- [Announcer] Funding for "Homegrown History" is provided in part by SECU Foundation, funded by the members of State Employees Credit Union, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

A private corporation funded by the American people.

[gentle music] - [Sandra] American Revolutionaries fought for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But for Native Americans, that fight was nothing new.

Since colonists first arrived, they'd faced an existential question, how to survive on their own terms.

Their fight for freedom to find the future of their communities and our nation.

This is "Homegrown History."

You may think you know about the winner in Valley Forge.

The one you learned about in middle school was cold, the soldiers didn't have food, many died.

What you may not have learned is that George Washington deliberately infected thousands of men with smallpox to save the Continental Army.

This mass inoculation campaign was unprecedented, risky, and ultimately successful.

And buried in the records of that campaign is a story of an indigenous man, Thomas Stewart, a Sappony warrior from the North Carolina, Virginia borderlands who was inoculated against smallpox during the American Revolution.

His story was hidden in plain sight for nearly 250 years until Sappony tribal researchers uncovered it.

- Things were written about us for several hundred years, but the people here in this tribe didn't have access to them and sometimes didn't even know about them.

- [Sandra] So we traveled to Sappony hunting grounds on the High Plains.

What we found is a tribe rooted in faith with remarkable warrior tradition, in a paradox.

Helping birth the nation was one thing.

Surviving inside it as indigenous people was another.

- Everybody assumes that fighting for independence was an easy decision.

- Oh yeah, now this is my way of hunting.

- [Sandra] This is Frankie Talley.

A Sappony man and veteran who likes to hunt the traditional way, no trail cams, no GPS, no quad runners to haul his kill back to camp.

He believes if you shoot it, you carry it.

- To me, that's not hunting.

You don't get no exercise.

And I'm an avid walker.

I like walking through the woods and stuff.

Just to see the forest, just all the pretty trees that's out there.

I think that's from being in the military too.

- [Sandra] Frankie grew up hunting here in the High Plains.

- We'd go hunt and we'd kill as many 30 rabbits and probably eight or 10 squirrels, 'cause as we saw squirrels through the trees, we'd shoot them too.

You had to be a good shot because you didn't have the money to buy shells and stuff, and so you want to make every shot count.

And all these little bluffs in here, I know how to get around there good.

It's almost like I got a compass in my head.

Do you know what I mean?

I know north, east, south, or west, whatever.

And I know the directions to go in, to get back home.

[gentle music] - [Sandra] Half a century before the Revolutionary War, another Sappony hunter named Ned Bearskin guided a surveying party right through these tribal lands.

The expedition was led by William Byrd II, a Virginia aristocrat in charge of settling the longstanding dispute between Virginia and North Carolina over territory.

With the help of Bearskin, Byrd and his surveying party drew the official dividing line between the two colonies.

But why would Ned Bearskin, an indigenous man, help draw that line right through his people's lands?

Dante Desiderio has been searching for answers in journals, manuscripts, and colonial government records for three decades.

- Dealing with the colonies wasn't easy, and they were both competing for trade, and this boundary line offered a lot of safety.

If we needed to, we can go on the Carolina side for protection.

If we needed to, we'd go on the Virginia side protection, right on the boundary line without changing and disrupting our way of life.

Bearskin knew where the boundary line was, and we looked at that as protection, this idea of the safe haven.

- [Sandra] As a Piedmont tribe, the Sappony had been living with colonists for a long time.

Trading, guiding, and protecting, and even being educated in one of the first Indian schools in the country.

By the 1750's, when the British went to war with the French and many of their Indian allies, some Sappony chose to fight on the side of their neighbors, the British colonists.

But their future was far from certain.

So on the eve of the war for independence, their choice to fight in the Revolutionary War was an existential one.

- This is a choice of how do we survive in the colony?

How do we survive as a people?

And it's a really daunting choice when your population is small and you're kind of marginalized in the first place.

All these decisions, none of them were easy to be able to try to just keep our people together and more important to remain in our homeland.

- [Sandra] But as the American Revolution arrived, researchers believed that the Sappony had to make new alliances in order to stay on their land.

So in 1778, a Sappony warrior named Thomas Stewart chose the patriot cause when he enlisted in the Continental Army.

