A production of South Carolina ETV (male narrator) This program was made possible in part by a grant from... ♪ (male narrator) They were pioneers on this ancient land.

They moved swiftly across mountains, valleys, rivers, and the seas until they came to the land at the end of the world, and they went no farther.

In 12,000 years, th ese pioneers became settlers.

They developed crafts and beliefs, worshipping now unremembered deities whose names they spoke in forgotten languages.

They lived, loved, hated, and warred until they made the land at the end of the world home.

And so it was for 12,000 years.

Until dawn on the last day, their land would be the end of their old world.

On the horizon came a new people, and from that day forward, it would be their new world.

New pioneers called the people at the end of the world Indians.

The land would be called by the newcomers first as Chicora, then La Florida, and eventually, South Carolina.

♪ Indians of South Carolina were the first people living on mainland North America to encounter European colonists.

They were the first to suffer near-annihilation from war, pestilence, persecution, or even the mere presence of the new wave of settlers.

Despite the odds and the centuries, they are still here.

This is the story of those who remain.

♪ ♪ ♪ (male speaker) When the, when the British had built their fort on top, they had dug through the remains of a building that had been here, a wattle-and-daub building, a building that had posts in the ground and saplings woven in and out of it and the outside of the walls plastered with, with clay, and then, probably, the roof was thatched.

(narrator) Leland Ferguson, an archaeologist, leads a group of curious visitors on a tour of an ancient place.

During the Revolution, the British army constructed a fort on top of a mound in the Lowcountry, near where present-day Interstate 95 meets the present-day town of Santee.

In 1701, when John Lawson came through and came up the Santee River, he met the Santee king and a prophet with the Santee king, or a shaman with the Santee king, and he said he met them at a big mound.

We think this is probably the place.

Lawson said he came up on the top, and there was a building.

Inside, they had the bones of their ancestors.

(narrator) The tour is part of an unusual celebration of a culture that has since disappeared by a people whose ancestors helped bring about its end.

[arrow thumps] This is Archaeology Day, an event sponsored by the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology.

Here, archaeologists an d aficionados of the old ways deliver lectures and give demonstrations.

[stone scraping] The men and women who maintain these old ways of life have a true 20th-century title.

They're just aboriginal technicians.

(male interviewer) What is that?

It's a white man that studies aboriginal culture.

(narrator) In fact, nearly all of the Indian crafts practiced at Archaeology Day and dozens of other celebrations like it are practiced by white aboriginal technicians.

♪ But in one corner of the field, a man prepares a fire pit.

The man is the one person here who saw his grandparents using this aboriginal technology.

This is the method that my ancestors always used, you know, the Indians?

This pottery that was put in there was made by hand, no wheel.

You'd trim it with a knife, smooth it down and sandpaper it, take it out of the fire.

When it cooled, you'd clean it with cloth, and the pottery's done, see?

(narrator) Fox Ayers and his wife, Sara, attend events frequently.

Twenty, even ten years ago, that would not be true.

Fox and his wife are Catawba Indians, the most well-known Indian tribe in South Carolina, their pottery perhaps the only traditional Indian craft native to South Carolina that survives today.

This makes them unusual for Indians in South Carolina, although the Catawba are the exception, which is more well-known than the rule.

Indians in this state are, for the most part, defined only in the negative sense.

Having no traces of their original culture, their identity is reduced to an offhand, collective negative leveled upon it by the white world.

They're "just Indians."

[bells rattling and chiming] (male speaker) So me of us are genetic Indians.

Some of us are Indians here.

I don't see that it would be useful to identify which are which because all of us respect the customs and the culture of our forefathers.

(narrator) Herb McAmis, adopted member of the Edisto Kusso-Natchez people of Dorchester and Colleton Counties, explains this ancient ritual.

Our forefathers visualized the earth that our Grandfather gave us on which to live as being a large, round island that was suspended from the blue dome of heaven from the four cardinal points of the compass.

Hence, the circle is sacred to us.

You will see the drum is round.

You will see we're dancing in a circular fashion.

And before any dancing takes place, the circle is always purified.

One of our tribal council members... [♪ chanting and singing in Native American language ♪] (narrator) The circle dance is, without a doubt, Indian.

While it's derived fr om the Western Plains Indians, it would not be unfamiliar to the people at the end of the world.

Amidst this gathering of disciples of Indian culture are just a few Indian children, the latest generation of those who remain.

