Genealogy - Native Interactions

 

   

Florida Beach with Tourist & Condos

Florida’s population has grown nearly five‑fold in my lifetime. In a state defined by newcomers, simply saying you’re a Florida native sets you apart. When I consider that my grandmother was a Florida native — born into a Florida that scarcely resembles the one we know today — that lineage places me in a very small circle indeed. I fully qualified for the "FLORIDA NATIVE" bumper sticker!

Now, in Florida we love tourists because they bring in tax revenue — which helps ensure we don’t pay a state income tax. But we’re often annoyed at the traffic they bring, and we certainly feel the loss of those miles and miles of open beaches and free parking we enjoyed before the population exploded.

I claim to be a native of Florida because my family has been here since the 1880s. Similarly, I claim to be a native American (with a lowercase "n") because a good portion of my family has been here since the founding of Jamestown and Plymouth. But, of course, there were natives here before that who were capitalizing, lamenting, and resisting our arrival.

Growth and change always create resistance and friction. The winners see the change coming and capitalize on it. The survivors adjust to it. The losers resist it. The same dynamic played out as the United States evolved from a vast open hunting reserve into a 21st‑century, multi‑cultural society of roughly 340 million people.

The Native Americans' first encounters with pesky tourists and interlopers came in the 1500s — beginning with Ponce de León in 1513, followed by Tristán de Luna y Arellano near Pensacola in 1559, and Pedro Menéndez de Avilés at St. Augustine in 1565. From that moment the encounters and friction increased.  As an American with long genealogical roots into its history, I have several ancestors that were both affected by the friction and contributors to that friction.

One of the earliest was Peter Montague. Peter arrived in Virginia in 1621, just months before the Good Friday (1622) Powhatan Massacre, led by Opechancanough of the Powhatan Confederacy, and he survived that colony‑shaking attack as a young servant at the newly established plantations along the James River. His later life as a planter, burgess, and landowner unfolded in the long shadow of that event, which shaped the colony’s defensive posture, settlement patterns, and attitudes toward Native peoples for decades.

My earliest ancestor in the colonies with my surname, Francis McCown, was present at the 1742 Massacre of Balcony Downs, (aka Battle of Galudoghson) one of the earliest settler‑Indian confrontations in the Shenandoah–Augusta frontier. As an early settler of in the Borden Tract, he experienced the tense early decades where Scotch‑Irish pioneers lived amid recurring conflict with Native groups.

Francis' son and my fourth great-grandfather, Malcolm McCown, was so affected by those events and especially the Kerr's Creek Massacre that he spent much of his energy in his early years fighting against Native Americans. In one such event he was one of the presumed perpetrators of the murder of Shawnee Chief Cornstalk.

A seventh great grandfather, James Caudy, was a frontiersman of the Cacapon Valley whose local legend centers on the Caudy’s Castle incident, where he is said to have fought off Native attackers by pushing them from a narrow ledge above the river. 

James Ward, who is thought to be one of my sixth great grandfathers, died at the Battle of Point Pleasant, where a clash between Native Americans and Virginia Militia erupted at the forks of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. Tragically, James' son, John had been captured by the Shawnee as a toddler and raised among them - so that day, he fought against his father, neither of them knowing this.

Other great grandfathers participated in actions against native populations in their participation in the militia or US military.  A couple of these include Andrew Walker who engaged in actions against the Cherokee and Ephraim Bates who was engaged in the 1778 Brodhead-McIntosh expedition into Deleware Territory.

Our Nation handled the friction with the Native populations badly overall. The problems were fueled by ignorance, greed, and bad personal experiences on both sides of the battle lines. I suppose that can be said of any clash of cultures throughout history.