Catawba, North American Indian tribe of Siouan language stock who inhabited the territory around the Catawba River in what are now the U.S. states of North and South Carolina. Their principal village was on the west side of the river in north-central South Carolina. They were known among English colonial traders as Flatheads because, like a number of other tribes of the Southeast, they practiced ritual head flattening on male infants.
Traditional Catawba villages consisted of bark-covered cabins and a temple for public gatherings and religious ceremonies. Each village was governed by a council presided over by a chief. They subsisted principally by farming, harvesting two or more crops of corn (maize) each year and growing several varieties of beans, squash, and gourds. In most Southeast Indian cultures the farming was done by the women, but among the Catawba it was the men who farmed. A plentiful supply of passenger pigeons served as winter food. The Catawba made bowls, baskets, and mats, which they traded to other tribes and Europeans for meat and skins. Fish was also a staple of their diet; they caught sturgeon and herring using weirs, snares, and long poles.
In the 17th century the Catawba numbered about 5,000. As the Spanish, English, and French competed to colonize the Carolinas, the Catawba became virtual satellites of the various colonial factions. Their numbers fell off rapidly; in 1738 approximately half the tribe was wiped out in a smallpox epidemic, and by 1780 there were only an estimated 500 Catawba left. They were allies of the English in the Tuscarora War (1711–13) and in the French and Indian War (1754–63), but they aided the colonists in the American Revolution.
Late 21st-century population estimates indicated more than 2,500 Catawba descendants.