They're Edisto Kusso-Natchez.

They and people like them represent the vast majority of enrolled tribal members in South Carolina.

Theirs is a struggle for identity and respect in a world that barely acknowledges their existence.

Because of their small numbers, political and economic disaffection, this has been easy to do.

From contacts with Spanish explorers in the 1520s until the founding of the United States, the population along the lower coast declined from 1750 to less than 250 Indians.

An account from Lieutenant Governor William Bull in 1770.

In this province, settled in 1670, then swarming with Indians, there remains now, except a few Catawbas, nothing but their names.

We still have those names: Kiawah, Wando, Wateree, Congaree, Oconee, and dozens more.

They are the rivers, islands, creeks, and lands where these nations once flourished.

Never great in size, each nation, nonetheless, possessed distinct dialects, beliefs, and cultures, of which only the smallest fragments remain.

Many said the people also have disappeared.

Yet those who claim that living legacy say they have survived, and, indeed, they may be reasserting themselves.

According to the 1990 census of South Carolina's 3 1/2 million residents, 2.4 million are white.

1,040,000 are black.

At a very distant third, numbering at just over 8,000, are those claiming American Indian as their race.

While this number seems miniscule in comparison, compared with the 5,000 Indians re ported in 1980's census, their numbers have nearly doubled.

These include the Catawba, some Cherokee, and members of other tribes transplanted here.

They include several other groups claiming indigenous an d unique South Carolina roots.

Along with the Catawba, they make up the vast majority of Indians in South Carolina.

They are the Santee, Pee Dee, Chicora, and the Edisto.

[♪ drumming ♪] (male speaker) I had a dream about me going fishing, and fish represents souls.

It changed to the Edisto River, and we were on the bank, and there were two young boys.

Some woman came along and said something that offended 'em.

They jumped into the water, and it was rough on the edge.

I said, "See what you done?"

I remember this vividly because I believe God was confirming that calling in my life.

I jumped in and began to coach them.

"Swim on your back, and you'll be all right.

Be careful; it's rough on the edge."

(narrator) For Glenn Creel; his people, the Edisto; and most Native Americans in South Carolina, life is rough on the edge... on the edge of identity, the edge of society, an d, often, the edge of poverty.

Because of this dream, Glenn Creel finds himself in the helping role among his people.

It was this dream that changed his life.

After it, he swore his life to Christ and to medicine at the same time.

I was going through a real burdensome time, wondering, "Lord, why am I going to school?"

It's hard study and hard work.

I was saying, "Am I throwing my life away?"

I knew I was doing good, but I wanted to do what God wants.

I began to say, "Am I doing the right thing?

Am I in your will?"

That night, he confirmed what I was doing was right.

He was gonna use me to minister physically as a physician and spiritually as a minister.

Lord, thank you for blessing us to gather here today.

Thank you for everyone that has come out.

Lord, we pray you'll bless the food, sanctify it holy, and purify it, that it'll be filling to our bodies and give us strength.

(voice-over) I knew I was Indian, but I didn't know what kind.

Recently it's become more aware to us and made known to us what type of Indian we are.

The bad thing was when somebody would ask, "Well, what kind of Indian?"

Most of the time, you'd say whichever Indian was the majority.

You'd say Cherokee or something like that.

(interviewer) Really?

Yeah.

I knew I was an Indian.

I didn't know what kind until recently.

Natchez-Kusso is where we descended.

We adopted the name Edisto because we live on the river.

Put your bikes down.

(Creel) It sort of touched me, you know, that there were other Native Americans.

And I feel that, though we're separate tribes and all, that we're more of a united person as Indians.

Dad, let's go down and look.

I can't see the water.

Look at these boards!

(Creel) Pull yourself up.

I can't!

(Creel, voice-over) Then my son was born with spina bifida.

I got the desire to do research and try to find cures for disease or to help people in general.

And plus...

I knew that being a doctor-- I was told this by a minister-- you would be able to go to any mission field, preach, carry the word, and help people spiritually.

I felt if I become a doctor, the doors would open.

I can go wherever I want.

Who has igneous rock, extrusive, with many holes?

Ouch!

[laughter] Shh!

Quiet.

(narrator) Fo r now, the financial pressures of medical school have put that dream out of reach for Creel, so he teaches to keep food on the table.

You will have to fill this out.

It's a magic square sum.

(voice-over) Some days I like it, some days not.

