The Lowry War is a notable event in North Carolina history. Led by Henry Berry Lowry, whose father and brother were murdered by men of the Confederate Home Guard, a band of American Indian, White and African-American men waged a guerrilla war against the white establishment from 1864 to 1872. He and his gang attained a kind of mythic status.
History
Some 42,000 North Carolinians lost their lives in the American Civil War. Native Americans in North Carolina had differing experiences. Many Cherokee supported the Confederacy. Thomas' Legion, also known as the 69th North Carolina Infantry Regiment of Colonel William Holland Thomas, had two full companies of Cherokee in it. The "free people of color" in eastern North Carolina were treated differently. In 1861 they were forced to work on Confederate fortifications at Fort Fisher, near Wilmington. Many fled into the forests and swamps to resist such enforced labor by the Confederate Army. Henry Berry Lowry was one of twelve children in the family of Allen and Mary Lowry. At the start of the Civil War in 1861, the native americans within Robeson County were viewed as a potential danger to the Confederacy, as it was believed some had earlier fomented slave rebellions. But they were also considered a source for forced labor for Confederate military projects. In Robeson County, the Confederate Home Guard accused some local free blacks of harboring escaped Union prisoners and Confederate deserters, hiding guns, and stealing meat from smokehouses. As elsewhere in the South during the Civil War, the Home Guard supported the Confederacy and maintained law and order at home while the war was being fought. Lowry killed neighbor James P. Barnes, who accused the Lowries of stealing food and harboring escaped Union prisoners of war, on December 21, 1864 and James Brantley "Brant" Harris on January 15, 1865 as a result of ongoing disputes with both men. With Sherman's army a few miles from Robeson, the Confederate Home Guard accused Henry Berry Lowry's father, Allen, and brother William, of various crimes, including illegal possession of firearms. After a hastily prepared kangaroo court trial, Allen and William were convicted and executed on March 3, 1865. For nearly a decade, Henry Berry Lowry conducted raids in southern North Carolina, primarily in Robeson County and against upper-class whites. He became the most hunted outlaw in the state's history. During the war, Henry Berry Lowry often flouted the authorities who hunted him for over eight years. He murdered the "presumed head" of the local Ku Klux Klan, John Taylor, after which Lowry and many others escaped into the surrounding swamps: a tactic that they would use over and over again and which would prove highly successful at helping them avoid capture. As the war dragged on, food became scarce as more outliers fled to the sanctuary of the swamps. The guerrilla band decided to live off the wealthy class of people instead of the poor. The band raided plantations and distributed food to the poor in Pembroke, North Carolina which was known then as "Scuffletown" or "The Settlement". In 1872, Henry Berry Lowry disappeared without a trace. The reward on his head was never collected, and the legend of his actions grew to mythic proportions. In 1874, after the death of Steve Lowry at the hands of bounty hunters, the Lowry War ended. For present-day North Carolinians, Lowry is a controversial figure. He was thought by his defenders to be a hero, and by his critics to be a common criminal. The descendants of Allen Lowry, a Tuscarora indian, created what we know as the Lowry war. During the Civil War many Tuscarora and other Indians of Robeson County banded together under the leadership of Allen Lowry and hid in swamps along the Lumber River to avoid forced labor in the building of Confederate fortifications along the Cape Fear River. After the war, former Confederates under the name of Conservatives dominated the county government and began to retaliate against the Native Americans. With Lowry as leader, the new band of refugees started raiding the plantations of the Conservatives. In 1865 Allen Lowry and his oldest son, William, were executed as bandits, and leadership of the band passed to Henry Berry Lowry, Allen's youngest son. Governor William W. Holden proclaimed Henry Berry Lowry a Tuscarora outlaw on 10 Nov. 1868. Lowry surrendered and was jailed in Lumberton but escaped. Eight members of the band were captured in the winter of 1869-70; two were tried and found guilty but escaped from the Wilmington jail where they were imprisoned, and the band continued its raids and killings. On 12 Nov. 1870 a federal artillery battery was sent to Robeson County to subdue the Lowry Band but failed to contain the raids. In 1871 the General Assembly offered a bounty on Henry Berry Lowry. Col. Francis Marion Wishart organized a militia unit in an effort to capture Lowry but only managed to seize several members of the band. On 15 Oct. 1871 federal troops withdrew from the county, and early in 1872 the Lowry Band conducted a lucrative raid on Lumberton, after which Lowry apparently disappeared. It is not known whether he was killed, either accidentally or intentionally, or vanished with the money obtained in the Lumberton raid, but his disappearance marked the end of the Lowry Band. By the close of 1872 its remaining members had been killed. Whatever his fate, in the years since 1872 Henry Berry Lowry has become a folk hero to the North Carolina Tuscarora Nation and Lumbee Indians.
The legend
Since 1976, Lowry's legend has been presented every summer in the outdoor drama Strike At The Wind in Pembroke. Set during the critical Civil War and Reconstruction years, the play portrays Lowry as a cultural hero who flouts the South's racialized power structure by fighting for his people's self-determination and allying with the county's downtrodden citizens, the blacks and poor whites.
