The Coree (also Connamox, Cores, Corennines, Connamocksocks, Coranine Indians, Neuse River Indians) were a very small Native American tribe, who once occupied a coastal area south of the

Neuse River The Neuse River ( , Tuscarora: Neyuherú·kęʔkì·nęʔ) is a river rising in the Piedmont of North Carolina and emptying into Pamlico Sound below New Bern. Its total length is approximately , making it the longest river entirely contained in ...

in southeastern

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

in the area now covered by Carteret and Craven counties. Early 20th-century scholars were unsure of what language they spoke,Coree Indian Tribe
in Frederick Webb Hodge, ''Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico'', Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1906, carried on Access Genealogy, accessed Mar 18, 2010 but the coastal areas were mostly populated by

Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...

and Algonquian peoples.

History

The Carte of all the Coast of Virginia by Theodor de Bry 1585 1586

The Coree were not described by English colonists until 1701, by which time their population had already been reduced to as few as 125 members, likely due to epidemics of

infectious disease An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...

and warfare. In the early 18th century, the Coree and several other tribes were allied with the

Iroquoian The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian la ...

Tuscarora Tuscarora may refer to the following: First nations and Native American people and culture * Tuscarora people **''Federal Power Commission v. Tuscarora Indian Nation'' (1960) * Tuscarora language, an Iroquoian language of the Tuscarora people * ...

against the colonists. In 1711, they participated in the

Tuscarora War The Tuscarora War was fought in North Carolina from September 10, 1711 until February 11, 1715 between the Tuscarora people and their allies on one side and European American settlers, the Yamassee, and other allies on the other. This was con ...

, trying to drive out the English settlers. The Native Americans were unsuccessful and suffered many fatalities. By 1715, some Coree merged with the remaining members of the nearby Algonquian

Machapunga The Machapunga are a small Algonquian language-speaking Native American tribe from coastal northeastern North Carolina. They were part of the Secotan people. They were a group from the Powhatan Confederacy who migrated from present-day Virginia ...

and Tuscarora people and settled in their single village of Mattamuskeet in present-day Hyde County. This was on the shore of

Lake Mattamuskeet Lake Mattamuskeet is the largest natural lake in North Carolina. It is a shallow coastal lake, averaging 2–3 ft (0.61–0.91 m) feet in depth, and stretches long and wide. Lake Mattamuskeet lies on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula. Lake ...

. Other Coree remained in Carteret county (especially in isolated areas such as Indian Beach, Atlantic Beach,

Harkers Island Harkers Island is a census-designated place (CDP) in Carteret County, North Carolina, United States. The population of Harkers Island was 1,207 at the 2010 census. Harkers Island is unincorporated and receives most public services, including law e ...

- formerly known as Craney Island, Core Creek, and swamp lands). Descendants gradually married and assimilated into the European-American and African-American populations. Although in the 20th century, some people claim individual descent from the historical Coree. Some observers believe that current attempts to claim Coree descent are by people who were among what anthropologists called " tri-racial isolates," often of majority European and African descent.

Language

The

ethnographer Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

James Mooney James Mooney (February 10, 1861 – December 22, 1921) was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. Known as "The Indian Man", he conducted major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as of tribes on the Gr ...

speculated that the Coree were related to the

Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...

, but he did not have convincing evidence. According to limited colonial reports, they spoke a language that did not appear to be mutually intelligible with any of the three major language stocks ( Carolina Algonquian,

Tuscarora, and Waccamaw Siouan or ''Woccon'') to John Lawson, who described Coree after recording vocabularies of the other three.''Handbook of North American Indians'' (2004, ) On the other hand, the Coree occupied territory that was historically mostly that of Tuscaroras, which suggests they were affiliated with these peoples. The name ''Coree'' may be the singular form of the Carolina Algonquian name ''Cwareuuoc''.

References

Bibliography

* Ives Goddard. (2005). "The indigenous languages of the Southeast", ''Anthropological Linguistics'', ''47'' (1), 1–60. * Ruth Y. Wetmore (1975), "First on the Land: The North Carolina Indians" . {{authority control Native American tribes in North Carolina Carteret County, North Carolina Craven County, North Carolina Hyde County, North Carolina Extinct languages of North America Extinct Native American peoples Unclassified languages of North America