I went through...

I don't know what.

This week I was disgusted.

I feel I should be in medical school, and I'm delaying my plans.

I'm gaining more experience by being here, but I feel that I'm missing out on a year that I could be advancing, going through medical school.

(narrator) Because they don't have federally recognized status possessed by other tribes, Edistos like Creel don't have access to assistance that would help pay the cost of medical school.

The reason they are unrecognized is their tribal governments were obliterated before the founding of the United States.

To survive as a people, they joined a small group of Mississippi Natchez, a history typical of South Carolina's native Indians.

In 1731, the French persuaded the Choctaws to join them in a war of attrition against the Natchez people.

They prevailed in 1731, and they captured about 400 Natchez, whom they promptly sold into slavery in the so-called Sugar Islands, the West Indies.

And the remainder of the Natchez people managed to escape.

One group settled at a place called Four Hole Swamp in South Carolina, which is where we live today.

(narrator) It's Election Day at the Edisto Indian Association tribal center.

The election pits the current chief, Matthew Creel, against his relative, Glenn Creel's father, Johnny, himself a former chief.

A third candidate, Eddie Martin, al so previously held that title.

Today, however, the contest is mainly between the two Creels.

In the end, the incumbent, Matthew Creel, clings to his post for another four-year term, winning the election by one vote.

Although the Edisto Kusso-Natchez can trace their heritage back two centuries, their lack of tribal government ov er time has hurt their chances of obtaining recognition.

This is a situation they and every other forgotten tribe hope to change.

I can't blame the government.

A lot of people blame the government for these things, but the people have to blame themselves.

They just accepted whatever the government handed them.

They built a school for them and give 'em schoolteachers, a white school with white schoolteachers, and they accepted that.

They didn't ask for nothing else.

So who can you blame?

(narrator) But with the vote comes a chance for Matthew Creel to move his people in a direction he hopes will lead someday to state or federal recognition.

Most significantly, th e election itself is important to show that these Indians, early victims to history's afflictions, are making the most of their chance at a future.

♪ ♪ [insects buzzing] [vehicular noise] (male speaker) Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Before I can remember, before I recall anything, they've been living in the Holly Hill area.

[birds chirping] My grandfather and them, they owned it, and my daddy was raised on it, and so I'm still here.

[chuckles] [machinery rumbling] (narrator) Spend much time at all with Oscar Pratt, chief of the Santee Indians of Holly Hill, and you'll find out pretty quickly his hobby is work.

Each morning, he drives 30 miles to Walterboro, where he's the supervisor at a steel company.

After work, he's usually here.

[machinery humming] [machinery humming] He will stay in his fields until dark.

Even then, his evening hobby is only half over, for the corn he raises will be used to feed his hogs.

He will work in the hog pen until 10:00 or so at night before finally going home to eat supper.

To Oscar Pratt, the land, working the land, and making sure it stays his family's land is of utmost importance.

(Pratt) It is important.

Me and my wife have been married for 27 years.

I promised to build her a house, and she ain't got the house yet.

I was building it last year.

When the land come up for sale-- I got a friend at the bank, a white man.

I talked with him, and he said, "If you want that land-- "I know it belongs in your family-- I'll help you get it."

I didn't have no money to buy no land, but I got some good white friends.

By his help, I got the land.

That was more important than any house.

I'd like to have a house for my wife, but it's important getting that land.

[machinery buzzing] Ever since I can remember, it was in the family.

Daddy'd tell me it was in the family for years.

I guess it was handed down fr om their grandmamma and daddy.

In fact, we owned all this land th rough here one time.

Uh...the people around my job, they call me JR, on "Dallas," say I'm always wanting to buy up land.

I don't want the land for myself.

I got two boys.

I don't need it for them.

But, see, I got a lot of colored friends, black friends.

I got a lot of 'em.

They sold that land and went to Philly and New York.

If they want to come back, they don't have no place to go.

I told my wife if I get able to buy land, I'll buy it, and any of my people that's left and want to come back, they have a place to come.

I don't actually need the land.

I'm too old to buy land just for myself.

But if I can afford it, I'll buy it, and if anybody want to come back here to stay, they'll have a place to come back.

(narrator) The Pratt family lost its land over the years through sale and foreclosure.

For Indians assimilated into the white culture, the idea of a reservation is foreign, although the need for family connections continues.

