E: This is Emma Reed Echols, Route 6, Box 26A, Rock Hill, South
 Carolina. I am recording the oral history of the Catawba
 Indians, November 5, 1985. Your name is John S. Simpson and this
 is Route 3, Rock Hill. Now how hold are you Mr. Simpson?

S: Eighty-one.

E: So, you have a lot of memories of the Catawba Indians. Tell me
 about when your father and mother used to bring you out here in
 the summer.

S: As soon as school was out he built this cabin down there on what
 we called Lilly River. It is the forty-acre island down there.
 We would come down here and spend the summer fishing and running
 up and down the river. Then, when the flood came, it washed that
 island just as clean as this floor. There was not a tree left on
 that island. I found some of the Spanish arrowheads that my
 daddy has in his collection where the road had washed up.
 This cabin we had was on a high hill. That hill must be seventy-
 five to eighty feet above the river. That water came up under
 the big porch. It must have been twenty or thirty feet wide; the
 length of the whole cabin, out over the hill like that.

E: What kind of things did you find when the water finally went
 down?

S: Well, we found a lot of shards of pottery and a good many
 arrowheads. I found some of the finest spear points my daddy has
 in his collection.

E: What destruction did you see on the river? Did you see houses,
 or cotton, or anything going down?

S: I saw houses go down, cotton go down, big oil tanks go down,
 everything go down.

E: What about loss of life?

S: Around here there was no loss of life, that I know of. Now maybe
 there has been some; it seems like I have heard that up in North
 Carolina there might have been some loss of life. But, as far as
 I am concerned, I have never heard of any.

E: Did the waters affect any of the places the Indians lived?

S: Not over here, when they were on the reservation. I do not think
 it affected them.

E: I have heard and have seen pictures after the bridge was washed
 away, did you see that destruction around the bridge?

S: I saw the bridge wash away.

E: That was a huge bridge between here and Charlotte.



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