The 13th Roanoke Island American Indian Festival and Powwow is scheduled for 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Manteo High School Athletic Complex.
The grand entry will take place at noon both days. Organizers recommend attendees bring their own chairs and blankets for seating.
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The Algonquian Indians of North Carolina Inc., a nonprofit made up of people genealogically descended from the original historic Roanoke-Hatteras, or Croatan, Indians of Dare County, and Mattamuskeet Indians of Hyde County, are presenting the festival and powwow.
The Pea Island Preservation Society Inc. will have a booth at the event to share information about the society and those who worked at the historic Pea Island lifesaving station with American Indian ties.
The society’s goal is to make the story of Keeper Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island lifesavers broadly known. Etheridge, who was once enslaved on Roanoke Island, became the nation’s first African American keeper in the U.S. Life-Saving Service in January 1880 when he took command of the Pea Island lifesaving station, known as the only all-Black lifesaving station in Life-Saving Service history, according to information provided by board member Joan Collins, an occasional Coastal Review contributor.
Many of the non-European residents on the Outer Banks were a mixture of African, European, and American Indian residents. This included many members of the historic Pea Island lifesaving lifesaving station, a facility that included men like the Etheridge who was enslaved and others who were the descendants of enslaved people and people with known American Indian ties.
The festival and powwow connect the historic Pea Island lifesaving station to the Algonquin speaking tribes of the North Carolina coast through family.
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The society’s president, Darrell Collins, and board members Joan Collins and Frank Hester, are cousins of Marilyn Berry Morrison, chief of the Roanoke-Hatteras Indians and chair of the Algonquian Indians of North Carolina.
They are descended from people who served at the Pea Island lifesaving station and numerous other U.S. Coast Guard locations. Hester is part of the remarkable record of 400 combined years of service the Berry family holds.
This record includes Joseph Hall Berry, the great-grandfather of Chief Morrison, Darrell Collins, Joan Collins, and Hester, a record that includes 21 members of the Berry family who have served in the U.S. Life-Saving Service and U.S. Coast Guard.
Their great-grandfather, Berry, served at the historic Pea Island station, initially as a “temporary surfman” under Keeper Etheridge before enlisting as a surfman in the Life-Saving Service, the predecessor of the Coast Guard, in February 1902. Surfman Berry served at the Pea Island station for 15 years before retiring from the Coast Guard in December 1917.