Just up the road from Oscar Pratt's house is the church where his father preached and the school where he and his brothers, sisters, cousins, everyone in the community went to school.

It was, for a long time, the only place to go.

While the Santee and most of South Carolina's other Indian people have never been officially recognized by the state, they were required to attend a separate school, a third district in the age of segregation, a district for Indians.

Ever since I was-- from first grade to eighth grade, we went to a school right down the road from my house.

They called it the Indian school.

And we considered ourself an Indian then, but then, we kind of growed out of it a little bit because a lot of the people was moving out, new era, and people was going out, trying to find jobs.

So they thought they would better theirself by not being Indians.

But then, it didn't work, so they figured they'd go back to being what they originally were.

And now it's a tough row to hoe.

A lot of the time, they say there's no Indians no more.

But I went to school, and my granddaddy-- my daddy, he went to school up there.

He was at the Indian school.

Ever since we known it, it was the Indian school.

So there's got to be some Indians somewhere 'cause I'm still living!

I wish we just had some jobs around here.

We could bring everybody back in the community, buy up some of the land we lost.

It was actually lost during the Depression, I think.

Back then is when the Indian didn't care too much about land.

He cared, but he had to get rid of it to survive.

And buy some of that land back and get 'em all back in the community and live like... in the old-time way.

I don't need to go back in teepees and things like that, but live normal and just be what we is.

Be an Indian, and go out and conduct ourself as Indians in a manner that we would be looked up to, not down on.

[♪ chanting, drumming ♪] ♪ (narrator) Fields of cotton: a sign of November in the Pee Dee for nearly 200 years.

It's one the Pee Dee Indians have grown used to... just one.

♪ [cheering] ...want a victory, and we'll never give in.

(female speaker) Go down... Go down the field.

Break through that line.

We're here to win!

We need to practice th at one again.

(narrator) For Dovey Locklear, it means cheerleading.

Her mother coaches.

You need to practice the touchdown, the one where you do the moving the feet.

(female speaker) Go get it, get it, get it!

(narrator) For Dovey's brother David, it's football.

His father, David Senior, coaches also.

We want the red team defense.

(narrator) It 's one of the elder Locklear's co mmunity roles in the white world.

Outside that world, he has another, as chief of the Pee Dee people, the largest Indian community in South Carolina.

Football is a family affair for the Locklears, and it's part of their participation in the wider communities, what Indians call the white world, but, as Indians, it's only half of their identity.

Only now is the other half returning.

The streets of McColl, South Carolina, in Marlboro County will never hear the language of the Pee Dee people who dwelt here before Columbus.

Not the faintest traces of it remain.

It feels bad.

I feel very bad.

I was fortunate enough to go down to visit the Miccosukee tribe in Florida after the Andrew hurricane, and they speak their native language.

And just to listen to that and say we've lost ours....

It's strange just to wonder what my forefathers did-- what kind of language they did speak, or what it sounded like.

(narrator) But Locklear and several hundred other members of the Pee Dee Indian Association hope to witness at least the re vitalization of their spirit.

And so the Pee Dee children dance.

(male speaker over PA system) We're certainly pleased today to have Ms. Karen and Virgie Montoya and their dancers to celebrate Indian Heritage Month.

[♪ singing, drums booming, and bells jingling ♪] ♪ (interviewer) Do you feel like you guys are changing things?

(children) Yeah.

I feel I'm changing the way they think about us because I guess they see it's fun.

We don't care what they say.

They're picking at us, and we don't pay 'em attention.

Without us, our heritage will die.

We got to build it back up.

[♪ singing, drums booming, and bells jingling ♪] (female speaker) We had just come from a powwow or something.

We were sitting around, talking, "These kids could do that."

So a friend of mine made a tape of the competition songs and the chants and stuff and the flag song and honor songs and different things on the tape.

We said, "We got something we want you to do."

(narrator) Karen Montoya; her mother, Virgie; and Jo Kitchen coaxed their kids and some other children in the Pee Dee community of Marlboro County to dance the dances of their ancestors.

They call themselves the Wind Walkers.

Well, it would teach them our heritage because if we didn't get them interested in it, it would be a lost art because, like some of them said, we are the older group now for Indians here that is interested in it.

The ones like my mother and father, they really had a hard time coming up as Indians because they couldn't go to school with the whites.

They'd have to look for an Indian school.

If they went to school with whites, they would tell of things that happened, like they could not face the white child.

They would have to turn their back to them.

