Catawbas

Catawbas. an historical nation of North America, formerly widespread throughout the present states of Virginia and both Carolinas. By some writers they have been identified with the Eries, or so-called "Neutral Nation," who were partly destroyed, partly driven southwards from their settlements about the Niagara river by the Iroquois in 1650. But the Catawbas appear to have been really a branch of the great Muscogee family of Alabama and Florida. They are now extinct or else absorbed in the Chickasaws and Choctaws of Indian territory; but their name survives in the geographical nomenclature of their former domain, as in Catawba county, N. Carolina, and the Great and Little Catawba rivers, which flow from the Black Dome (Alleghanies) through the Wateree to the Santee.