And almost immediately, Stewart was thrust into one of the most storied moments of the Revolutionary War, Valley Forge.

[drum beating] - [TV Broadcaster] With his men freezing in the desolation of Valley Forge, only General Washington's granite determination prevented the cause of the United States from slipping into defeat.

- [Sandra] If you remember one thing about the Revolutionary War from middle school, it's probably Valley Forge.

It was winter of 1778.

The British had taken Philadelphia, a patriot stronghold, and George Washington needed a place for his army to wait out the brutal winter.

So he chose Valley Forge, a frozen plateau 20 miles north of Philadelphia.

Nearly 2,000 soldiers would die there.

Not from British bullets, but from hunger, cold, and disease.

One of the deadliest threats, smallpox.

At its peak, more than 1/3 of the Continental Army was too sick to fight.

Washington had avoided inoculating his troops for months because it required intentionally getting them sick, which would take more out of the fight and make them an easy target.

But at Valley Forge, 12,000 soldiers living in makeshift log huts created ideal conditions for the disease to spread.

So George Washington made an unprecedented decision to inoculate thousands of soldiers at once.

It worked like this.

The doctor cut open a pustule on an infected patient, then used that same blade to make an incision under a healthy person's skin.

Most inoculated people got sick, but with a much weaker version of the disease.

Many historians believe this bold public health gamble saved the Continental Army.

Thomas Stewart was one of them.

Our co-producer, Kara Stewart, has been researching Thomas Stewart's story for years.

He's her 5th great-grandfather, and she shared much of her research with us for this episode.

- Our tribal archiving office, and we've been documenting our history.

We have about 1500 documents that we collected over the course of three years.

- [Sandra] Using primary resources surfaced by the tribe, Kara found out what happened next.

- Muster roll documents.

First, when I was looking at this, obviously Valley Forge, that's a big deal.

- [Sandra] After three years of fighting to liberate the Northeast from British occupation, Thomas marched to fight at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, roughly 127 miles from where he grew up.

The Battle of Guilford Courthouse devastated the British Army, 27% of their forces laid dead or wounded.

But Thomas also paid the price of warrior.

It was there in the middle of the fight as he was raising his gun to fire it a second time that a musket ball shattered his wrist.

- So one man said that he was at the Battle of Guilford and was wounded in the wrist.

This wound was so notorious that every old man in the county was familiar with the fact.

So to me, that tells me he was not shy about talking about his war service.

- [Sandra] The wound resulted in permanent damage to his arm.

But despite that, six months later, Thomas made his way north to fight at Yorktown where he helped finish what they started at Guilford Courthouse.

General Cornwallis surrendered and Thomas made it out alive.

Records show he returned to the High Plains, married, and raised a family with his wife, Sarah Drummond.

And that the couple settled in Person County, North Carolina, where he set up shop as a blacksmith.

- [Kara] He's making a living as a blacksmith despite this wound.

So we know he's persistent, right?

We know he had that blacksmith shop all of the rest of his life.

- [Sandra] And while looking into his story, tribal researchers discovered another Sappony patriot hidden in the records, a man named John Epps.

- John Epps and Thomas were good friends.

Thomas and Sarah left from John's house to get married as a runaway match, is what they call it in the pension application.

- [Sandra] Epps was barely 17 when he enlisted in a Virginia regiment of the Continental Army, and he served two tours.

Then Kara discovered something else about him that helps us understand the Sappony's challenges after the war.

Just six years after Britain recognized America's independence, John Epps was arrested.

- So this is the 1789 Virginia Herald Fredericksburg Advertiser, and on the second page, in the bottom corner, there's the ad.

Committed to the jail of this county on suspicion of being a runaway.

A mulatto man about 25 years of age, about 5'10" high, has on a light-colored broad cloth coat, corduroy waistcoat, brown linen overalls, and a pair of shoe boots, says he is a free man, and calls his name John Epps.

The owner or owners, if any, are requested to apply, pay the charges, and take the said Negro and horse away.

He's called mulatto at the beginning of the paragraph.

He's called a negro at the end.

And that was common at the time.

So to me, that is the earliest instance I have ever read about, about a native man fighting for the rights of the country that he's in, fighting for the rights of these colonists.

