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Indian Settlement Saved With Land Trust Purchase - HISTORY

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Author Topic: Indian Settlement Saved With Land Trust Purchase - HISTORY  (Read 1414 times)
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Bianca
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« on: October 22, 2008, 11:52:44 am »










The English Colonize South Carolina, 1670-1700



So it was with great expectation that three English ships¾the Albemarle, the Port Royal, and the Carolina¾set sail from England in 1669 to found a new settlement along the southern coast of South Carolina. Assailed by storms and stopping in Barbados to take on additional colonists and replace battered ships, the immigrants’ vessels eventually arrived and dropped anchor off the coast of South Carolina on March 15, 1670. Bypassing the Port Royal Sound area where they had originally intended to establish their colony, their initial settlement was established instead at Albemarle Point on the western side of the Ashley River. Ever fearful of attack, the colonists immediately fortified their new settlement (Chevis 1897; Sirmans 1966; South 1969, 1989); a precaution that later proved quite prudent as three Spanish ships and 14 pirogues of Indians under the command of Juan Menéndez Marquéz sailed to attack the colony just a few months later in August 1670, but were forced to withdraw because of bad weather (Crane 1929:10; Wright 1971:53). This would not be the last attempt by the Spanish to forcibly evict the English from South Carolina (Wright 1971).

Although the first few years in Charles Town were arduous for the early colony’s inhabitants, the community quickly prospered and grew as a important seaport. The nearby forests yielded rich timber and naval stores such as pitch and tar for the shipping industry. Wealthy colonists, many of them Barbadians, employed African and Indian slaves on their extensive plantations to grow indigo, cattle, tobacco and rice for export. Those involved in the lucrative fur and slave trades prospered. This general prosperity did not extend to the coffers of the Lord Proprietors, however, who profited little from the Carolinas, in large part due to their own poor management, indifference, and recurring disputes between the colonists and the proprietors’ appointed governors (Ferris 1968:122).

As the English in Carolina grew in prosperity, Spanish fortunes and those of their Indian allies rapidly declined. With supplies of guns and ammunition now much closer at hand, slave raids by the Chichimeco continued unabated as did the gradual retreat of Spanish missions to the south. By 1675, the province of Mocama was settled mainly by non-christian Yamassee while the christianized population of the Guale and Mocama had been reduced to a total of only 326 individuals (Worth 1995:28). In that same year two Yamassee towns¾San Simón and Ocotonico¾were established on St. Simon’s Island between the missions of San Buenaventura de Guadalquini and Santo Domingo de Asajo. Sixty-one years later in 1736 the old abandoned fields of San Simón would be chosen by Georgia’s founding governor, James Edward Oglethorpe, as the spot to build the military post, Fort Frederica, to protect his new colony from Spanish attack; but it was an earlier attack in 1680 by England’s Indian allies that ultimately led to San Simón being vacant when the English arrived on St. Simons Island. It was in late April of that year that an English-led party of some 300 Indians composed of Chichimeco, Uchise, and Chiluque attacked the Spanish missions once again, preying first upon the small Yamassee (“Colones”) town of San Simón before attacking the mission at Santa Catalina de Guale located on St. Catherines Island. Although only a few Yamassee and Guale were killed in the 1680 attack, it was enough to convince many of the former inhabitants to move elsewhere yet again. Only a few of the Yamassee could be persuaded to return to their villages and fields at San Simón, and the village of Santa Catalina de Guale, which had been burned to the ground, was completely abandoned (Thomas 1988:15; Worth 1995:32). A census taken by the Spaniards the following year showed that the 40 Yamassee that had occupied San Simón in 1675 was now reduced to a mere 17 individuals and that Guale and Mocama had been effectively reduced to five mission towns with a few outlying settlements (Worth 1995:34). Had it not been for a recent souring of relationships between the British and the Chichimeco, the Spanish missions would probably have suffered more at the hands of their recent assailants. As it was, the Spanish missions gained a short reprieve as the Carolinians become fed up with the Chichimeco/Westo for their repeated attacks on other Indians that had allied themselves to the British, particularly the Cusabo, and decided their elimination was the best solution to the problem. Joined by a band of Shawnee also known as the Savannah Indians, the Carolinians and their Shawnee allies succeeded in driving the Westo from the middle Savannah River region, with the Westo survivors seeking refuge among the Yuchi further up the river (Swanton 1952:99, 103-104).

