The earliest discovered human settlements in what eventually became 
North Carolina are found at the Hardaway Site near the town of Badin in
 the south-central part of the state. Radiocarbon dating of the site has not 
been possible. However, based on other dating methods, such as rock 
strata and the existence of Dalton-type spear points, the site has been 
dated to approximately 8000 BC.

Spearpoints of the Dalton type continued to change and evolve slowly for the 
next 7000 years, suggesting a continuity of culture for most of that time. 
During this time, settlement was scattered and likely existed solely on the 
hunter-gatherer level. Towards the end of this period, there is evidence of 
settled agriculture, such as plant domestication and the development of 
pottery.

From 1000 BC until the time of European settlement marks a time period 
known as the "Woodland period". Permanent villages, based on settled 
agriculture, existed throughout the state. By about 800 AD, fortified towns 
appeared throughout the Piedmont region, suggesting the existence of 
organized tribal warfare.[3] An important site of this late-Woodland period is 
the Town Creek Indian Mound, an archaeologically rich location occupied by 
the Pee Dee culture of the Mississippian tradition.

Earliest European explorations
 
The earliest exploration of North Carolina by a European expedition is likely 
that of Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. An Italian from Florence, Verrazzano 
was hired by French merchants in order to procure a sea route to bring silk 
to the city of Lyon. With the tacit support of King Francis I, Verrazzano 
sailed west on January 1, 1524 aboard his ship La Dauphine ahead of a flotilla 
of three other ships.[6] The expedition made landfall at Cape Fear, and 
Verrazzano reported of his explorations to the King of France,

"The seashore is completely covered with fine sand [15 feet] deep, which rises 
in the shape of small hills about fifty paces wide... Nearby we could see a 
stretch of country much higher than the sandy shore, with many beautiful fields 
and planes[sic] full of great forests, some sparse and some dense; and the trees 
have so many colors, and are so beautiful and delightful that they defy 
description."

Verrazzano continued north along the Outer Banks, making periodic explorations 
as he sought a route further west towards China. When he viewed the Albemarle 
and Pamlico Sounds opposite the Outer Banks, he believed them to be the Pacific
 Ocean; his reports of such helped fuel the belief that the westward route to Asia 
was much closer than previously believed.

Just two years later, in 1526, a group of Spanish colonists from Hispaniola led by 
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón landed at the mouth of a river they called the "Rio Jordan", 
which may have been the Cape Fear River. The party consisted of 500 men and 
women, their slaves, and horses. One of their ships wrecked off the shore, and 
valuable supplies were lost; this coupled with illness and rebellion doomed the 
colony. Ayllon died in October, 1526 and the 150 or so survivors of that first year 
abandoned the colony and attempted to return to Hispaniola. Later explorers 
reported finding their remains along the coast; as the dead were cast off during 
the return trip.

 
Hernando de Soto first explored west-central North Carolina during his 1539-1540 
expedition. His first encounter with a native settlement in North Carolina may have 
been at Guaquilli near modern Hickory. In 1567 Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition 
from Santa Elena at Parris Island, South Carolina, then the capital of the Spanish 
colony in the Southeast, into the interior of North Carolina, largely following De Soto's 
earlier route. His journey was ordered to claim the area as a Spanish colony, pacify 
and convert the natives, as well as establish another route to protect silver mines in 
Mexico (the Spanish did not realize the distances involved). Pardo went toward the 
northwest to be able to get food supplies from natives.

Pardo and his team made a winter base at Joara (near Morganton, in Burke County), 
which he renamed Cuenca. They built Fort San Juan and left 30 men, while Pardo 
traveled further, establishing five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa 
Elena. After 18 months, in the spring of 1568, natives killed all the soldiers and burned 
the six forts, including the one at Fort San Juan. The Spanish never returned to the 
interior to press their colonial claim, but this marked the first European attempt at 
colonization of the interior. Translation in the 1980s of a journal by Pardo's scribe 
Bandera have confirmed the expedition and settlement. Archaeological finds at 
Joara indicate that it was a Mississippian culture settlement and also indicate 
Spanish settlement at Fort San Juan in 1567-1568. Joara was the largest mound 
builder settlement in the region. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting 
with them in 1540.
 