It was hard for them to say they were Indian.

I don't think they lost their pride.

They're proud of their heritage, but after you're told you're wrong so many times, you start to think it is wrong.

It was never popular to be Indian, and it's still not.

I think people are becoming more educated about the Indian heritage, the culture.

We're trying to instill pride in young people.

Um... Miss, um-- Christie Lynn, a 76 in science?

Conduct!

Christie Lynn!

A N!

Gah!

I'm gonna hurt you, girl.

(narrator) The Wind Walkers meet when they can, when other activities allow, when their grades allow.

It's no pass, no play, this wind-walking, even for those whose duty it is to cherish their once-forgotten past, because those who remain recognize that ignorance is the path to oblivion.

These aren't easy sacrifices for kids who, like most their age, simply want to fit in.

Being Indian in South Carolina means a little sacrifice, even at their age.

It's a sacrifice that David Locklear, the Pee Dees' chief, insists upon and is shared by all Indian leaders.

We want to educate our people.

With education, jobs will come.

[sheet metal banging] (narrator) A freak tornado touches down a few miles outside of McColl.

It damages two houses, one of them the lifelong home of an elderly Pee Dee woman.

She has nowhere else to turn.

[metal scraping and banging] It's gonna need a new roof.

Oh, yeah, it will.

(female speaker) I've worked, but these elderly people, they need help, some of them.

She's lived here all these years and don't even have a bathroom.

Yeah.

That's another thing that needs to be added.

When we do it, we'll just put a bathroom.

Wouldn't you like that?

Bathroom.

[chuckling] Yeah, I need one.

(narrator) Un til recently, Lo cklear could have done little, perhaps giving a few hours on weekends.

But the Pee Dee are getting a boost from the federal government, which recently bestowed a governance grant on the tribe.

Locklear is now paid as a full-time director.

This old warehouse will become the new center of the Pee Dee Indian Association.

A lot will come out of the center.

We will have a gathering place.

We will have our new office there.

We plan to have a food bank, a clothes closet.

Anyone in need of clothes or burn-out victims or just really down on their luck and need help, we'll be there.

[♪ rhythmic drumming ♪] ♪ (male reporter) Traffic in downtown Georgetown grinds to a halt as music fills the air.

The Chicora Indians, a Grand Strand American tribe, are picketing a replica of Columbus's ship, the "Niña."

Tribe members say they are hurt by the sight.

One reason, it's a symbol of the destruction of our nation and the enslavement of our people.

Crew members say they've had protests at other locations, and, like today, they've tried to explain their position.

We have gone over there, and the chief had said that he didn't want to talk to anybody on the "Niña," which I find very strange.

(reporter) The captain argues Columbus is being celebrated as a navigator, not as a politician.

The leader says the vessel is a disgrace.

Makes no difference to Native Americans if it's Spanish, English, or whoever.

That ship still represents the holocaust that existed to our people.

(narrator) Gene Martin is chief of the Chicora tribe of Horry and Georgetown Counties.

The people he claims descent from were the first Native Americans on the North American continent to greet Spanish colonists.

In 1991, they received a charter from the South Carolina secretary of state as an Indian association, becoming the newest such or ganization in South Carolina.

This protest of the Columbus ship replicas in Georgetown also made them among the most visible.

(Martin) I want to continue seeking recognition for my people.

I want to restore the identity of my people.

I want our culture brought back, you know.

I want people to be proud to be a Native American, you know, rather than be ashamed, as so many of our people are, and will deny the fact that they're Indian.

That's what I want.

I dedicated my life to this.

Many people dedicate their life to Jesus.

I dedicated my life to working for Native Americans, the Chicori-Siouan people.

(narrator) Mo re typically, Martin's people, th e Chicori, or, as they're better known, the Chicora, are expressing their identity this way.

Every month, Martin holds a gathering.

One of the centerpieces of these get-togethers is a kind of open hand to others wh o are seeking ethnic identity.

(male speaker) It's just right now mostly word of mouth that brings them to us.

We haven't had the exposure locally that we need.

For that reason, they only hear bits and pieces.

So then, they start to come to us asking questions.

But, as you'll hear repeated often, it's a learning process for all of us.

How are you doing, Chief?

Good to see you.

See, I remember.

(Martin, voice-over) We want to stay in touch.

We'll have a gathering every two months.

We don't just place people on a tribal roll, assign them a tribal number, and forget about them.

