The Tuscaroras happily signed the peace treaty after the carnage and capture at Nooherooka in 1713. The records say the Corees just grunted at the signing. For two more bitter years, until 1715, the Corees fought the colonists. This is the keystone in building an understanding of the Tuscarora War.

The Coree War is the Indian war that's in the records, that history ignored and historians forgot. It started before the "Tuscarora War" and lasted another two years after the Tuscarora gave up their resistance to European settlement of eastern North Carolina. The Coree war was a tidewater canoe warfare diversion and pitiful delaying action.

While their menfolks harried the Albemarle, the women and children of the Corees made their way to rich dry land hammocks between the pocosins. From Goshen to the Pee Dee, while the disillusioned Tuscaroras, trapped between perfidious Whites among them and hostile Siouans to the south, slowly turned their tracks back toward their northern ancestral homelands, the Coree people took up their "fallback" positions. When the northern invaders made their ways back toward the homelands of their ancestors, the Coree hunkered down in their hideaways, deep in the swamps, to await the next European onslaught.

With the best weapons pirates could supply, the Corees ranged from Haw's Run to Haw's Landing to Haws Branch, that is, from New River of Onslow to Contentnea's tributaries to Core Point and into their old homeland on the Pamlico south shore of Coree Tuck. With the latest in weapons stripped from European ships by their buccaneer allies, the Corees fought on until the colonists got relief in a new treaty that gave back to the few visible Corees a piece of old Pamtico. It was just a sop, but it acknowledged their old holdings.

Robert Beverly could have told the politicians at Edenton, the Corees had come back home. But the handful of civilized people the colonial government settled on the reservation on Lake Mattamuskeet was a token group. They brought with them as symbolic luggage a few of their old enemies, and sometimes allies, the old-enemy Matchapunga and the bearded Hatteras.

When you understand this, you have grasped what has been missed by most students of the North Carolina Indian. Wes White wrote and compiled over 500 pages--all the references he could find--to help himself to understand the Lumbees, Coharies and the Haliwa Saponies. He ended his notes with a discussion of the cusped incisors of the Siouan Haliwa and a repudiation of "any connection between the Waccamaw in Robeson Co. (1720-1733) and the Lumbee (Jan. 1951-present)."

The parentheses are White's. He signed this expression of his frustration and confusion 19 August 1980. On 11 March 1982 he sent a note to George Stevens of the North Carolina State Archives, saying:

"The Archives has on file a large bound book, of about 535 pages, that I wrote, called North Carolina in the Fall of 1754 with Emphasis on the American Indian Population. Actually, I think it is under some other title, but you know the book of which I speak."

The actual title is Indians of the North Carolina Costal Plain: Material Toward a Study of Post-1754 Remnants. White goes on to say:

"This is to serve notice that I, having had these matters under consideration for several years, now consider pages 284-307, inclusive, of that book, both inaccurate and obsolete.

"The same goes for pages 146A-146E."

We get from this some sense of White's state of mind, as he slipped and slid through the muck of North Carolina's Indian tribal nomenclature, from what was essentially a South Carolina starting point, metaphorically reminiscent of Lederer's trip through the same area. He got there after the Indians were nearly all gone, or concealed in White or Black societies, of all sorts. Wes White wearied his mind without mastering the time dynamic seen so clearly by Fairfax Harrison in his Landmarks of Old Prince William. Harrison identified the Tuscaroras as Iroquoians of the border between North Carolina and Virginia, like Norman robber barons astride the Siouan Acconneechee trail.

The Tuscaroras showed their real origins and nationality, when they petitioned the governor of Pennsylvania for permission to return to their ancestral haunts on the Tuscarora River and in the Tuscarora Mountains of that colony. But by that time they were like the wayward husband, whose wife had changed the lock on the door. They were descendants of the Oneida, keepers of the southern door of the Iroquoian Long House, who by then had been forced by their "allies", the English, to northern New York.

The governor of Pennsylvania said he didn't know them. They'd been away from home too long. The Tuscarora were reclaimed by the Oneida, but they found the Long House so crowded that many wandered on up into Canada by the time period in which Wes White was checking the White man's censuses of the Indians.

White ignored the observations of the early European explorers that certain groups of Indians avoided contact with the Whites. Long experience, beginning at latest with Breton French on the Great Lakes and Mississippi in the 1500's, had taught them the wisdom of this. The records show that associations with the Whites inevitably resulted in devastation of Indian populations by death, disease and assimilation into the White society, at all levels.

