From Princess to Chief: Life with the Waccamaw Siouan Indians of North Carolina

By Priscilla Freeman Jacobs and Patricia Barker Lerch

A collaborative life history of Priscilla Freeman Jacobs, From Princess to Chief tells the story of the first female chief (from 1986 to 2005) of the state-recognized Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe of North Carolina.    In From Princess to Chief, Priscilla Freeman Jacobs and Patricia Barker Lerch detail Jacobs’s birth and childhood, coming of age, education, young adulthood, marriage and family, Indian activism, and spiritual life. Jacobs is descended from a family of Indian leaders whose activism dates back to the early twentieth century. Her ancestors pressured the local county and state governments to fund their Indian schools, led the drive for the Waccamaw Sioux to be recognized as Indians in state and federal legislation, and finally succeeded in opening the long-awaited Indian schools in the 1930s.    Jacobs’s lasting legacies to her community include the many initiatives on which she collaborated with her father, Clifton Freeman, including the acquisition of common land for the tribe, initiation of a tribal board of directors, incorporation of a development association, and the establishment of a day care and many other social and educational programs. In the 1970s Jacobs served on the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs and was active in the Coalition of Eastern Native Americans.   Introducing the powwow as a way for young people to learn about the traditions of Indian people throughout the state of North Carolina, Jacobs taught many children how to dance and wear Indian regalia with pride and dignity. Throughout her life, Jacobs has worked hard to preserve the traditional customs of her people and to teach others about the folk culture that shaped and molded her as a person.   Told from the point of view of an eyewitness to the community’s effort to win federal recognition in 1950 and their lives since, From Princess to Chief helps preserve the story of Jacobs’s Indian community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Aug 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9780817386757

Book preview

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES

Heidi M. Altman, Series Editor

J. Anthony Paredes, Founding Editor

FROM PRINCESS TO CHIEF

Life with the Waccamaw Siouan Indians of North Carolina

Priscilla Freeman Jacobs and Patricia Barker Lerch

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2013 The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: ACaslon

Cover photograph: Priscilla Freeman Jacobs in powwow dress with shell ornaments and feathered fan, 1993. Sears Portrait Studio

Author photograph: Sears Portrait Studio, Wilmington, North Carolina

Cover design: Erin Kirk New

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jacobs, Priscilla Freeman, 1940-

From princess to chief : life with the Waccamaw Siouan indians of North Carolina / Priscilla Freeman Jacobs and Patricia Barker Lerch.

         pages cm. — (Contemporary American Indian studies)

     Includes bibliographical references and index.

     ISBN 978-0-8173-1797-3 (trade cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-8675-7 (e book) 1. Jacobs, Priscilla Freeman, 1940–   2. Waccamaw Indians—Biography. 3. Waccamaw Indians—Politics and government. 4. Waccamaw Indians—Social life and customs. I. Title.

     E99.W114J3325  2013

     975.6004’9752—dc23

2013001195

Contents

Acknowledgments

Jacobs Family Tree

Introduction

1. Early Memories

2. Eyewitness to History

3. Marriage and Family

4. Indian Activism: From Princess to Chief

5. Spiritual Life

Epilogue

Notes

References Cited

Index

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Special thanks go to those who have supported this project over the years. Priscilla Freeman Jacobs thanks her family members Donna and Dean for reading the manuscript and offering good advice and Welton for doing without her as she worked on this project. Thank you to Priscilla's mama, Mrs. Vera Freeman, for generously sharing her memories with us. And a special thanks to Patricia Barker Lerch for her time and patience.

Patricia Barker Lerch expresses her gratitude to the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, for the research reassignment in 2010 that provided the time to work on the manuscript. Thanks to Mrs. Vera Freeman for her wonderful memories that have so enriched this book. A special thanks to Alfred H. Lerch Jr. for seeing her through to the completion of this project. Of course, gratitude to her friend Priscilla Freeman Jacobs; Patricia is especially thankful to have had the opportunity to do this project.

Patricia Barker Lerch offers a special thanks to Erika Bourguignon, professor emeritus at the Ohio State University, for her guidance and friendship over the years and to J. Anthony Paredes, professor emeritus at Florida State University, for his unfailing support of scholarship on the southeastern Indians.

Finally, we acknowledge the support of Joseph B. Powell, Heidi M. Altman, and the two anonymous readers for the University of Alabama Press whose criticism and suggestions markedly improved our final manuscript, as well as Karen Johnson for her helpful editing suggestions. Thanks to Wesley D. Taukchiray for pointing us to the Wesley D. White Papers on the Coalition of Native Americans in the South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, South Carolina.

Introduction

Patricia Barker Lerch

This book presents memories of the life and times of Priscilla Freeman Jacobs, Waccamaw Siouan Indian, former chief and leader, preacher, wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, born and raised in southeastern North Carolina. Priscilla's memories describe scenes of daily life familiar to people living along the coastal plain of the southeastern United States, especially those raised surrounded by rural landscapes, tobacco fields, and pine forests and whose daily lives kept them away from the urban areas of the central piedmont.