We like to stay in contact with the people.

(reporter) The Chicora Indians, a Grand Strand American tribe... (narrator) The protest presents a man of sharp contrasts, willing, on the one hand, to proclaim his strong views.

Yet, he says it's a proclamation wi thout bitterness.

It was another in a series of endeavors that make up Martin's long struggle to restore his people's identity, an identity typically defined only by what they were not.

It never was discussed, you know.

It just wasn't discussed, you know.

We knew that... we knew that... we knew we wasn't white.

We knew we wasn't black, see?

And after my daddy moved from the farm, there's one section of Conway where the Native American people lived that separated the whites from the blacks.

And we moved into that part of Conway many years ago.

(narrator) The Chicora, like most of South Carolina's non-Catawba native people, live with an identity of confused acceptance and denial on the part of the greater society.

They can obtain meager federal benefits for their Indian ancestry and, at the same time, have that ancestry officially ignored.

This is my trotline and fish trap tags from the state of South Carolina.

It comes from Columbia.

You have to fill out a special application to get this.

If you will notice the race on here, I'm classified as "other."

Zero for "other."

This is the hunting, fishing license.

You'll notice the race on it.

The State of South Carolina doesn't recognize any Indians other than the Catawba Indians.

[♪ piano music ♪] [cleaning tool whirring] (voice-over) I know I'm the only dentist in the tribe, and I don't think that there are any other... doctors, either, in there.

So it wasn't any role models from within.

(narrator) Wenonah Haire holds an unusual title among American Indians in South Carolina: Doctor.

The title is a source of pride for Wenonah Haire.

With it comes recognition from the wider white world that she has what it takes.

Even if it hadn't been dentistry, any other postgraduate degree or even going through college, that puts you in the mainstream of the population and gets you exposed, and that helps.

(narrator) But it's not the only thing she's proud of, nor is it, perhaps, the greatest.

[indistinct conversation] (Haire) Other than my family and my church, I'm pretty much consumed with my cultural heritage.

Marilyn, what'd you do with that piece you was making?

(female speaker) Pull it back down.

(narrator) This could be a craft class anywhere, but this one is different.

The students are all Catawba Indians, and they're learning from a master potter, also a Catawba.

Together, they're molding th eir futures out of their past, and it's something that Wenonah George Haire values immeasurably.

(voice-over) I always was proud of my heritage, but the quarter of my life I spent in school, I thought of it like survival.

It was a competitive world.

I was one of three women in dental school when I came along.

And in college, if you didn't study and you didn't get the good grades, the next step of your life didn't come to pass.

You couldn't hope to get chosen for dental school.

So just surviving was my main thing for the quarter of my life.

And now that I have gotten to that area where I could take a breather from the competitiveness of school, now that, especially, I have children, I look back, and I think, This is great that I'm doing this.

I love my work and the patients I work with.

I love communicating with them.

But how can I go further?

Then I look at my heritage and see that my children are not really gonna know anything about heritage, and most of the other tribal members, the same goes with their children if we don't all pull together and start making heritage a big focal point.

See, this side looks-- Look at there.

(Haire) So I guess we're-- a fight for a race right now is the way we look at it.

A lot of the heritage can die out so quickly if we don't preserve it now.

We have quite a few potters that are superb.

Their life is a living, breathing book of heritage.

The age that some of them have, we're not promised they'll be here tomorrow.

So we're trying to take down stories they tell us, to get them on videotape as often as we can.

We've just got so many irons in the pot that sometimes that's become, I guess, the second part of my life, the consuming part, to try to get all of that.

We have a dedicated board.

Everyone on the board feels the urgency to start a push on this heritage now so that it's not lost.

(narrator) Heritage is a source of pride for the Catawba.

It's a source of survival also, since many scholars see the Catawbas' unique pottery craft as the one binding force which kept the people together... that and the river.

(male speaker) When you're down in that river corridor, even in that portion of the river, then you find that the Catawba River has retained a lot of its natural character, even in those industrialized places.

There are several areas where the banks appear, from the river, to be relatively undisturbed at all.

I think it's a magnificent canoe trip.

Got it?

Yep.

[canoe creaking] (narrator) To day, Wenonah Haire, th e Catawba Indian, the doctor, is joining with her father, Buck George, in a canoe, and other community members around Rock Hill, in the Catawba River Task Force.

Today, they're simply there to enjoy the river.