And eight years later, not even a decade later, they turn around and they take away his rights.

Even though he fought for them, they take away his right to freedom.

[birds chirping] [gentle music] [gentle music continues] - This is where my heart is.

This is where I spend my Sundays.

And I am the pianist and the organist for the church.

And I've been playing the piano here for the church since I was in the 8th grade.

- [Sandra] Elders say that the creation of their close-knit community is how they managed to survive after the war.

- I mean, we've managed to go a long way with our tribe.

And I just thank God for our forefathers that held onto our identity.

I, as of today, do not look at this area as North Carolina, Virginia.

It's the High Plains community.

We just forget all about the boundaries, the borderlines, and keep Sappony in High Plains.

- And in our community, we have three things that are of utmost importance.

And that is our faith, our family, and education.

- [Sandra] In the years following the Revolutionary War, the Sappony went on to build schools and churches in the High Plains.

Just a few miles down the road from Cavalry Baptist, we find the relics of the original church and school that was built by the tribe on land that was once owned by the descendants of John Epps, that patriot veteran who was arrested under suspicion of being a runaway enslaved person after the Revolutionary War.

Elders say that legacy of patriotic service has continued to this day.

From Valley Forge, to Vietnam, to Desert Storm.

The Sappony have fought in every major American conflict since the Revolution.

- I was in heavy artillery, 94th Artillery Division in Vietnam.

We were the only army unit there, and we were support for the Marine unit that fought along the DMZ.

We got hit three and four times a day, every day, every night.

Artillery, rockets, mortars, all that stuff.

And it was rough.

When I can't get outside and do things, I'm miserable.

And I got PTSD from Vietnam, and staying busy outside, that's my therapy.

When I'm hunting, I go to the elite places, those high bluffs with big trees and stuff, just watching wildlife move around.

And that too is exciting to me.

I've been all over the place traveling and stuff in the military and all, but it's no place like home.

When I flew into Raleigh Durham Airport that day, even if no one had met me there on a vehicle, I'd have walked home.

[gentle music] [birds chirping] - [Sandra] That warrior spirit, that sense of place, and those tight kinship bonds are shared by the Lumbee tribe.

160 miles south in the middle of the American Revolution, they face another existential question.

Fight with the patriots, be loyal to the British, or remain neutral and autonomous.

Two years ago, we heard about a story that's given the Lumbee tribe new insights into their ancestors' actions during the Revolutionary War.

It's a story about a chief named Captain Sweat, who had nearly 600 well-armed horsemen ready to fight to the death, and a patriot spy sent to infiltrate that community of warriors.

It's also a story about sovereignty, because Captain Sweat and his community existed outside of loyalists and patriot control and seemed to be more concerned about remaining free on the land they called home, than picking a side in the revolution.

We wanted to know more.

So we visited Lumbee homelands.

- We are the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River.

- [Sandra] Paddle down the dark waters mentioned in the records.

- Look at that Hawk.

- And talked with an indigenous community who never gave up on their fight for sovereignty.

- Call us what you want to.

I mean, now, all is recognized.

[crowds shouting] [drums beating heavily] - [Sandra] We did not think we were gonna start this story by making a blooming onion.

[onion slicing] - So we're gonna be making the Lumbee onion, which is the fried onion made popular by the Outback Steakhouse.

And I have created my own recipe.

- [Sandra] Adrian Kyle Locklear is a hardworking restaurant owner and musician known in the Lumbee community for his take on the blooming onion and for making music about the Lumbee way of life.

♪ On the river, under the pines, them lums is outside ♪ ♪ Cherry Grove, Harley Davidson ridin', them lums is outside ♪ ♪ Scuffeltown, at a homecoming ♪ ♪ On a golf cart or a side-by-side ♪ ♪ Them lums is outside, them lums is outside ♪ ♪ This is about pride ♪ ♪ Them youngins is outside ♪ - [Sandra] Going into this assignment, our co-producer, a Lumbee historian, told us we could share the story of Captain Sweat with any Lumbee person and they'd be able to explain it, even if they'd never heard it before.

So we shared it with Adrian.

I'm gonna have you look at this document.

- Sweat is a Lumbee surname.

I like to read this part right here too.