In North Carolina that assimilation was, more often than not, into that other society in the shanties of the slaves. Indians were pressed into slavery by every scheme and subterfuge conceivable, ranging from brutal capture to apprenticeships. Studies by Byrd and Stover show the lengths to which White society went to obscure the identity of the Indians concealed within it.

But this was really the benevolent side of White society. Blessed, or brilliant, was the Indian who was not hurt by it. It killed Pocahontas. But it established a powerful Mustee precedent in the Rolfe family of Virginia, that many of the frontiersman in North Carolina didn't hesitate to follow.

What about the dark side of White society, that ultimately cast its malevolent shadow on the Mandans and the Sioux of Wounded Knee? The battle goes on, but it is nearly sterile and not contaminating now, like a liquid fuel air burst, compared to the filthy carnage of the old battle fields of North Carolina's wars against the Indians. Courtrooms now do what disease and deprivation used to accomplish.

One of the most chilling passages in North Carolina's history is in Thomas Alonzo Dill's Eighteenth Century New Bern, Part IV, No. 4, in the October 1954 edition of The North Carolina Historical Review: "A curious reference to Scott appears in the court minutes of 1759. In the August session of that year witness was summoned to answer questions 'concerning Doctor Andrew Scotts sending to him for some of the Small Pox Skabbs in a Vial.'"

What could he have wanted with smallpox scabs?" It was illegal to murder an Indian, even in colonial times, without a military mandate. Dill asked the question. I leave the reader to conjecture.

Cow pox pus was an ancient prophylaxis against smallpox, belatedly described by Jenner in 1822. On the other hand, a pinch of pulverized smallpox scab could quickly rid a cleared tract of land of undesirable neighbors who had no immunity. A little knowledge in the minds of some Whites could be very dangerous to the Indians in those days.

Pathetically, the Indians philosophically returned friendship for every beating they took. All except the Corees. The Corees were like the Siouan peoples of our plains, or the Mixteca of Oaxaca in Mexico. They became a proud people apart, even in the White man's midst.

In her master's thesis entitled Cambio De Idumentaria (Change of Attire), published by the Mexican Instituto Nacional Indigenista in 1963, Susan Drucker studied the dynamic of cultural change of a native people long in contact with Europeans. Her study's big flaw was in ignoring the very early church mandated wearing of covering garments by Indians in contact with Europeans, that is conquistadors' drawers and peasant womens' faldas. This influence was at least as old in North Carolina as the Juan Pardo expedition, and doubtless more diverse than the Smithsonian Institution is prepared to acknowledge.

Drucker studied the change from the church-fostered Father and Mother Hubbard attire, like the Siouan buckskin suits and dresses (described in the Carolinas by De Soto's companions), to the apparel of contemporary Europeans. When the coastal Carolina Siouan Indian gave up his buckskins, which he did as soon as he could deal, steal, or salvage from a grounded vessel a shirt and a pair of pants, he picked up the accoutrements of White power and officially joined the European society, insofar as it would accept him.

This had happened to many, if not most, of the Coastal Plain North Carolina Indians, by the time of the Tuscarora War. This was reflected in the wisdom of Lawson, in his discourse on the desirable course of relationships between the Whites and the Indians. Lawson poisoned his wisdom with his own hypocrisy, however. But there were men to whom the Indians became really neighbors and family. One such man was Silas Daniel Pate, who married and cherished a Coree Indian maiden.

Silas sojourned as a Primitive Baptist preacher among the Indians who inhabited the hidden hammocks between the pocosins of the lands south of the Neuse, as his father Shadrach had done before him. He married Christian, daughter of Coree Indian Jesse Ammons, who owned 150 acres on the Neuse River. His given name was Silas Daniel, but he was Danny to the Indians in those days.

But there were so many Pates named Daniel in the area, he became the preacher man known as Silas, "A True Predestinarian Baptist," it says on his tombstone, when he answered the call to preach. Christian's mother Sithy was married to Jesse Ammons, a Coree. Her grandfather was "Lame" David Jernigan.

The Pates and Jernigans were on opposing sides for years in political conflict that rocked and shocked the county for generations. This conflict is obliquely related to The Search for Johnny Chevin. It was part of a political struggle over the development of Wayne County.

Bryant Handley Pate was married to Zilpha Howell, ward of John Coor Pender, who was sheriff and representative in the state legislature. Out of conflict over location of the new county seat, David Jernigan shot John Coor Pender. Then Jernigan ran south to the Indians for protection, all the way down to the home of William Powell, chief of the Seminole Indians in Florida and father of the famous Osceola, who is in our time the symbol of Florida State University.

