According to Wolfram, et al, Cheraw language, from the Eastern Siouan language family, was the earliest language spoken in and around present-day Robeson County. It is also noted that the Lumbee were probably familiar with all three language families present in the Carolinas (Eastern Siouan, Algonquian, and Iroquoian), and that they "emerged as a conglomerate group from a multilingual ancestral language situation" (Fine in the World: Lumbee Language in Time and Place, Wolfram et al).

The first English settlements were located along the Atlantic coast in the area of Virginia and North Carolina. Therefore, those tribes inhabiting those areas would be the first to lose their native language. As a result, rapid transition from their native language to English would have been only natural for the Lumbee tribe. In order to communicate with the settlers, the Lumbee were forced to abandon their language in favor of English for trade purposes.

In 1936, D'Arcy McNickle, from the United States Office of Indian Affairs came to Robeson County to collect affidavits from Lumbee people registering as Indian under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. McNickle stated, "…there are reasons for believing that until comparatively recently some remnant of language still persisted among these people". Reverend Dawley Maynor gave one example of a surviving phrase: epta tewa newasin, which roughly translates to "Jesus I love you". Rev. Maynor was born in 1902, and learned the phrase from his great-grandmother Susan Dial.

The following is a quote by Hugh Brayboy in his application for registration as Indian under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934:

My grandmother [Clarissa Chavis] did say that when the white men came here, they prevailed on the Indians to throw away their language and take up theirs so that they could understand them when they traded. My grandmother said that she heard her father talk the Indian language and often my grandmother would have to go and do the trading because her father wouldn't know whether the traders were saying fifty or seventy-five cents.

In another application for registration as Indian, Duncan L. Locklear noted that:

The language which the old Indians spoke was unlike any language used by the white people. The white people made fun of their speech and said it sounded like the sound of hoot owls and screech owls and they shamed them into giving up their native speech and adopting that of the white people.

When speaking of his grandparents, Randall and Ruth Locklear, in his application for registration, George Locklear said the following:

…he [Randall] claimed to be a full blood Indian and I can remember him speaking some Indian language, I don't know which one and singing Indian songs. None of us understood the Indian words he used but he would tell us what they meant. … Ruth could understand Indian language.

 

Smithsonian Files
Indian Man, “Tribe: Croatan”,
By Gill, 1911

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