The task force, however, was set up to guide development of this resource, to direct its future use and its preservation.

The Catawba River, winding through York County, has been the spine of the Catawba nation since before Columbus.

They have always wandered its banks, fishing, gathering, playing, and always drawing forth the clay for their pots.

Because she's a dentist, a professional, Wenonah Haire is, in some ways, at ypical of the Catawba Indians.

But she also represents a sense th at the Catawba are recognized and accepted as Indian people and are also a force to be reckoned with.

The river bears the name of the Catawba nation, which was one of the largest tribes in the Southeast at the time of the European arrival.

Because of their ability to work with the British and their willingness to fight with them during the French and Indian War, the British government ceded the Catawba the river and land along its banks, 144,000 acres, a diamond-shaped reservation that included portions of three current counties: York, Chester, and Lancaster.

The Catawba held the claim through the early years of the United States, yet the tribe was not strong enough to keep white settlers from encroaching on the in creasingly valuable farmland.

The white population increased.

The Indian population dwindled.

By 1840, the Catawba nation finally agreed to leave the place they had held fr om time immemorial.

(male speaker) We ll, basically, what happened, the Catawbas were very few in number with 144,000 acres of land.

(narrator) Gilbert Blue is the current chief of the Catawba nation.

Now, of that land that we owned, it was being rented or leased.

And those people who had leased it, some of 'em had had it for almost 99 years and was paying like a dollar a year.

Basically, those landowners decided they would like to have ownership.

They said, "We've got everything except ownership.

"We're using the land as our own, "but we need title.

"Let's make a treaty with the Catawbas "to give them something in return "for title to this land because there's very few of 'em."

That's what happened with the instigation of the landowners.

They went to the legislature, and they contacted the Catawbas and drew up the 1840 treaty.

And it's kind of ironic that the landowners now are the ones hollering, "I had nothing to do with this," and, "We're the ones hurting," when it was the landowners who initiated the treaty of 1840 to begin with.

(narrator) This Treaty of Nations Ford has led to one of the most convoluted legal challenges in U.S. history, pitting the Catawba nation of some 500 living members against over 60,000 landowners and residents living in northern-central South Carolina.

It's a hot summer afternoon at the Catawba Indian Tribal Center.

The center sits on all that remains of their former territory, a minute 500-acre reservation in York County held in trust by the state of South Carolina, although ironically at the time, th e state of South Carolina acknowledged no official tribal government.

The Catawba had relinquished their federally recognized status in the early 1960s in exchange for the reservation an d a small cash settlement under a now-discredited federal policy designed to wean Indian tribes from federal entitlements.

Today, those entitlements could provide the Catawba with education and healthcare and allow them to act as an autonomous government.

The tribe will take a vote that could affect their entire future and the future of the three counties.

The tribal chief, Gilbert Blue, is counting on his people's support for a plan that could restore their federal recognition.

If they agree, the tribe will continue negotiations with state and federal officials.

If they don't, the tribe will proceed with a court challenge of unprecedented complexity and unknown consequence, ta king each landowner to court.

No outsiders are allowed to witness the discussion or the vote.

A short time later, Blue emerges from the center, along with attorney Don Miller of the Native American Rights Fund.

The significance of the vote was that we'd have the support of the tribe in the negotiating or the filing of the individual suits.

(narrator) The tribe agreed to delay action if a reasonable settlement could be achieved.

The vote signaled the tribe's confidence in the nearly 20-year-old legal struggle to regain their recognition from the federal government.

The effort, initiated by Don Miller and Gilbert Blue, hinged on using a fatal flaw in the 1840 Treaty of Nations Ford.

While the Catawba tribe had agreed to sell its land to the state of South Carolina, there is no record of it being ratified by the U.S. Congress, putting it in direct conflict with the Federal Nonintercourse Act of 1790, the underpinning of all U.S./Indian policy, It prevents any state from negotiating with recognized tribal governments without federal approval.

The Catawba leadership under Blue determined it could use this flawed treaty to force a final settlement and gain a four-point plan that would aid the tribe in perpetuity.

The four points is federal recognition; a development fund, which is actually dollars in the bank; acquisition of land; and per capita division among tribal members.

(interviewer) Mm-hmm, and how much money are we talking about?

We're probably talking in the neighborhood, right now, at least-- we don't know what we'll settle for, but their projection is about $50 million in cash, and, with services that they're going to be talking about, probably goes up to-- I can't give an exact figure-- somewhere around the $90 million area.

