Swiss American Historical Society Review
Keywords
New Bern, Southern Iroquoia
Abstract
On September 29, 1710, a hundred and three people - among them their leader Christoph von Graffenried and his son Christoph jr. - arrived at a river the Tuscarora called Gow-ta-no, meaning "pine water." 1 When in 15 84 reconnoitering the coast between what his people named Cape Fear and Cape Lookout, the English captain Arthur Barlowe (?-?) called it Neus River, possibly derived from the name of the Neusiok people living at its mouth,.2 The newcomers were from Canton Bern, a leading member state of the Swiss Confederacy, and they intended to settle in a region located on the North Atlantic coast of the Wes tern Hemisphere that the English named Carolina. 3 Since the 1660s the latter strove to wrest the area from the indigenous peoples of Iroquoian and Algonquian origin as well as from Spanish-claimed jurisdiction and from designs of the French who in the 1680s became ensconced across the mountains on the Mississippi and intended to expand eastward.
Recommended Citation
Schelbert, Leo
(2009)
"The Enmeshment of Five Worlds, 1710-1713: The Making of New Bern in Southern Iroquoia,"
Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 45:
No.
3, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol45/iss3/3