The earliest English attempt at colonization in North America was Roanoke Colony of 
1584–1587, the famed "Lost Colony" of Sir Walter Raleigh. The colony was established 
at Roanoke Island in the Croatan Sound on the leeward side of the Outer Banks. The 
first attempt at a settlement consisted of 100 or so men led by Ralph Lane. They built 
a fort, and waited for supplies from a second voyage. While waiting for supplies to 
return, Lane and his men antagonized the local Croatan peoples, killing several of 
them in armed skirmishes. The interactions were not all negative, as the local people 
did teach the colonists some survival skills, such as the construction of dugout canoes.

When the relief was long in coming, the colonists began to give up hope; after a 
chance encounter with Sir Francis Drake, the colonists elected to accept transport 
back to England with him. When the supply ships did arrive, only a few days later, 
they found the colony abandoned. The ship's captain, Richard Grenville, left a small 
force of 15 men to hold the fort and supplies and wait for a new stock of colonists.

In 1587 third ship arrived carrying 110 men, 17 women, and 9 children, some of 
whom had been part of the first group of colonists that had earlier abandoned 
Roanoke. This group was lead by John White. Among them was a pregnant 
woman; she gave birth to the first English subject born in North America, Virginia 
Dare. The colonists found the remains of the garrison left behind, likely killed by the 
Croatan who had been so antagonized by Lane's aggressiveness. White had intended 
to pick up the remains of the garrison, abandon Roanoke Island, and settle in the 
Chesapeake Bay. White's Portuguese pilot, Simon Fernandez, refused to carry on 
further; rather than risk mutiny, White agreed to resettle the former colony.

The Spanish War prevented any further contact between the colony and England 
until a 1590 expedition, which found no remains of any colonists, just an abandoned 
colony and the letters "CROATOAN" carved into a tree, and "CRO" carved into 
another. John White, who had not remained with the colony he established, made 
an brief attempt to search Croatan Island (speculated to be either Hatteras Island or 
Ocracoke Island) for the survivors, but weather prevented a thorough search, and he r
eturned to England with no evidence of what happened to the colony.

No evidence has ever turned up to explain what happened to the colony. One story, 
told by Powhatan to the settlers of the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, was that the 
Roanoke Colonists were making their way north towards the Chesapeake Bay 
when they were caught between two warring bands of natives; most of them were 
killed in the battle. Powhatan provided several copper pots, supposedly from the 
Roanoke Colony, as evidence of his story Another speculation is that the 
colonists were integrated into the Croatan tribe, and intermarried with them. Modern 
Lumbee peoples may be decendants of these Croatan people.

Development of North Carolina Colony
The Province of North Carolina developed distinctly from South Carolina almost from 
the beginning. The Spanish experienced trouble colonizing North Carolina because
 it had a dangerous coastline, a lack of ports, and few inland rivers by which to 
navigate. In the 1650s and 1660s, settlers (mostly British) moved south from 
Virginia, in addition to runaway servants and fur trappers. There were only about 
5,000 settlers in 1700 and 11,000 in 1715.[27] While mostly British, the settlers 
included a few African slaves and a colony at New Bern composed of Swiss and 
German settlers.

As early as 1689, the Carolina proprietors named a separate governor for the region of 
the colony that lay to the north and east of Cape Fear. By 1712, the term "North 
Carolina" was in common use. In 1728, the dividing line between North Carolina and 
Virginia was surveyed. In 1730, the population was 30,000.[27] By 1729, the Crown 
bought out seven of the eight original proprietors, making North Carolina a royal colony.

The proprietor who refused to sell was John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, who in 1744 
received rights to the vast Granville Tract, constituting the northern half of North Carolina. 
This happened just as the tide of immigration to North Carolina from Virginia and 
Pennsylvania began to swell.[27] Many of the mid-18th-century immigrants were farmers 
of Scots-Irish or German descent. On the eve of the American Revolution, North Carolina 
was the fastest-growing British colony in North America. The small family farms of the 
Piedmont contrasted sharply with the plantation economy of the coastal region, where 
wealthy planters grew tobacco and rice with slave labor. It had a population of 100,000 
in 1752 and 200,000 in 1765.[27] By 1760, enslaved Africans constituted one quarter of 
North Carolina's population and were concentrated along the coast.

