still subject to attack by the Iroquois, they finally—between 1726 and 1739—became incorporated with the Catawba ... They are mentioned as with the Catawba but speaking their own distinct dialect as late as 1743 (Adair). The last notice of them in 1768, when their remnant, reduced by war and disease to 50 or 60, were still living with the Catawba. The Catawba are a federally recognized tribe. The McPherson Report does not explain how or when the remaining four or five dozen Cheraw identified in 1768 separated from the Catawba and became the ancestors of the Lumbee. Siouan descent After repeated rejections under the Croatan, Cherokee and Cheraw labels, the proto Lumbee petitioned the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1924 for recognition as "Siouan" Indians. This refers to Siouan language-speaking groups, not the Sioux, an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. This petition was rejected largely on the grounds that Siouan was a language, not a tribe. Moreover, there was no record of the Lumbee or their ancestors having ever spoken the Siouan or any other Indian language. Keyauwee descent In 1933, John Swanton wrote that the Siouan-speaking Keyauwee and Cheraw of the Carolina Piedmont were the most likely Indian ancestors of the people known from 1885 to 1912 as Croatan Indians and later as the Indians of Robeson County. He suggested that surviving descendants of the Waccamaw and the Woccon likely lived in the central coastal region of North Carolina. In the 21st century, these tribes are extinct as groups, except for a small band of Waccamaw that live on Lake Waccamaw and have been recognized by the state. Swanton traced the migration of Southeast tribes. In addition to the Keyauwee, Cheraw, Bear River, Waccamaw, and Woccon already mentioned, he noted that the Eno and Waxhaw migrated from Piedmont South Carolina northeast to the north-central part of North Carolina, then back south again to a point on the Pee Dee River just south of the border of the two Carolinas. According to Blu, by the 1770s, remnant Indians from the once distinct tribal communities of the Cheraw, Keyauwee, Hatteras, Waxhaw, Sugaree, Eno and Shakori gathered along the Lumbee River, near the border that now divides North and South Carolina. Some of these Indians moved further southward to join with the few surviving Catawba, but the majority settled near the pines, web of wetlands, and river that bear