Cherohenaka

Cherohenaka lies in the northeastern corner of North Carolina, where the Roanoke River crosses the coastal plain and gathers streams flowing south from Virginia. The Meherrin and Tuscarora peoples, both Iroquoian speakers, lived along these rivers, growing maize, beans and squash on the sandy bottomlands and hunting in the pine and hardwood forests. Their towns lay along waterways linking the Roanoke with the Chowan River and Albemarle Sound. When English settlers pressed into the region in the early eighteenth century, the Tuscarora War of 1711 to 1715 broke out. After its defeat many Tuscarora moved north, and in 1722 they were admitted to the Iroquois Confederacy as its sixth nation.