"It was found to be about 600 strong, well-trained, well-armed, well-minded people."

In my opinion, it would have taken a very strong force to subdue him.

- [Producer] Why do you like that one?

- Just 'cause that encompasses who we are as a people now today still.

We have so many churches.

We are wonderful, good-hearted people that give you the clothes off our back, but at the same time, you, like, even a preacher, even my mother and father as the most wonderful Christian people you know, they, you know, you don't cross these people.

I mean, that's just like, to me, that's just like the definition of sovereignty.

We can't be told what to do.

We're gonna govern ourselves, just like this right here.

- [Sandra] That fierce determination to remain free and protect each other is a cornerstone of Lumbee culture.

And it's a tradition that starts appearing in the colonial record long before the patriots sent a spy into Captain Sweat's camp.

Two decades before the war for independence began, a colonial official traveling the region to raise a militia encountered a group of 50 non-white families living deep in the swamps of this area.

The official seemed shocked to find them there.

He reported that the families were living on the land without legally owning it and without paying any taxes on it.

But the record suggest that this community rejected colonial authority's right to charge them for land they already occupied or the authority to enforce rules they didn't recognize.

Because when a surveyor arrived to assess their land, [gun blast] they shot at him.

It wouldn't be the last time they defended their land.

And to understand why, we needed to go to the place they were protecting.

A place the colonists called Drowning Creek.

- [Jeff] So the river that flows through here actually starts up in Montgomery County, where the headwaters called Drowning Creek are located.

- [Sandra] Jeff Currie is a Lumbee folklorist and co-founder of an archeological program that's helping the tribe document and preserve ancestral sites.

We're with him today on the banks of a waterway known as the Lumbee River, and he's helping us understand why this river is sacred to the Lumbee, who are known as the people of the dark water.

- This is a place of.

It's the origin past an origin.

It's a rebirth in the sense of communities that are trying to survive.

- [Sandra] The Lumbee River is a part of a larger system spanning the coastal plain of North and South Carolina.

Tannins leaching from cypress roots, fallen leaves, and decaying plant matter give it its signature tea-like color.

And the swamps running alongside it are a defining feature of its landscape and its folklore.

- I think swamps are amazing and peaceful and I feel comfortable being in the swamp.

Yeah, it's a little darker.

It's cooler oftentimes 'cause the water is around.

But you know, it can also be very, very humid and kind of forbidding.

- [Sandra] Archeological evidence shows that indigenous people have lived here for thousands of years.

But in the colonial era, the swamps along this river became a home for the Lumbee and other people of color looking for safety in a changing world.

A refuge from war, disease, and colonial conquest.

- Tribes in this area have been dealing with colonial folks for a long time.

And so, you know, to survive, to maintain, tribes were moving.

This is a place where people knew to come.

And one reason to move in is swamps kind of a formidable place.

And if they're dense and other people can't come in easy, it's a place of protection.

You know, this is a place that was built out of survival.

And part of that survival was the swamp.

We knew that this was a good place to settle, survive, bring in more folks and continue, which we did.

[gentle music] - [Sandra] More indigenous people did move into this area and colonists took note.

Three years before the Declaration of Independence, they reported that a riotous mob had assembled in the area and were annoying inhabitants of the county.

This document lists 18 men colonial officials describe as rogues and three individuals who harbored and protected them.

And it captures some of the racial terms used to describe people who are Native Americans, people of African descent, or people whose race was unclear to colonists.

And it's on this list that we find Lumbee surnames prevalent in the community to this day.

Dees, Groom, Lochlear, Chavis, and Sweat.

Which begs the question, is one of the Sweats listed here, Captain Sweat, or one of his relatives?

And if so, did these events inform what happened when that patriot spy arrived in Sweat's camp?

Research is ongoing, but what Lumbee scholars do know is that when revolutionary fervor erupted throughout North Carolina, patriots and loyalists alike looked to these swamps for allies and enemies.

And the Lumbee fought on both sides.

Some fought alongside the patriots.

Men like John Brooks, Samuel Bell, and William Lowry.

Others sided with their Scottish Highlander neighbors who were mostly loyal to the crown.

Men like Jacob Locklear, Jeremiah Revels, and Edmund Revels.