That Jernigan ran south among the Indians, rather than north or west is a clear indication that the Corees and related Indians had their origin among the Siouan nation. These Indians were North and South Carolina people. Many of them were by then scattered among the Muskogean peoples of Georgia, Florida and Alabama by the early 1800's. That Paul Coor Pender was able to move from North Carolina among the Indians, to single-handedly get the Indians in Florida to turn David Jernigan over to him, is clear evidence of the affinity of the Coor-Pender family for the Indians south of the Neuse River.

We don't know what specific help the Indian people gave him, but Paul Coor-Pender, who was barely grown, traveled for weeks among them and elicited from them information that led him to his father's murderer. Young Pender persuaded Chief Powell of the justness of his quest, and brought Jernigan back from Florida.

Lame David Jernigan was an old man at the time, frustrated by who knows what imagined or real injustices that bedevilled him. He was shackled, like a slave, and brought back to North Carolina to face an enraged justice. Jernigan was indicted for murder at the September term of the Waynesboro court in 1816. Sentiment against him was so strong in northern Wayne County his trial had to be moved to Kinston, where he was convicted and executed.

In his will, Jesse Ammons bequeathed nine slaves. That he did so tells us nothing about his race, nor the race of the slaves. The slaves are all referred to as "Negro," but we know that since long before the Tuscarora War, many Indians had been enslaved. Slave status automatically classified and physically lumped the Indian with the Black people.

Jesse Ammons, Sr., was illiterate. He signed with an inverted V, with a mark to the right of it; and he still seined and salted and smoked fish, like an Indian, but he left a better than average estate, for his time. His will was witnessed by Calvin Coor and John C. Pender. His estate was administered by his son, Jesse Ammons, Jr., who inventoried it in 1826. Jesse, Jr., signed the inventory with a bold hand, after noting that collection of many of the notes owed to his father were "doubtful," others were "desperate."

I have contacted the Ammonses listed in the Wayne County phone directory, all of whom consider themselves Black; but some of them, when specifically asked, indicate an oral tradition of Indian ancestry. This fits in with what I know of the Wayne County members of the Jacobs family, studied in detail by Stuart Berde for his study Nowhere To Hide: A Theoretical and Documentary Quest into Coharie Indian History. Berde's study goes considerably deeper than does the family history prepared by the Rev. Plummer D. Jacobs, Sr., of Indianapolis, Indiana, which was the basis for the Jacobs family story in my manuscript At Your Beginnings.

Berde's study explicitly identifies racial problems that drove the Jesse Jacobs family from Sampson to Wayne County, and alienated some members from the Baptist Church. When I was a child I went with my grandfather to visit the home of Frank Jacobs, Sr. on some business relating to the operation of our farm. The Jacobs family was considered by most members of my family, and people in Greenleaf, where they lived, as Black. Their home was big and very nice, and I noted that females of the family were light-skinned and very pretty.

This prompted me to say in childish ignorance when we left, "Granpa, them people don't look like niggers." To which my grandfather curtly replied, without elaboration, "They're Indians." Understanding by his tone that he didn't intend to discuss it further, I never asked him anything else about them, but, if they were Indians, I wanted to know more.

It is clear from the Plummer Jacobs material that the Coharie and Lumbee Indians did not adhere to any rigid appearance code, when identifying themselves. Jacobs describes Marshall Carter, husband of Frances Jacobs (daughter of Jesse and Abigail Gilliam Jacobs) as "short and fat with sandy hair and deep blue eyes." Included with the Plummer Jacobs material given to me by Mrs. Jessie Lee (Jacobs) Simmons, of Dudley, (grand daughter of Jesse Jacobs) is a single xeroxed typed page, bearing the portrait of a white-bearded elderly gentleman, entitled SKETCH OF THE GOODMAN FAMILY, by Jonathan Goodman.

This short Goodman family study was written in the early twentieth century, as indicated by the references to individuals made in it. It and the Plummer Jacobs material were prepared early enough, however, that the Lumbees and Coharies are both referred to as Croatan Indians. Jonathan Goodman verified the problem of the identity of the Croatan Indians, without bringing us any nearer to a solution.

Yesterday I visited Savie Peacock Moses, matriarch of a family that tended my family's farm in Wayne County with members of the Jacobs family. The Moses and the Jacobses lived in separate houses on our farm. Savie knows interesting things about White families in the area, that members of the families now don't even know themselves.

