Iswa

The Iswa, 'people of the river' in their Siouan tongue, whom Europeans called the Catawba, dominated the Carolina Piedmont on their namesake river. Earlier Mississippian chiefdoms such as Joara stood there, visited by De Soto in 1540 and by Juan Pardo, builder of Fort San Juan in 1567, whose garrison was wiped out a year later.

As English settlement spread, they absorbed dwindling neighbors and fought the Seneca and Shawnee over hunting grounds, and the Cherokee over their mountain border; colonists brokered talks at Albany in 1721 and the Treaty of Lancaster in 1744.

Smallpox struck in 1738 and again in 1759, when it killed nearly half the nation, and Shawnee raiders killed their chief King Hagler in 1763. South Carolina confirmed a reservation on the Catawba River the same year. They joined the colonists in the Revolutionary War, fleeing to Virginia in 1780 and returning after Guilford Court House to reduced lands.