The Site

For the first half of the 18th century, Nassaw Town was the political center of the Catawba Indian Nation. This important village sequentially occupied a number of locations near the Great Trading Path’s crossing of the Catawba River at Nation Ford. John Evan’s map of the "Cattawbaw Nation … In ye year 1756" indicates Nassaw and the small satellite village of Weyapee with 50 warriors, suggesting a probable population of 200-300 souls. A devastating smallpox epidemic struck the Catawba settlements in 1759, and the survivors abandoned the Nation Ford area. They resettled several miles downriver, and their descendants, members of the modern Catawba Indian Nation, now live nearby at Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Recent archaeological work by the University of North Carolina’s Research Laboratories of Archaeology has identified the final location of Nassaw, occupied ca. 1755–1759. Survey and excavations at the site in 2007 revealed a large, compact circular town of rectangular, post-built houses. Trash middens along the edge of the village have yielded extensive arrays of native pottery, animal bone and botanical remains, as well as abundant trade materials such as gunparts and ammunition, brass kettle fragments, glass beads, and kaolin pipe fragments. The highly diverse ceramic assemblage may correspond to the plural, multi-ethnic character of Catawba society in the 1750s, while the rich assemblage of trade goods reflects the economic, political, and military importance of the Catawba Nation to the colony of South Carolina.