All of Priscilla's life experiences are shaped by memories of living in the Waccamaw Siouan Indian community, set within the broader southern landscapes that included Native Americans, whites, and African American people.¹ In Priscilla's words,

My purpose in sharing my memories is so that the younger generation may learn how the Waccamaw Siouan tribe came about. Sometimes young people hear a version of our history that is untrue. In the process of digging in my files and looking back, I realized that there is so much to know about our tribe. I hope my memories may help others to learn our history. My desire is to see the tribe go forth and prosper in the different endeavors that they are after, and I think that learning about our traditions can help them meet this goal. By traditions, I mean the beliefs and values that shaped the lives of our ancestors. I learned so much about our traditions from the generation of my grandparents that I wanted to share these memories with my descendants. I also hope the book will get people to think more about the traditions of their Waccamaw Siouan ancestors than simply about finances and other things.

Priscilla's personal memory is a thread in the tapestry of culture—to borrow the metaphor for culture from Abraham Rosman, Paula Rubel, and Maxine Weisgrau (2009:xiii)—woven by the collective memories of her social and cultural group, the North Carolina, state-recognized, Waccamaw Siouan Indian tribe. (In 1970 the state of North Carolina granted state recognition to the Waccamaw Siouan Indian community.) We can see her memory as sometimes being more communitist than individualist, in the sense used by Arnold Krupat (2010:527), in that while it is individual and personal, it is also reflective of the culture in which she grew up and through which she interprets her life and her memories.² To use the phrase of Maria Teski and Jacob Climo (1995:2), culture . . . may be seen as memory in action.

This book preserves Priscilla's family history, too. Family and kinship are central to all of her memories, and through these memories we learn the history of her Indian community. It's all relatives, writes historian Clara Sue Kidwell (2010) when offering strategies for the writing of American Indian history. The centrality of family history to tribal identity is also the topic of Melinda Maynor's (2010) Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South. The Lumbee are the largest Indian tribe in North Carolina. In her book, Maynor effectively uses family traditions, photographs, and stories to highlight the key marker of tribal identity, which is summarized in the response to the question Lumbees ask each other, Who's your people? (Kidwell 2010:28). Family and kin are embedded in the social and cultural structure and provide the framework for Priscilla's memories.

On January 31, 2005, I drove out to the home of Priscilla Freeman Jacobs to discuss with her my idea of us working together on a life history or memory of her life and times. The drive from Wilmington to Priscilla's home follows the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge across the Cape Fear River into the rural counties of Brunswick, Columbus, and Bladen. In 2005 I thought about the first time I drove to the Waccamaw Siouan Indian community in 1981 to learn about the community's desire to research its history in preparation for a petition for federal acknowledgement (Lerch 2004). At that time I did not know that the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge was fairly new—only twenty years old—and that its completion cut the driving time to Priscilla's home almost in half. Along Highway 74/76 there were just a few industries and some small businesses, a couple of gas stations, and long, empty stretches of road to mark the passing of time until I reached the turnoff taking me to Priscilla's home at the corner of Route 1801 and Old Lake Road, Columbus County, North Carolina. Before turning right, I noted the cemetery with its freshly dug grave, the New Hope Baptist Church with its community buildings, and the Corner Grill. These buildings and places are what Marea Cattell and Jacob Climo (2002:1–36) call sites of memory, and they anchor many of Priscilla's memories about her family, people, and the past and present. Most of our recorded conversations have taken place at the Corner Grill, a location central to Priscilla's life. When she greeted me at the door of the house, which she shares with her husband, Welton Jacobs, Priscilla was smiling and friendly. After a warm embrace, we entered her living room, which was comfortably heated by a wood-burning stove, which she said made it warm but dirty and sooty, too. The house is a large split-level ranch with comfortable sitting areas and several upstairs bedrooms, empty now that Priscilla and Welton live alone. Their son and daughter, who are both married and have children of their own, live nearby on land either bought for or deeded to them by Welton and Priscilla. Priscilla lives on land once owned by her grandfather and grandmother Freeman, embedded in the close family community in which she grew up. Priscilla's great-great-grandfather Eli Jacobs was in possession of this land as early as 1893, according to records of a 1962 court case in which Priscilla's uncle and aunt won back control of this area from International Paper Company.³

Priscilla and I discussed the possibility of writing a book about her life together over the coming year. Priscilla was used to the idea of telling her story to outsiders. She had experienced being interviewed by the newspaper, a folklorist (Henning 1994, 1996), the television, and the radio, so she was quite comfortable with the idea of voice recording our conversations. We had, in fact, already collaborated on a brief biographical story in 2005 for the Tar Heel Junior Historian (Lerch 2005). As I listened to her talk about her life, I began to see some of the memories that would be prominent in our book: her family, her father and his work for the Indian people, her time as chief and leader, and her role as a Christian preacher. We made plans to get together right away to start our project; almost eight months passed before we could start! We continued to meet over the next seven years at the Corner Grill, her restaurant, at her church, and in her home to record our conversations for the book. Neither of us ever thought it would take so long to finish our project, but both of us believed in it enough to keep us coming back together to see it to the end.

