Colonial North Carolina

Colonial North Carolina By Joe A. Mobley

The history of North Carolina began before the first European explorers gazed on its shores. Its American Indian inhabitants had long dominated the land and waterways. Before the colonial era ended, vast numbers of English, Scottish, Swiss, Germans, French, Welsh and Africans had immigrated to North Carolina, pushing American Indian groups to the margins and leaving their marks on the culture of the colony. In some ways, colonial North Carolina was unique in the early American experience. The peculiar configuration of the Outer Banks limited its commercial opportunities, but the colony was very much a part of the Atlantic world. Historian Joe A. Mobley recounts events in the region from prehistory and the first settlement by colonists through North Carolina’s emergence as a state in a new democratic nation.