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The Burnt Swamp Baptist Association: a fellowship of Indian Baptist churches.

Article Excerpt
The Burnt Swamp Baptist Association includes seventy Baptist churches comprised primarily of Native Americans from eastern North Carolina. All of the churches affiliate with the North Carolina Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention.

The more than 10,000 church members of the association come from five tribal groups: Lumbee, Waccamaw-Siouan, Coharie, Haliwa-Saponi, and Tuscarora. The Lumbee are the largest tribal population group of the Burnt Swamp Association tribes. The tribe numbers as many as 100,000, with 50,000 living near their homeland in rural Robeson County, North Carolina. Only five of the seventy Burnt Swamp churches do not have a majority of Lumbee in their membership. Two congregations are Waccamaw-Siouan, two are Haliwa-Saponi, and one is Coharie. Some Lumbee families may live among the other tribes, but the other tribal territories are definitely not known as Lumbee communities.

Geographic boundaries often define the territory of Baptist associations. Such is not the case with the Burnt Swamp Association. Its churches are located in ten counties and within three states. While North Carolina is home to sixty-seven Burnt Swamp churches, the association has two churches in South Carolina and one church in Baltimore, Maryland. The Lumbee and Tuscarora church members live mainly in Robeson County and the immediately surrounding counties of Hoke, Scotland, Cumberland, Columbus, and Marlboro (South Carolina). The Coharie communities are located in Sampson and Harnett counties; the Haliwa-Saponi live in Halifax and Warren counties; and the Waccamaw-Siouan live in Bladen and Columbus counties. The one affiliated church in Baltimore, Maryland, began as a congregation primarily of Native Americans from Robeson and Hoke Counties in North Carolina who moved to that northern city in search of livelihood.

This account of the Burnt Swamp Association history summarizes a more detailed and precise report found in The History of Burnt Swamp Baptist Association and Its Churches: The Spread of the Gospel Across America and Beyond by the Lumbee, Waccamaw-Siouan, Coharie, and Haliwa-Saponi, Cumberland County Indians, and Eastern Band of Cherokee Native American Tribes. That history was written by former association missionary Tony Brewington and printed by the association in 2002. (1)

Eastern Carolina Indian Ancestral Roots

Various groups of Native Americans living in eastern North Carolina settled on lands along the local rivers for centuries. Surviving from among those various Indian groups and descendants of a mixture of those tribes are the Lumbee, Waccamaw-Siouan, Coharie, Tuscarora, and Haliwa-Saponi tribes. These tribes chose to live peacefully among early English settlers in eastern North Carolina in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They maintained their native identity while adapting to the shared life among English neighbors. English influence upon the Native tribes revealed itself in noticeable ways, including language and lifestyle. This influence was and remains strongly evident so that the quest for ancestral origins has occupied much of the scholarly historical research focused upon these tribes.

A widely held view is that the Indians of eastern North Carolina are descended from a mixture of Native tribes who lived among John White's lost colony and continue to survive today in strong numbers. (2) While many embrace that theory, others hold to an idea that eastern North Carolina Indians are more ethnically aligned with the blending of several Indian tribes in this region apart from much mingling with Anglo blood. In the late 1800s, most of these North Carolina Indian groups were designated by the white community leaders as the "mixed" race. The Indians themselves were offended by such designations and insisted on their ancestral Indian heritage. Neither would they agree that they all are of the same specific tribal ancestry. The five distinct tribes listed in this paragraph bear tribal names that are relatively modern nomenclature based on each tribe's research into their origins and native culture. The developing story of the Baptist faith among Indians of the Burnt Swamp Baptist Association includes the participation mainly of these five tribes. At least five other North Carolina Indian tribes exist today that have no affiliation with the Burnt Swamp Baptist Association.

Early Faith Development

As early settlers brought their faith with them to the new world, they found a receptive audience in Indian communities. Presbyterians and Methodists, and then Baptists, brought the gospel message to Indian people in Carolina. In the beginning, Baptists may have been the least influential in their missionary outreach among the Indians. By the start of the nineteenth century and during the decades to follow, the witness of white Baptists spread...

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