In the late 1760s, tensions between Piedmont farmers and coastal planters welled
up in the Regulator movement. With specie scarce, many inland farmers found 
themselves unable to pay their taxes and resented the consequent seizure of their 
property. Local sheriffs sometimes kept taxes for their own gain and sometimes 
charged twice for the same tax. Governor William Tryon's conspicuous consumption 
in the construction of a new governor's mansion at New Bern fuelled the movement's 
resentment. As the western districts were under-represented in the colonial legislature, 
it was difficult for the farmers to obtain redress by legislative means. Ultimately, the 
frustrated farmers took to arms and closed the court in Hillsborough, North Carolina. 
Tryon sent troops to the region and defeated the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance 
in May 1771.

North Carolina in the American Revolution
In the spring of 1776, North Carolinians, meeting in the fourth of their Provincial 
Congresses, drafted the Halifax Resolves, a set of resolutions that empowered the 
state's delegates to the Second Continental Congress to concur in a declaration of 
independence from Great Britain. In November 1776, North Carolina representatives 
gathered in Halifax to write a new state constitution, which remained in effect until 
1835.

Although North Carolina was spared violence in the early years of the Revolutionary 
War, it was a major focus of fighting in 1780-81. American general Nathanael Greene 
engaged British forces under Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Guilford Court House 
in March 1781. In 1786, the population of North Carolina had increased to 350,000.

The United States Constitution drafted in 1787 was controversial in North Carolina. 
Delegate meetings at Hillsboro in July 1788 initially voted to reject it for anti-federalist 
reasons. They were persuaded to change their minds partly by the strenuous efforts 
of James Iredell and William Davies and partly by the prospect of a Bill of Rights. 
Meanwhile, residents in the wealthy northeastern part of the state, who generally 
supported the proposed Constitution, threatened to secede if the rest of the state 
did not fall into line. A second ratifying convention was held in Fayetteville in November 
1789, and on November 21, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. 
Constitution.

North Carolina adopted a new state constitution in 1835. One of the major changes 
was the introduction of direct election of the governor, for a term of two years; prior 
to 1835, the legislature elected the governor for a term of one year. North Carolina's 
current capitol building was completed in 1840.

James K. Polk, who was president of the United States from 1845 until 1849, was 
born in North Carolina. Andrew Jackson, who was president of the United States from 
1829 until 1837, was most likely born in South Carolina, but is sometimes also 
claimed as a native of North Carolina. Andrew Johnson, President of the United 
States from April 15, 1865 to March 4, 1869,was born in Raleigh.

Civil War, Reconstruction and disfranchisement
See also Reconstruction era of the United States and Disfranchisement after the 
Civil War.

As a plantation state, North Carolina had a long history of slavery. It also received 
numerous African American migrants from Virginia who had been free people of 
color since the colonial period. They tended to settle in frontier areas, where relations 
were easier. Up until 1835, free African Americans had the right to vote in the state, 
but they were disfranchised and put under increasing restrictions as tensions built 
toward the Civil War. By the 1860 census, there were 629,942 whites and 361,544 
African-Americans, of whom 30,000 were free.

In the fraught election of 1860, North Carolina's electoral votes went to Southern 
Democrat John C. Breckinridge, an adamant supporter of slavery who hoped to 
extend human bondage in blacks to the United States' western territories. He 
defeated the Constitutional Union candidate, John Bell, who carried much of the 
upper South.

In marked contrast to most of the states which Breckinridge carried, North Carolina 
was reluctant to secede from the Union when it became clear that Republican 
Abraham Lincoln had won the presidential election. North Carolina did not secede 
until May 20, 1861, after the fall of Fort Sumter and the secession of the Upper 
South's bellwether, Virginia.

Many North Carolinians, especially yeoman farmers who owned few or no slaves, 
were not supportive of the Confederacy. Draft-dodging, desertion, and tax evasion 
were common during the Civil War years. The Union's naval blockade of Southern 
ports and the breakdown of the Confederate transportation system took a heavy 
toll on North Carolina residents, as did the runaway inflation of the war years. In 
the spring of 1863, there were food riots in North Carolina (as well as Georgia).