Memory, Anthropology, American Indians, and Christianity

Our book is based on the recorded memories of Priscilla Freeman Jacobs, who told the story of her childhood, schooling, marriage, Indian activism, and Christian life to me, Patricia Barker Lerch, an anthropologist employed at the University of North Carolina–Wilmington. My initial acquaintance with Priscilla and her people began in 1981 when I was asked by members of the community to come out for a visit to discuss their desire to have ethnographic and ethno-historical research done on their community. This began a long-term acquaintance that has continued to the present.

Within the discipline of anthropology, there is a long tradition that focuses on individual memory in relation to culture and change, culture and personality, and the self and society (Kluckhohn 1945; Langness and Frank 1981; Leighton 1959; Peacock and Holland 1993; Radin 1983). Teski and Climo (1995:1) pointed out that memory is central to an understanding of culture and life experiences. Memory is not just about the past; it is remembered in the present, where it is given meaning; it can lead one into the future (Teski and Climo 1995:3). As in our case, the telling of this life story sometimes unfolded in a linear fashion, beginning with birth and childhood and moving toward the present. According to Erika Bourguignon, when someone tells their story, as Priscilla has done, past events are reflected on in the light of the present (Bourguignon 1996, Bourguignon and Rigney 1998).

In our book we have collaborated on providing the social and cultural context of Priscilla's story. My role as an anthropologist was to link events in Priscilla's story to historical documents that she and I had collected over the years and to interviews and observations made by me when I conducted ethnographic and ethno-historical research in the community about the history of the Waccamaw Siouan people. Some of the documents prompted fresh reflections from Priscilla about past events and her memory of them. We decided to adopt a reflective approach within a framework where historical documentation provided a backdrop to the personal memories of the events Priscilla's describes. This kind of approach has been used by historians like Steven Stern (2004:ix) to overcome a little of the academic bias favoring historical documentation over oral tradition. Priscilla asked me to edit and organize the transcriptions and, with Priscilla's guidance, we formed the organization of the book.

Priscilla's memory is also from the perspective of American Indian women who grew up in the South, where societal racial definitions were controlled for the most part by white southerners (Brundage 2000). American Indians have always lived in the South, but their memories are only now being included in the social history of that region (Halbwachs 1992). Priscilla's memories will contribute to our understanding of the complex lives led by American Indian women today. A partial list of the many sources available on American Indian women includes Brad Agnew (2001), Patricia C. Albers (1989), Patricia C. Albers and Beatrice Medicine (1983), Gary C. Anderson (2001), Gretchen M. Bataille and Kathleen Mullen Sands (1984), Mary Brave Bird and Richard Erdoes (1993), Margaret B. Blackman (1992), Judith K. Brown (1970), Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes (1990), Mourning Dove (1990), Rayna Green (1983, 1990), Carolyn Johnston (2003), Betty Mae Jumper and Patsy West (2001), Clara Sue Kidwell (1978, 2001), Ruth Landes (1971), Eleanor Burke Leacock (2008), Patricia Barker Lerch (2005), Nancy Oestreich Lurie (1961), Wilma Mankiller and Michael Wallis (1993), Beatrice Medicine (2006), Devon A. Mihesuah (2003), Douglas Nelson and Jeremy Johnston (2001), Theda Perdue (1998, 2001), Delphine Red Shirt (2002), Carolyn Reyer (1993), Nancy Shoemaker (1995), David Smits (1982), Alma Hogan Snell (2000), Ruth B. Underhill (1979), Deborah Welch (2001), and Lionel Youst (1997).

Finally, Priscilla Freeman Jacobs was raised in a Baptist religious community of American Indians. As an adult she found leadership roles in the singing ministry and as a pastor. As with other American Indians, being a Christian is an important part of her life; or, as she would say, "It is my life." Scholars have studied the subject of American Indians and Christianity, and readers may consult Charles Hudson (1970), Luke Eric Lassiter, Clyde Ellis, and Ralph Kotay (2002), Michael Harkin and Sergei Kan (1996), and James Treat (1996) for more information.

We have chosen a chronological organization for our book. Chapter 1, Early Memories, highlights the shared memories of Priscilla's birth and naming, early childhood, and family life. Priscilla shares these memories because she has heard the story told many times by her maternal grandmother, mother, and aunt. Shared memories of events that one did not witness—the infant Priscilla was present but could not be said to witness her birth—become a part of a person's individual memory (Cattell and Climo 2002:12). A key community memory frames chapter 2, Eyewitness to History. When Priscilla is nine years old, she goes to Washington with the Indian elders, hoping to win federal recognition by special