Skarureh

The Skarureh, whom European settlers called the Tuscarora, are an Iroquoian-speaking people of the North Carolina coastal plain. Their autonym means 'hemp gatherers', and on the eve of colonization they formed a confederacy of three tribes divided into matrilineal clans.

Having moved south from the Great Lakes region centuries earlier, they first traded and then clashed with English settlers pushing up the river valleys. The Tuscarora War of 1711 to 1715 ended with the storming of their stronghold at Fort Neoheroka, and a treaty of 1718 confined a remnant to a reservation in Bertie County.

Most survivors drifted north to Pennsylvania and New York, where in 1722 the Oneida sponsored their admission as the sixth nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. During the American Revolution the community split, with pro-British families moving to Ontario and others remaining in New York.