(narrator) The reservation the Catawbas sought would increase in size by ten times to over 5,000 acres.

In addition, the tribal government would be autonomous fr om state and local authority, as with all federally recognized In dian tribes.

This provision raised the eyebrows of the surrounding community.

Congressman John Spratt spearheaded negotiation for the settlement.

There were those who were opposed to settlement who, early on, insisted that if we created an Indian tribe here with federal recognition, we would give them supervening authority, and they would have authority unlike anybody else when it came to, say, permitting activities like dams on the Catawba River or approving permits under the Clean Air Act, They might be able to permit a hazardous waste landfill within their boundaries.

Don't know why they would foul their nest.

Opponents said they would be exempt from laws the rest of us abide by and consider important.

They would be free and clear of these laws.

I don't think that was accurate in the first place, but we set out to make certain it would not be accurate in this tribe.

This tribe is subject to all state and federal environmental laws that the rest of the state is subject to.

This will literally be a suburban Indian tribe.

It will be located no t too far from the boundaries of the city of Rock Hill, the town of Fort Mill.

Consequently, we didn't want to insert a new sovereign authority here that would be able to exist as a foreign government in an enclave within York County near Rock Hill, in an area that is growing as fast as any other area in South Carolina.

[distant laughter and screams] (narrator) The claim area, 144,000 acres, contains some of the most valuable real estate in the Southeast.

Included are parts of Paramount's Carowinds park, Rock Hill and Fort Mill, and the I-77 corridor co nnecting the rest of the state with the fastest-growing city in the Southeast, Charlotte, North Carolina.

The tribe attempted to fight for the claim in a class-action suit.

That failed in the courts.

Facing a statute of limitations, the tribe used the avenue of last resort, threatening to sue each landowner possessing some portion of the claim.

At that time things shifted.

People began to cease thinking of this in the abstract, that this was something that happened 250 years ago that doesn't have any impact on me.

People began to think, Individual landowners?

They're talking about me!

My name is going to be on a federal court summons.

And at that point, the politicians began to get the heat from the landowners.

The governor began to hear about it.

In my way of looking at it, that's when it brought this to the front burner and got a lot of people's attention.

I'm convinced the settlement would not have taken place if it had not been for the threat.

(narrator) It would have been an un precedented number of lawsuits in the annals of U.S. history.

The prospect sent shockwaves through the Rock Hill area and the affected portions of surrounding counties.

Will Jordan is a real estate agent in Rock Hill.

We were told by the attorneys, of course, and the lenders, if, in fact, these individual suits are filed, several things will occurred.

You have lease pendings in the courthouse on all these properties.

You have property owners under deadlines to answer.

These lawsuits will, of course, be filed to take property from the owner.

I think you have, in addition to publicity, a lot of ill will created in the area.

You look at the situation with respect to passing title.

If you can't pass a clear title, who wants to buy a piece of property and buy directly into a lawsuit?

Even though the chances might be slim of losing the property, you still have the expense and the unknown aspect of going through this entire lawsuit.

So we feel, and quite a number of attorneys and lenders and businesspeople in the area also feel, that if all these individual lawsuits are filed, it'd be a-- just have a devastating effect on the local economy.

(narrator) Th e strong-armed threat of lo ading down the courts worked.

Leaders realized that, right or wrong, settling with the tribe would be cheaper than battling 60,000 lawsuits.

With the Catawba nation's acceptance of that effort, negotiations moved toward the necessary breakthrough.

The Catawba tribe voted unanimously to support the Tribal Executive Committee to pursue the negotiated process until we reach a final settlement of our land claim.

All of us, almost 90% of us, go for it.

Yes, I'm very happy.

As long as things goes right, it suits me, 'cause I done lived my life now.

I'm 74 years old.

They don't do something quick, I ain't gonna be around.

We're not gonna sue.

(interviewer) Are you happy?

Oh, yes.

I live on the reservation.

The rest that complain usually don't live on the reservation.

All they wanted was money.

"Don't want to be Indian; just give me money."

That's not being an Indian.

The land is the Indian - not the money.

...go dancing tonight.

I think I will.

See you later.

(narrator) While the agreement would have to be accepted by the state legislature, governor, Congress, and the President, the willingness to compromise on the local level was vital.

Gilbert Blue and the Catawba had their foot in the door, The breeze was now at their back.

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