Nonprofit seeks to honor the legacy of Indigenous communities in North Carolina

Wearing a bright pink sweater and traditional green beaded accessories, Beverly A. Scarlett holds a ceremonial feather bundle while seated near an Indigenous burial mound in HIllsborough, N.C. The sacred site is part of her family's ancestral property, where she works to preserve and document Native American cultural heritage through the Community of Indigenous Memories initiative. Behind her, the winter woods and exposed rock formations mark the burial ground's historic landscape.

It was 2007, and Beverly Scarlett was hiking in the woods with a member of the Trading Path Association. Their goal was to find graves of Indigenous people who had travelled on The Great Trading Path, which travels from Petersburg, Va. all the way to Augusta, Ga. The two stumbled upon a pile of stones leveled at Scarlett’s height, about 5 feet 7.5 inches tall.

“I asked, 'What is this?'” Scarlett said. “I was told it was a farmer’s rock pile. I knew that couldn’t be the case, because we grew up farming right here on the land in this area, and it takes a lot of time to construct something with permanence that takes time away from your farm work.”

Scarlett said that she knew she needed to do something when she saw that the stone pile was her height. While it took time to research and organize, her discovery in the woods would act as a catalyst for Indigenous Memories, a nonprofit organization aiming to honor, preserve and teach the lives of numerous Indigenous, Maroon, Slave and Free People of Color who occupied land in Orange County, N.C.

Since 2020, Indigenous Memories has accumulated two sacred burial grounds. One is Indigenous burial mounds that date back before European contact. Indigenous Memories also owns an enslaved cemetery which was a part of the Hardscrabble Plantation.

“Most of what we do revolves around telling the history from an Indigenous and People of Color point of view through the touch points of those two burial grounds,” Executive Director Annie Newton said.

Indigenous Memories is currently working on multiple projects for awareness and adequate preservation of Indigenous heritage.

Emma Denman

In Hillsborough, N.C., Beverly A. Scarlett stands before a centuries-old trail tree, traditionally modified by Indigenous peoples to mark paths to water sources. Holding books Scarlett wrote documenting local Indigenous histories, Founder of Indigenous Memories works to preserve both her family's generational land — home to several Native American burial mounds — and the cultural heritage of the area's original inhabitants. The trail tree's distinctive bend, visible in the sycamore's pale bark, serves as a living marker of Indigenous presence on this historic landscape.

In conjunction with N.C. State University, the organization is working to test soil at the Hardscrabble Plantation to see how many people are buried, what they ate, how they died and types of diseases they may have endured.

“[Testing] is going to give us a lot of information on what slavery looked like in North Carolina based on this one plantation,” Newton said.

Along with the genetic testing, Indigenous Memories recently received a grant from the state of North Carolina with the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources as a part of the America 250 NC project. This project urges Americans to remember the past and celebrate the present in commemoration of 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Finally, Indigenous Memories has provided an outlet for Scarlett to continue to research and disprove the theory of “farmer’s piles,” and to preserve the historical sites.

The stone piles had been discovered around the country, including around the Hillsborough area, but had been assumed to be the creation of farmers.

“They’re plowing their fields, and they find a rock, and they just throw it in a pile,” Newton said.

However, connections began to be made between the different mounds.

“They’re very intentional,” Newton said. “They clearly are stacked in almost a methodical way.”

Scarlett had done research on mounds out West, which mostly ended up being dirt mounds or urban mounds. However, upon finding the journal, "The Travels of Richard Traunter," Scarlett found her answers.

Trauntertravelled along the Petersburg path as he came looking for silver in the Carolinas. Specifically, he wrote on the area near Scarlett’s home being the agriculture site of the Eno people. Traunter understood from natives at the time that the mounds lining the path were in fact ceremonial or burial sites.

Currently, the organization is in the process of documenting the area where Scarlett lives. Along with N.C. State, testing these mounds would help to prove that there are people buried in them. This would provide a clearer picture of Indigenous history and culture, as well as what needs to be preserved.

Yolanda Scarlett is Beverly Scarlett’s sister and the administrative guide to Indigenous Memories. She works to make sure that the organization remains nonprofit.

“We are not an entity to make money,” Yolanda Scarlett said.

She called the organization Beverly Scarlett’s “brainchild” and said that education and preservation were the main goals.

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Beverly Scarlett continues to work toward recognizing the depth of Indigenous culture in North Carolina. She said she has two inspirations in mind when working with the organization.

“My greatest desire is to, number one, honor my Indigenous great grandmother, Sally Ray Harris, who lived and walked this land here in North Carolina — as well as Mecklenburg County, Virginia — to walk back and forth between the states to keep her family alive and to not be run off her homeland or killed, but for her I wouldn’t be here, that’s thing number one,” Scarlett said. “Thing number two is to make sure that I constantly do everything I can to preserve and maintain my indigenous culture as well as my Black culture.”

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