Savie would have been a reliable intelligence operative for the military or the CIA. Her memory is still unfailing in her seventies, and she has yet to reveal to me a name in scandal. But she will reveal enough that diligent study of court house records will enable a person to fill in the blanks in the mysteries.

Savie and I talked for some time, and she told me about the racial situation during her childhood in Lucama that necessitated a White school, a Black school and a so-called "Half-White Half-Black" school. I will quote the Jonathan Goodman material that poignantly reveals problems of people who have been racially and culturally ravaged, in a system that is still out of control. Whatever our historical innocence or guilt, involvement or acquiescence, this study suggests that another school will not solve our racial problems: "SKETCH OF THE GOODMAN FAMILY"

"Timothy Goodman is the founder of this particular family in Sampson County. He is said to have represented in features and general appearance the Indian race, he having straight black hair, and his complexion being of a reddish hue. His mother was one Sallie Hobbs. His father was unknown. He married Nancy Maynor, a woman who was an excellent specimen of the Cherokee Indian race. Jonathan Goodman is the son of the above Timothy Goodman, and we are sure, judging from his general appearance, that he is at least three-fourths Indian, with only one fourth White. His first wife was one Dorcas Maynor, Indian, daughter of Morris Maynor. Many sons and daughters were born to this couple, after which the first wife died, and he married his present wife, Lucy Faircloth. Her father being unknown to the writer. Mary E. Brewington is the daughter of Lucy Goodman, her father being an Indian. Mary E. Brewington married James Brewington, a son of Raford Brewington. They also have several sons and daughters."

Plummer Jacobs indicated that Raiford Brewington was a chief of the Coharie Indians. Jonathan Goodman continues:

"The subject of this sketch is now 76 years old and resides in Honeycutt Township, Sampson County. His wife, now dead, was Dorcas Maynor. Their children and grandchildren attend the Indian school in Herrings Township. Jonathan Goodman's father was Timothy Goodman and his mother was Nancy Maynor. The records in the Register of Deeds' office of Sampson County show that Timothy Goodman was a large land owner before the Civil War, and after his death his widow, Nancy Goodman, was assigned dower in this land in this land in Sampson County, according to these records. She was a typical Croatan Indian and showed no traces of negro blood. Jonathan's grandmother was Nancy Revell, and the Revell family are now prominent Croatans in Robeson County."

We know that many Indians became identified with and as Blacks during colonial times, simply by being captured and sold as slaves. Many records indicate that Indians were active in the Revolutionary War. Many free blacks and Indians who fought for the American cause were granted lands because of this service, for which they were respected as men and valued as citizens.

During the half century preceding the Civil War the Indian social, economic and racial situation was very complex and generally deteriorating, with "Indians" being found in all levels of society, ranging from abject servitude to respected wealth. This was the era in which many Indians shed their Indianness. The bright and bold just took a place as darker members of the White society. This sometimes took some brass, but the resourceful hammered their copper color into lives that were beautiful.

The same was true of many Blacks, but we tend to forget this. Because of the felt need to right wrongs, we also sometimes foolishly forget that some Blacks bought into slavery, for a variety of reasons. The important thing to remember, and this is made clear, over and over, by Stuart Berde, is that free Blacks and Indians became perceived as intolerable examples in the South, where the institution of slavery was perceived as being jeopardized by them.

Blacks and Indians became socially and economically equated with each other in the half century before the Civil War, to a great extent, particularly in the South. This came about by burning church and court house records. Those Indians not absorbed into White society at the time the records were burned, subsequently found it hard to impossible to get into it. Christian Ammons Pate moved through this era in "fair style," and never looked back.

Then it became important for proponents of slavery to have all Blacks and Indians either securely bound or isolated on rigidly controlled reservations, where they were systematically stripped of dignity and self-sufficiency. Since this attitude was not universal, or enthusiastically accepted among all Whites, efforts to Europeanize Indians were as inevitable as the Civil War in areas where slavery was not popular.

The Civil war was as much a working out of the Indians' destiny, as it was a struggle for liberation of the Blacks. The emotional conflicts were poignant then and now. Jonathan Goodman sums up for his people with three short paragraphs, headed "The Indian Families of Sampson County":

"The people now living in Sampson, Robeson and adjoining counties of this State and any other State of the Union are undoubtedly the Indian race mixed with the whites. Among the prominent (Indian) families of Sampson County are the Emanuels, Brewingtons, Jacobs, Bledsoles, Jones, Maynors, Stricklands, Simmons, Goodmans, Faircloths and Ammons.

