 With a population of nearly 6,000 at the time of first European contact, the native inhabitants, the Catawba were primarily agriculturalists.Hernando de Soto passed through the area in the 1540s in his search for gold.Several decades later Juan Pardo recorded his observation of a predominant Native American tribe, later confirmed to be the Catawba, in the vicinity of present-day Fort Mill, east of the Catawba River.