Reconstruction
During Reconstruction, African American leaders came both from those free 
before the war, from men who had escaped to the North and decided to return, 
and from migrants from the North who wanted to help in the postwar years. Many 
of these had escaped from slavery and got some education before they came 
back to the state. In general, however, illiteracy was a problem shared by most 
African Americans and about one-third of the whites in the state.

A number of white northerners migrated to North Carolina to work and invest. 
While feelings in the state were high against carpetbaggers, of the 133 persons
at the constitutional convention, only 18 were Northern carpetbaggers and 15 
were African American. North Carolina was readmitted to the Union in 1868, after
ratifying a new state constitution. It included provisions to establish public education, 
prohibited slavery, and adopted universal suffrage. It also provided for orphanages, 
public charities and a penitentiary. The legislature also ratified the Fourteenth 
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 1870 the Democratic Party came to power in the state. Governor William W. 
Holden had used civil powers and spoken out to try to combat the Ku Klux Klan's 
increasing violence. Conservatives accused him of being head of the Union League, 
of believing in social equality between the races, and of being corrupt. When the 
legislature voted to impeach him, however, it charged him only with using and 
paying troops to put down insurrection (Ku Klux Klan activity) in the state. Holden 
was impeached and turned over his duties to Lieutenant Governor Tod R. Caldwell 
on December 20, 1870. The trial began on January 30, 1871, and lasted nearly 
three months. On March 22, the North Carolina Senate found Holden guilty and 
ordered him removed from office.

After the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 went into effect, the U.S. Attorney General, 
Amos T. Akerman, vigorously prosecuted Klan members in North Carolina. During 
the late 1870s, there was increased violence in the Piedmont area, where whites 
tried to suppress minority black voting in the election.

Disfranchisement
As in other Southern states, after white Democrats regained power, they worked to 
re-establish white supremacy. Nonetheless, in the 1880s, black officeholders were 
at a peak in local offices, elected from black-majority districts. In 1894 after years 
of agricultural problems, an interracial coalition of Republicans and Populists won 
a majority of seats in the state legislature. White Democrats worked to break up 
the coalition and reduce black and poor white suffrage.

In 1896 North Carolina passed a statute that made voter registration more complicated 
and reduced blacks on voter registration rolls. In 1898 in an election characterized by 
violence, fraud and intimidation of black voters, white Democrats regained power in the 
state legislature. They then passed a new constitution in 1900 with a suffrage amendment. 
Its provisions for poll taxes, literacy tests and similar mechanisms succeeded in 
reducing black voter turnout completely by 1904, and disfranchising many poor 
whites as well. Contemporary accounts estimated that 75,000 black men lost the vote.
 In 1900 blacks numbered 630,207 citizens, about 33% of the state's total population.

With control of the legislature, white Democrats passed Jim Crow laws establishing 
segregation in public facilities and transportation. It would take African Americans more 
than 60 years before they would regain full power to exercise the suffrage and other full 
rights of citizens. Without the ability to vote, they lost all chance at local offices: sheriffs, 
justices of the peace, jurors, county commissioners and school board members, which 
were the active site of government at the turn of the century.[34] Suppression of the black 
vote and re-establishment of white supremacy quickly overwhelmed people's memory and
 knowledge of the thriving black middle class in the state.

"Native American" groups
Post-Civil War racial politics encouraged efforts to divide and co-opt groups. In 1885 North 
Carolina passed a law sponsored by Hamilton McMillan, a Democrat from Robeson County, 
to create separate school districts for free persons of color of the county. They did not want 
to attend the schools for freedmen, where they were directed because of segregation. 
McMillan invented the name "Croatan Indians" and theorized that the people had 
descended from a friendly tribe of Indians on the Roanoke River in eastern North Carolina 
who had mixed with the whites in Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony in 1587 [35]. Twelve 
"Croatan Indian" districts were created from districts which had formerly been classified 
as "Colored". Robeson County residents switched their votes to the Democrats as a result 
of McMillan's efforts.

In this way the Democrats solidified their position in the legislature. They also drew racial 
lines in a county where they had been blurred. In 1900 the state passed laws completing 
the disfranchisement of former slaves and free people of color. With conservative white 
Democrats in control of the state legislature, the "Croatan Indians" lost much of their 
influence, since the Republicans were no longer competitive in the state. Thus, the 1885 
law formally created three castes in Robeson County: white, Colored and "Croatan Indian." 
Later, there would be three sets of water fountains, seating areas, rest rooms, etc. The 
group changed their name to "Cherokee Indians of Robeson County" in 1913, "Siouan 
Indians of Lumber River" in 1934-1935, and were given limited recognition by the U.S. 
Congress as Lumbee Indians in 1956.

