Catawba Indians Were Called Flatheads

By Susan F. Craft

Catawba Indian Village

        The Catawba, many of whom lived in North and South Carolina, dwelled in villages of circular, bark-covered houses, and dedicated temple structures were used for public gatherings and religious ceremonies. 

Catawba Indian woman

        Agriculture, for which men and women both shared responsibility, provided at least two crops each year and was heavily supplemented by hunting and fishing.
        The Iroquois called the Catawba "flatheads" because they, as well as many of the other Siouan-speaking tribes of the area, practiced forehead flattening of males infants.
      Besides the Iroquois, traditional Catawba enemies included the Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, and several members of the Great Lakes Algonquin allied with the French.

      
Catawba warriors had a fearsome reputation and an appearance to match: ponytail hairstyle with a distinctive war paint pattern of painting one eye in a black circle, the other in a white circle and the remainder of the face painted black. Seeing that fearsome look, coupled with the flattened foreheads, some of their enemies must have died from sheer fright. 
         The Catawba allied during the American Revolutionary War with the Patriot colonists against the British.
       

Samuel Harris, one of the characters in my novel, Laurel, is a Catawba Indian. Here’s how my character, Lilyan Xanthakos describes Samuel:

        She loved her husband’s best friend, who had fought at his side through so many battles that they often argued about who had saved whose life most often. A handsome man with a wide, square jaw and full lips, he wore moccasins, buckskin leggings, a breech cloth, and a drop-shoulder shirt. Over his shoulder he’d strapped a powder horn engraved with a carving of a black snake, identifying him as a Catawba, some of the fiercest and most feared warriors in the Carolinas.

Susan F. Craft is the author of The Chamomile, a Revolutionary War romantic suspense, which won the SIBA Okra Pick. The sequel, Laurel, is a post-Revolutionary War suspense, released by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas Jan. 17, 2015.