Lowry War facts for kids

The Lowry War or Lowrie War was a conflict that took place in and around Robeson County, North Carolina, United States from 1864 to 1874 between a group of mostly Native American outlaws and civil local, state, and federal authorities. The conflict is named for Henry Berry Lowry, a Lumbee who led a gang of American Indian, white and black men which robbed area farms and killed public officials who pursued them.

Banditry in Robeson County emerged during the later stages of the American Civil War, as free persons of color hid in local swamps to avoid being conscripted for labor to support the war effort and stole food to survive. In 1864 and 1865 local Confederate officials came into conflict with the prominent Lumbee Lowry family, and two of the former were murdered. A Confederate Home Guard detachment subsequently executed two Lowrys for alleged possession of stolen goods and arrested Henry Berry Lowry on murder charges. He later broke out of jail and avoided the authorities by hiding in swamps with a group of associates which became known as the Lowry Gang. The gang was a somewhat fluid group of American Indian, white and black men, but many of its predominant members had kinship ties to Lowry. New public officials brought in during Reconstruction initially sought a peaceful solution to the problem, but this ended after the gang killed a former sheriff during a robbery in 1868.

Over the following years the gang committed various robberies, often targeting plantations. Declared outlaws by the state government, they were pursued by posses and county militiamen, typically eluding them in swamps and killing some of their pursuers. Some gang members were captured but successfully escaped detention. The state of North Carolina ultimately placed large bounties on the core gang members, with a reward of $12,000 being offered for the capture or killing of Lowry. Elements of the 4th Regiment U.S. Artillery were dispatched on several occasions to assist the local authorities. Following a major robbery in Lumberton in February 1872, Lowry disappeared, and over the next two years bounty hunters tracked down the remaining active gang members. Over the course of the conflict, the Lowry Gang was implicated in the deaths of 22 people, while one of its members was arrested and executed and several others killed. The affair attracted significant regional and national media attention. His fate still unknown, Lowry became a folk hero for the Lumbee people and his exploits have a prominent place in Lumbee folklore.

Legacy

Reflecting on the conflict, historian Malinda Maynor Lowery wrote, "For Robeson County Indians, the end of the Lowry War was their Wounded Knee massacre. Their nation didn't die, but it did become subject to state, local, and federal authority in many ways. The Lowry War left Robeson County Indians a separate social identity, but they spent the next seventy years, through the 1950s, gaining acknowledgement of their political autonomy." Evans concluded, "The Lowrys clearly made an impact [...] With the triumph of a frankly racist party during Reconstruction, it appeared that nothing could stop the winners from putting the Lumbee River Indians into the same half-free 'place' in which they generally succeeded in putting the blacks. But this effort failed. It appears to have failed, furthermore, to a great extent because of the bold deeds of the Lowrys, which filled the Lumber River Indians with a new pride of race, and a new confidence that despite generations of defeat, revitalized their will to survive as a people."

Commemoration and remembrance

The release of The Swamp Outlaws spurred numerous retrospective features on the Lowry War in books and newspapers throughout the late 1800s. Lowry is remembered by many Lumbee people as a folk hero, and his exploits have a prominent place in Lumbee folklore. As late as the 1930s, some Lumbees claimed he was living far away in Florida, Arizona, or Oklahoma but would occasionally visit Robeson County. Communications scholar Lorraine Ahearn wrote that the portrayal of the Lowry War in the confines of the "outlaw tropes" of the 1870s by the media helped establish its modern "mythic narrative" in the Lumbee community as a story of "Native American resistance to white supremacy". The Lumbee Tribe annually accords a person with the Henry Berry Lowry Award for distinguished community service.

The life of Henry Berry Lowry and the events of the war have been subject to fictional portrayal in several books and plays. In 1976 the Robeson County Historical Drama, Inc. produced a play dramatizing the life of Lowry, Strike At The Wind. Performances were conducted annually throughout the 1970s and 1980s in Pembroke as well as at the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. In the late 1990s and early 2000s shows became more sporadic due to financial costs. In 2007, North Carolina erected a highway historical marker in Pembroke to commemorate Lowry.