"The features of these people betray the fact that white and Indian blood alone course through their veins. The educational status of these people is very low, owing to their having been deprived of schools within reach of their own race and color. Only a few have obtained a fair education owing to the above conditions.

"The above statement can be verified by John Emanuel, who is now seventy-four years old; by J.S. Strickland, who is now seventy-six years old; by Jonathan Goodman."

I have reluctantly concluded that the Pates were a varied lot in terms of their relations with the Indians. At the sublime extreme was Silas Daniel, who taught the true faith, or trafficked it, some might say. At the other end of the spiritual spectrum, there were those like McDonald, who became the richest man in Greene county, in his time, selling booze, wholesale and retail, in places like Scuffleton. Alcohol unfailingly undid the Indian socially and economically, and racially, as long as race was an issue in which his identity was debated or condemned.

In the North Carolina magazine, The State, 12 September 1942, there is an article by R.C. Lawrence, entitled "Robin Adair," This article is about James Robert Adair, the physician, trader and ancient historian of the American Indian. It satisfies me in my search for the connection between Scuffleton in Greene County and Scuffletown in Robeson County. Adair followed the Indian survivors of the Tuscarora War southward, for reasons we will probably never know, but he was always a dreamer and a trader, and he had a deep appreciation of the Indian women. Below is a quote from the article:

"Dr. Adair settled in what is now Greene County, and a grant for 462 acres was issued to him in 1755 by Colonial Governor Arthur Dobbs. His seat was known as "Fairfields," located on the north side of Contentnea, opposite the mouth of Nahunta Creek (which is joined by Patetown Slough at Torhunta, my parentheses). Later he settled in lower Robeson."

Stuart Berde, in a 1982 study prepared for the Lumbee River Legal Services, Inc., Coharie Intra-Tribal Council, entitled COHARIE REEMERGENCE: Attaining Religious and Educational Freedom in Eastern North Carolina 1850c-Present, indicates that the New Bethel Baptist Church, in Sampson County, began as a brush arbour meeting on the land of Isam (Isham) Ammons, who was then an old Indian man.

I have found no connection between the Jacobs and Pate families in the material at my disposal. Nor have I found an Ammons connection to the Jacobses, though Jonathan Goodman identifies the Ammonses as Croatans. My family oral tradition identifies Christian Ammons's people as Coree. I have no personal alternative but to identify the Corees and the Croatans as one and the same people. It is no mental stretch for me to believe that the ancestors of Christian Ammons Pate befriended John Chevin and his people.

The earliest mention I've found of an Ammons is a "Thomas Amons," a petitioner from Edgecombe Precinct in 1732, who wanted the seat of government moved to a site between the Tar and Neuse rivers, because of the inconvenience of Edenton and a site on the Cape Fear (then being considered), to the people of his precinct. Edgecombe was then part of Bertie, which had been Chowan, when the Huguenots sojourned there. How Ammons became a Coharie Indian name is not clear to me.

The derivation of the counties is helpful in interpreting how the Ammonses migrated southward. Edgecombe was derived from Bertie, which was derived from Chowan. The French Huguenots left the Siouan Indians at Manikintown in Virginia and went to live at Pamtico (now Bath), and after a few years moved on to the Trent River. They left Manikintown because of their reluctance to allow their minister Claude Phillippe Richebourg custody of certain parish records, according to R.H. Fife, who translated the French portion of records of "The Vestry Book of King William Parish, Va., 1707-1750."

The nature of church parish records being what it is, the Manikin Town church records would have clearly indicated the marital, or family, relationships between the Indians and the Huguenots. The Executive Council's reaction to John Norcome's accusation of colonial officials of sexual promiscuity with Indian women is a fair gauge of the working morality of the colony and the deep, if sometimes illicit, social involvement of the colonists, at even the highest levels, with the Indians.

My mother's people, the Slaughters, had a plantation called Airville, located about midway between the Mattaponi and the Pamunkey Indians, who ran the Siouan Manikintown Indians out of the present King William County Court House area. The Monacans settled farther up the James River. Swanton tells us, "The population gradually declined and in 1699 some Huguenots took possession of the land of Mowhemencho (the Manikintown chief). The greater part of the Monacan had been driven away some years before this by Col. Bornn (Byrd?)." The last parentheses are Swanton's.

