Priscilla Freeman Jacobs

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Priscilla Freeman Jacobs (born October 27, 1940) is a former chief of the Waccamaw-Siouan tribe, serving from 1986 to early 2005. She grew up in Ricefield, North Carolina, the oldest of Clifton Freeman and Vara Patrick’s four children. Her family worked in logging near Wilmington. When she was nine, she joined a Waccamaw-Siouan delegation to Washington, DC to seek federal recognition from Congress for the tribe; the bill did not pass. Her father became chief in 1941, and she attended many meetings with him, learning how to help her people with jobs and better community infrastructure.

Priscilla was educated in American Indian and local schools, then studied secretarial work at Miller-Mott Business College in Wilmington. After graduating, she worked for her father’s logging business. In 1961 she married Welton Jacobs, and they had two children, Ray Freeman and Welton Jacobs. During the 1960s, Priscilla and her father helped bring back the pan-Indian powwow to unite and recognize Native communities. In 1970 she led the organization of the first modern Waccamaw-Siouan powwow. The event helped revive Waccamaw-Siouan identity after the Indian boarding schools closed. The powwow has been held every October since then.

In 1974, Priscilla helped secure five acres of land from International Paper to create a Waccamaw center; today that land has grown to about thirty acres with a daycare, an office, and a ball field. She became chief after her father’s death in November 1985, and was inaugurated in 1986 at Frontier Fort near Wilmington. She was the first woman to lead the Waccamaw-Siouan.

Her activism helped create the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs, where she served as the first secretary of the board and later as a community developer. Between 1971 and 1973 she represented the Waccamaw-Siouan at the Coalition for Eastern Native Americans, alongside her father. She also participated in the North Carolina Indian Unity Conference and helped form the Waccamaw-Siouan Development Association (WSDA) to improve education, economic development, and culture. She was also a spiritual and community leader, raised in a Christian church; her grandfather Riley T. Freeman was a Bible school teacher. She served as a minister, bookkeeper, and secretary before becoming chief. Priscilla Freeman Jacobs stepped down as chief in 2005.