Hot summer day. Cold water. Time to cool off in Lake Waccamaw.
But the quick cool-off turned into an unexpected brush with history.
“I stepped on it and I thought it was a log,” said Eli Hill told WECT TV. Hill and his friends tried to figure out what the submerged object was. “I tried to pick it up and it never came up. So, we kept digging at it and it just kept going. And then the next day, we came back and we started digging some more and it just kept going.”
Hill’s family reached out to the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology. A team worked to move the canoe closer to the family pier, but it stayed underwater for two more years until it could finally be recovered and brought to the surface.
“The lengthy removal process was worth it,” said state archaeologist John Mintz. “This canoe is about 1,000 years old, and it’s a southeastern Indian canoe, and it originated from this area.”
A team of neighbors, archaeologists and members of the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe brought the canoe to the surface.
“That canoe at 28 feet long would have carried many a brave,” said Michael Jacobs, chief of the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe. “We feel like in our heart, it’s a history that we’re still exploring and understanding because this is the first time we’ve had access.”
The canoe will be taken to the Queen Anne’s Revenge Conservation Lab in Greenville. The Columbus County News reports it will then be moved to Waccamaw Siouan Lands in Buckhead, where it will make a permanent home. The canoe is the first such artifact to be housed there, and the tribe is hopeful there will be more artifacts to come.
“There’s just tangible evidence that we’ve been here pre-colonial context,” said Jacobs, in an interview with WUNC radio. “That just confirms the fact of oral history that we’ve been told that Lake Waccamaw was one of the places that our tribe dwelt, and lived, hunted, fished and survived.”
The Waccamaw Siouan Tribe is one of eight state-recognized Native American tribes in North Carolina.
The tribe’s website says the first mention of the Waccamaw Siouan Indians was made in 1521 by Spanish explorer Captain Francisco Gordillo while visiting the South Carolina coast. The tribe was mentioned again during a war between several tribes and English settlers.
After a war broke out between the tribe and the State of South Carolina in 1749, the Waccamaw sought refuge in the swamplands of North Carolina.
The present home of the Waccamaw Siouan is situated on the edge of the Green Swamp, about 37 miles west of Wilmington. The tribe’s members live primarily in Bladen and Columbus counties. There are many gaps in the tribe’s history, and members hope the new discovery can fill in some of it.
“We’re looking forward to examining it [the canoe], running some tests on it, really finding out and going back to our elders and getting the history of it so we can teach the truth to our people and know that we’ve got concrete evidence to stand on,” said Jacobs.