It is reasonable to assume that the Monacans drifted southward to the Siouan population concentration in North Carolina, rather than to remain embroiled in conflict with the Algonquin and Iroquoian tribes of Virginia. The conflict between Algonquians and Iroquoians was rapidly resolved in a takeover by the Iroquoians, the surviving Algonquians becoming vassals of the English. The Huguenots drifted with a remnant of the Siouan Monacans to the Pamtigo area, which by this time was known to the colonists as Bath, named so, interestingly enough, after the great Welsh resort of the time of the same name.

Thomas Alonzo Dill, in his "Eighteenth Century New Bern," tells us, in reference to the Huguenots at Pamtico, that "Lawson gathered some information on the difficulties of these people when he talked with Richebourg in 1708 while the latter was on a visit to the French colony at Bath Town, which had been founded three years earlier." Keep in mind that these French were Bretons, to whom Welsh was a dialect of their own language.

Dill tells us that by the time the Huguenots arrived in the Core Sound and Neuse River area, it was already heavily settled by "English," such as Frederick Jones, whose South Wales Grant of 4,565 acres, included a large part of the present Jones and Craven counties. Some of these "English" were named Blount and Hancock; the names, respectively, of the pro- and anti-English Tuscaroras in the "Tuscarora War."

We reasonably wonder about these names, and the relationships of their "English" possessors to the natives at this time (circa 1700). The "Minutes of the Executive Council" are surprisingly revealing. This is from Records of the Executive Council 1664-1734, "[CCR 189]", edited by R.J. Cain, pp.5-6:

"John Norcome Comes and appeares In pursuance of a Warrant against him from the Honorable Thomas Pollock Esqr. For uttering divers verry scandelous words and Expressions against the honorable the president and Christopher Gale Esqr. And upon a heareing of the whole matter before this Board it dos appeare that the said Norcome discoursing of the president and the said Mr. Gales goeing to Pamtico on an Expedition against the Indyans (by ordrer of this Board) the said Norcom did Say that they (meaneing the president and Mr. Gale) went for nothing but to Knock the Indyan Women; which words appeareing to be very Scandelous."

The parentheses in the above records were in the original records. The colonists of the Neuse and Trent were subject to the same militia levies as the men of the Albemarle, and would have been involved in the Pamtico campaigns. That the militiamen became involved with Indian women is inevitable. Comments by Lawson, Adair, and many others, indicate that there were probably long-standing relationships between some of the colonial officials and Indian women.

Such relationships would have been normal to members of the polygamous Indian society. For his candor regarding the mission of the militia in the Bath area, John Norcome was sentenced to "receive tenn Lashes on his bare Back publickly and find Good and Sufficient Suretyes for his Good behaviour for one whole yeare from hence Ensuing." We don't get from the record what "Good and Sufficient Suretyes" John Norcom found, but he apparently made no further public criticism of official/military White-Indian relationships that ultimately broke down the Indians' culture and enriched a nation still in the process of becoming.

I have said about enough. My people found the descendants of Johnny Chevin. That's as much of a story as any family needs. It's more of a story than I can well tell.

Some day insightful scholars will trace James Coharie from his cabin at old Cartuka to Sampson County. Others will wrangle over the migration of the Jacobs antecedents from Old Duplin to Black River. Others will even trouble the remains of the beautiful socialite Kittie Royal, but I will not.

In the 29 July 1992 issue of This Week Magazine, Sheila Turnage gave an interesting description of the discovery of the site of Nooherooka, without any reference to Larry Pait, the original excavator of the site. In this article Turnage quotes Dr. David Phelps, East Carolina University professor of archaeology: "This is what every archaeologist dreams about," says Phelps. "This is an endpoint for a culture in time."

Endpoint for what culture? That of the crude European hand tool perhaps, but certainly not for a people. Knowing the fate of the impious moralist John Lawson, I feel it temerity to moralize myself. However, when Albert Einstein was asked what is the most powerful force in the Universe, he replied, "Compound interest." Again, it is temerity to criticize Einstein, but his was an acculturated response.

Compound interest may be the most powerful force in the Universe, but the second most powerful force in this beautiful ball of hot mud we call Earth is human DNA. The human chromosome has locked within it the power to destroy the Universe--as we know it. The procreative urge detonates its charge. We, dear reader, you and I, are the fallout from this explosion.

Maybe that's why God keeps trying to tell us: Sex is for responsible procreation, not a casual form of recreation. Responsible adaptive people take care of their own--and they survive.