzburg Halstat milk Abbey, the Habsburg's Vienna. It's
ra I missed the archive. I also wanted to share

(35:02):
a couple of things related to recent podcasts I think
you will find interesting. The first item relates to William
marsh Rice. My husband and I are both alumni of
Rice University and have been following with interest the work
of Rice's Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice.
One of the co chairs, Alex Bird, is a friend
of ours. Among the task forces changes was what to

(35:26):
do with the Founder's statue that is in the main
campus quadrangle. You can read more at the links below.
The second item is a sculpture that was inspired by
the Laocoon. The work is by the South African artist
when both the end is entitled Prism ten Dead Laocoon.
We've seen it a two different hotels. It's very powerful,

(35:47):
sea below and attached REALOK. Forward to another live show
in Houston when you're touring again. I was the one
who gave you a postcard from the Mutual Museum. This
is from Anette, so thank you so much. Annette. I
wanted to read this because number one I had missed
that update. About Rice University's decision to move the statue
of the founder William marsh Rice to another place. That

(36:09):
is something that we had talked about briefly in that episode,
and so that is a decision that was made earlier
this year to relocate that statue. Uh. The other thing
is I also missed the archive, even though our old
website went away at this point, I feel like three

(36:30):
or four years ago. It was before the pandemic that
the old website went away. We'll still occasionally get emails
from folks saying something like, what happened to the old
website and we no longer have it? And it was
it was not within our ability to change. We also
missed the archive, but our archive wasn't quite granular enough

(36:52):
to have made it I think easy to find episode
podcasts related to these particular places related to German in Austria.
UM so I did dig up a few. We have
stuff on Rudolph the second of Austria and Empress Cissy
Lola Montez tangentially related also a fun listen uh, and

(37:14):
then Maria Anna Mozart would be classified as related to that. Also.
We've said this before on the show, but at this point,
the easiest way to find episodes on specific topics is
either to use a podcast player that's searchable, because our
our website is not, or to google the topic that
you're looking for along with the words stuffy miss in

(37:35):
history class. I have found that recently the Google algorithm
just as also wants me to have the word I
heart in there, because nothing can be easy. Um so
that would bring up things like Germany and Austria if
they were referenced in the episode description. The tags that

(37:55):
we used for the episodes were not ever something that
was part of the actual RSS feeds, So even though
they were are part of the old website, it's not
a thing that is like facing users anymore. And it
also wasn't quite as granular as the topics that Annett
asked for suggestions related to. So thank you again, Annette
for this hope that folks are looking for old episodes

(38:19):
of the show, we're able to find them by something
more searchable than our website, which is not searchable. If
you would like to write to us, we're a history
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(38:40):
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