But Lumbee scholars believe that much of the evidence suggests their ancestors chose the side that could help them remain on their land and continue to determine their own future.

In 1781, half a decade into the Revolutionary War, patriots in this area were engaged in a violent tit-for-tat with local loyalists.

So they sent a spy, John Brumfield, into the swamps around Drowning Creek to investigate a group of suspected loyalists.

He entered Captain Sweat's camp under a false name, John Brown.

What he found was around 600 men living outside of the rules of patriots or loyalists.

They were well-armed and well-trained.

They had horses, and they drilled in exercise every day, which seems to indicate they had some sort of military training.

Brumfield's assessment was that it would take a strong force to subdue them and that they were prepared to fight to the death.

He was determined to see if they were a threat.

But after eight days living with Captain Sweat's militia, his spying revealed a nuance.

Captain Sweat and his men didn't want to be enemies with the patriots.

If they were left alone, they'd remain neutral.

If this was the same group causing problems for the patriots, were they really loyalists fighting to defend the king's land?

Or were they fighting to protect the freedom to determine their own future?

In his pension application, Brumfield reported that the patriots ultimately entered into a treaty with Captain Sweat and his mounted men.

Researchers are still looking for evidence of this claim.

- We always like to start our sage in the east.

And before we get on the river, we'd like to give honor to our river.

And remember our children from the east, our beginning days.

- [Sandra] We're back on the Lumbee River, this time with a family that's fished, swam, and enjoyed these waters for generations.

[water splashing] [peaceful music] - Our river has been containing people for thousands of years.

[Alexis gasping] - Danny!

Danny!

Look at that hawk.

- [Richard] Oh my God.

To have a hawk to visit us and sit quiet and just watch us is really amazing.

If we're not on the river, we're at the river almost every day.

- It kind of comes along with the territory, just being indigenous and have that connection with the land.

- We have a cultural center that has a swimming pool.

As a tribe, we opened that culture center because we weren't allowed to go in pools here in Lumberton.

But if you couldn't make it there and everybody wanted to go there, you would always, you could always come to the river.

That's where I actually learned how to swim.

- [Sandra] Surviving in this new nation wasn't easy.

In the years after the Revolutionary War, the Lumbee faced discrimination and disenfranchisement.

But today, over 55,000 Lumbee live in this area and have served in every major American war since 1776.

And decade after decade, century after century, they've continued fighting for recognition and sovereignty.

In 1885, the state officially recognized the ancestors of the Lumbee.

Three years later, they petitioned Congress directly, seeking federal recognition and the right to govern themselves as a sovereign nation.

The petition was denied.

In 1955, they tried again.

A year later, President Eisenhower signed the Lumbee Recognition Act, which acknowledged the Lumbee people as an Indian community, but denied federal Indian services and benefits to the tribe.

Numerous attempts were made to get them in subsequent decades because federal recognition meant healthcare, housing, and resources for the Lumbee.

And then in 2025, after 137 years of fighting, the Lumbee tribe became the 575th federally recognized tribe in the nation.

[drums beating] [crowds shouting] [fireworks popping] [Indians shouting] [upbeat music] - You know, when we talked about it, it was just like, like this, this fairytale, you know, like one day, what if.

And it's not something that always.

I always knew we would be fine without it because we had sustained ourselves so long in the conditions that we were given that we were still gonna be okay.

But to see it happen and see it come in full fruition is absolutely mind-blowing.

We're here tonight celebrating our historic federal recognition.

- We've always been Indian people.

Call us what you want to.

I mean, now call us recognized, because we fought long and hard for that, and now it happened.

[Indian shouting] - It makes people whole to know where they came from.

And we always known who we were just by the way that we live and it been passed down to us.

A lot of our people will tell you we didn't need no federal recognition.

We didn't need no government to tell us who we were because we knew who we were already.

That's not what makes us Lumbee people.

Our ancestors, what our ancestors went through and how we have latched onto that and it is still us today.

That's what makes us who we are.

[upbeat music] - [Sandra] If you have North Carolina history you think we should know about, follow the link below or scan the QR code on your screen now to share your history with us.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Homegrown History" is provided in part by SECU Foundation, funded by the members of State Employees Credit Union, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

[gentle music]