900-year-old canoe pulled from North Carolina lake. ‘Our history is still unfolding’
An ancient canoe with 900 years of history was pulled to the surface of a North Carolina lake, video shows.
The centuries-old boat is believed to be tied to Native Americans who had a presence around Lake Waccamaw, in the southeastern part of the state.
“Our history is still unfolding,” Michael Jacobs, chief of the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe, told WECT. “When the colonists made contact with our tribe, there’s a lot of the things that we hailed as historical and meaningful to us that we’re still putting together.”
The Waccamaw Siouan Tribe teamed with state officials to recover the canoe Wednesday, April 12. A team of about a dozen people brought the boat from under a dock and raised it out of the murky water, according to a two-minute video that the N.C. American Indian Heritage Commission shared on Facebook.
The 28-foot canoe was found buried underneath the surface when a group was on the lake in 2021, Jacobs told McClatchy News in a phone interview.
“I stepped on it and I thought it was a log,” swimmer Eli Hill told WECT. “I tried to pick it up and it never came up. So, we kept digging at it and it just kept going.”
Jacobs said people used to bury canoes to preserve them, similar to the way people park their cars in safe places today. The canoe might have been used for transporting people or goods along the Waccamaw River, which winds toward the present-day Georgetown, South Carolina, area.
“It would have been a trade highway back in the day for our people going back and forth and transporting goods before colonists even came over,” Jacobs said.
The canoe, which was lifted from about six inches of sand at the bottom of the lake, is being conserved and taken to Waccamaw Siouan lands, according to the Columbus County News and information the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources shared with McClatchy News in an email.
The Waccamaw Siouan Tribe is recognized by the state of North Carolina. The people, believed to have “sought refuge” in the state’s swamp lands after an 18th-century war, now live “on the edge of the Green swamp about thirty-seven miles west of Wilmington,” the tribe wrote on its website.
Jacobs said the unearthing of the canoe helps paint a more complete picture of history.
“We just weren’t living there,” he said. “We were thriving as a people.”
Ship hidden beneath Caribbean harbor may be ‘prize’ from American Revolution, experts say
Search underway for key WWII battlefield hidden on Pacific seafloor off Guam, team says
