[1][page needed] The Tuscarora signed a treaty with colonial officials in 1718 and settled on a reserved tract of land in Bertie County, North Carolina.
The war incited further conflict on the part of the Tuscarora and led to changes in the slave trade of North and South Carolina.
The Tuscarora are an Iroquoian people who are believed to have migrated from the Great Lakes area into the Piedmont centuries before European colonization.
As the settlers moved closer to the Tuscarora and the two began interacting more frequently, conflict arose over competition for resources, shared hunting grounds and cultural differences.
[2] Settlers found eastern North Carolina to be swampy and difficult to farm, so they pushed westward, attracted by the more fertile uplands.
Some historians including Richard White and Rebecca Seaman have suggested that the war grew out of misunderstandings between the colonists and the Tuscaroras.
[5] The Southern Tuscaroras led by Hancock allied with the Bear River tribe, Coree, Cothechney, Machapunga, Mattamuskeet, Neuse, Pamlico, Senequa, and Weetock to attack the settlers in a wide range within a short time period.
The Baron of Bernberg was a prisoner of the Tuscarora during the raids, and he recounted stories of women impaled on stakes, more than 80 infants slaughtered, and more than 130 settlers killed in the New Bern settlement.
These attacks came amid a yellow fever outbreak that weakened the North Carolina colony; the combined pressure caused many settlers to flee.
[7] South Carolina dispatched Colonel James Moore with a force of 33 colonists and nearly 1,000 Native Americans, which arrived in December 1712.
[9] An archaeological analysis of Fort Neoheroka indicates that the Tuscarora were adapting to modern methods of warfare in North America, specifically the advent of firearms, explosives and artillery.
Ultimately, it was not the defensive limitations of the Tuscarora that cost them at Fort Neoheroka, which was in fact "...equal to, if not superior to, comparable Euro-American frontier fortifications of the same era.
[10] About 950 people were killed or captured and sold into slavery in the Caribbean or New England by Colonel Moore and his South Carolina troops.
[12][page needed] The Yamasee and other tribes in South Carolina learned from the Tuscarora War that colonial settlers were heavily invested in the slave trade of Native Americans.
The most valuable role of Native Americans also shifted during this time from slave to ally because of the ongoing power struggle between the French and English to control North America.