Tag: Catawba

The Catawba (also known as Issa or Esaw, but most commonly Iswa) are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans, known as the Catawba Indian Nation. They live in the Southeast United States, along the border between North and South Carolina near the city of Rock Hill. The Catawba were once considered one of the most powerful Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes. The Catawba and other Siouan peoples are believed to have coalesced as individual tribes in the Southeast.
Primarily involved in agriculture, the Catawba were friendly toward early European colonists. They were at almost constant war with tribes of other major language families: the Iroquois, the Algonquian Shawnee and Delaware, and the Iroquoian Cherokee, who fought for control over the large Ohio Valley (including what is now in present-day West Virginia). They served during the American Revolutionary War with the colonists against the British. Decimated by earlier smallpox epidemics, tribal warfare and social…