The 1885 North Carolina bill affected the very history of Indians in the Southeast. 
Anthropologist James Mooney included the Croatan Indians and other mixed-race 
communities in his studies of the Indian tribes of the Southeast in 1907. Frank G. 
Speck traveled throughout the Southeast "discovering" lost tribes.

In 1887 Person County granted a separate school to a group called "old issue negroes". 
It was discontinued about 1896 but reestablished in 1901. Person County Indians were 
recognized by the state in 1911. What some researchers call "invented" North Carolina 
Indian tribes followed: the Sampson County Coharie Indians, Columbus County 
Waccamaw-Siouan Indians, and Halifax County Haliwa-Saponi Indians. Virginia 
recognized the former free-person-of-color community of Norfolk County as Nansemond 
Indians and the community in Amherst county as Monacan Indians.

Post-war economic development
During the late 19th century, North Carolina's Piedmont region developed a cotton 
textile industry, based in close-knit company towns. The introduction of manufacturing 
helped to diversify North Carolina's chiefly agricultural economy. In the early decades, 
African Americans were rejected for textile industry jobs because of segregation.

On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers made the first successful airplane flight 
at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Reacting to segregation, disfranchisement and difficulties in agriculture, tens of 
thousands of African Americans left North Carolina for the North for better 
opportunities in the Great Migration, whose first wave was from 1910-1940. They 
went to Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, and Philadelphia; and sometimes further 
north, where there was work.

In the early 20th century, North Carolina launched both a major education initiative 
and a major road-building initiative to enhance the state's economy. The educational 
initiative was launched by Governor Charles Aycock in 1901. Supposedly, North 
Carolina built one school per day while Aycock was in office. In addition, North 
Carolina was helped by the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which contributed matching funds 
for the construction of thousands of schools for African Americans in rural areas 
throughout the South in the 1920s and 1930s.

The state's road-building initiative began in the 1920s, after the automobile became 
a popular mode of transportation. During the early decades of the 20th century, 
several major U.S. military installations, notably Fort Bragg, were located in North 
Carolina. There were many usable trains in the town.

[edit] North Carolina since the New Deal
In the period since the 1930s, North Carolina's reputation as an educational and 
manufacturing center has continued to grow. During World War II, North Carolina 
supplied the U.S. armed forces with diverse manufactured goods, including more 
textiles than any other state in the nation. North Carolina also became known for 
its excellent universities. Three major institutions compose the state's Research 
Triangle: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (chartered in 1789 and 
greatly expanded from the 1930s on), North Carolina State University, and Duke 
University (rechartered in 1924).

In 1931 the Negro Voters League was formed in Raleigh to press for voter registration. 
The city had an educated and politically sophisticated black middle class; by 1946 
the League had succeeded in registering 7,000 black voters, an achievement in the 
segregated South. The work of racial desegregation and restoration of civil rights for 
African Americans continued throughout the state.

In 1960 nearly 25% of the state was African American: 1,114,907 citizens who 
had been living without full rights. African-American college students began the 
sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro on February 1, 1960, sparking 
a wave of copycat sit-ins across the American South. They continued the Greensboro 
sit-in sporadically for several months until, on July 25, African Americans were at last 
allowed to eat at Woolworth's. Integration of public facilities followed.

Together with continued activism in states throughout the South, African Americans' 
moral leadership gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights 
Act of 1965. Throughout the state, African Americans began to participate fully in 
political life. In October 1973, Clarence Lightner was elected mayor of Raleigh, making 
history as the first popularly elected mayor of the city, the first African American to be 
elected mayor, and the first African American to be elected mayor in a white-majority 
city of the South.

In 1971, North Carolina's third state constitution was ratified. A 1997 amendment to 
this constitution granted the governor veto power over most legislation.

During the last 25 years, North Carolina's population has increased as its economy 
has grown, especially in finance and knowledge-based industries. Most of the growth 
has taken place in metropolitan areas of the Piedmont, in Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, 
Greensboro.









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