With the conclusion of the Westo War in 1681, the path was now open for the English to extend their influence westward by establishing trading relations with the Cherokee and the Creeks, thereby adding to the rancor of the Spanish who wished to keep the British out (Hann 1988:188-189). Large numbers of the Lower Creeks (Apalachicola) living along the Chattahoochee River began to relocate to the Fall Line region near the Ocmulgee and Oconee Rivers to take advantage of closer trade opportunities with the Charles Town colonists, and by the early 1690s many had settled near what is now Macon, Georgia and along the lower Savannah River (Worth 2000:279). The Charles Town traders welcomed the arrival of the Creek, who, according to one official report consumed a “great quantity of English Goods” (Colonial Office Papers 5:1264, cited in Crane 1929:37).

In the year prior to the conclusion of the Westo War, the prospering English community at Albemarle Point (Old Charles Town), now boasting a population of some 1200 people, moved across the river to the more defensible neck of land between the Ashley and Cooper rivers, where the new capitol of Charles Town had been laid out following a square grid. Persecution in Europe and promises of religious freedom in Carolina also led to the influx of additional settlers into South Carolina. Among these were French Huguenots who began arriving in Charles Town in 1680. In 1683, a vanguard of 30 Scottish Presbyterians led by Henry Erskine founded Stewarts Town near Port Royal, South Carolina, and prepared for the coming of another nearly 150 Scots who would arrive the following year (Wright 1971:57). In the eyes of the Spanish, the establishment of Stuart’s Town clearly violated their territorial claims as established by the Treaty of Madrid signed with England in 1670.

But this affront paled in comparison with an attack that was carried out in early spring of the same year by a fleet of English and French pirates led by Monsieur de Grammont. Denied his original goal of plundering St. Augustine in April of 1683, Grammont and his pirate fleet turned northward to pillage the missions along Georgia’s coastal island (Worth 1995:36). Faced with the threat of future buccaneer raids, nearly all the Yamassee abandoned the Spanish mission towns they had settled less than two decades before, cutting the Indian populations of Guale and Mocama in half. Among the few mission towns that remained occupied in Georgia following the Grammont raid were the Yamassee, Guale and Mocama villages of San Simón, Santo Domingo de Asajo and San Buenaventura de Guadalquini on St. Simons Island, the Guale mission of San Joseph de Sapala on Sapelo Island, and the Guale mission of San Phelipe on the Isle de San Pedro (Cumberland Island). Interestingly, a map prepared by Alonso Solana in documenting the state of the mission system shortly after the Grammont raid shows a “Pueblo de Ynfieles” on Hilton Head Island, north of the Savannah River. It has been pointed out that this “Town of Pagans” was probably the new residence of the Yamassee, after having fled northward from the Spanish missions hoping to establish peaceful relations with the English (Worth 1995:37). The Spanish mission population that remained following the 1683 attack was now spread too thin to defend against the possibility of future sea rover raids, so another consolidation and relocation of missions toward St. Augustine was ordered once more. Within the next two years, during which additional pirate attacks befell the Spanish missions including those on St. Simons Island (Worth 1995:40-42), all the coastal islands in Georgia were abandoned in favor of missions clustered on Amelia Island and near the mouth of the St. Johns River.

Meanwhile, the Scots led by Lord Cardross (Henry Erskine) had settled Stuart’s Town on Santa Elena Island near the mouth of the Edisto River where they quickly made alliances with the Yamassee who had recently settled on St. Helena Island and Hilton Head Island under the leadership of Chief Altamaha (Crane 1929:25). Eager to gain a share of the lucrative Indian slave trade, Lord Cardross began to arm the Yamassee and encouraged them to make war as a means of taking captives (Crane 1929:28-29). Provided with 30 shotguns and cutlasses, approximately 50 Yamassee set out in February of 1685 on a slave-raid across Georgia and northern Florida laying waste to the mission at Santa Catalina de Afuyca, killing some 50 Timucuans and taking a score of prisoners back to Carolina for sale as slaves (Crane 1929:31; Worth 1995:45). The Yamassee also began to filter southward occupying the islands that had been recently abandoned by the Spanish including Sapelo and St. Catherines Island. The Spanish Governor in St. Augustine could tolerate the intercessions of the English and their new Yamassee allies no longer. Consequently, in August of 1686, the Spanish and their Indian allies set sail in three small ships to attack Stuart’s Town. Finding the settlement poorly defended, the Spanish burned the town, then pressed northward after the fleeing English colonists, sacking outlying English plantations along the way. The Spanish invasion was soon thwarted, however, when the arrival of a hurricane and the loss of their flagship and another vessel forced them to abandon their invasion of south Carolina (Crane 1929:31; Worth 1995:46).

Reports of the Spanish attack on Stuart’s Town soon reached Charleston where the Carolina colonists immediately prepared to retaliate with an attack on St. Augustine. The foray was canceled, however, when the newly arrived Governor Colleton, forbade the counterattack in the belief that a more peaceful coexistence between the Spanish and English colonists would better benefit the Carolina colony. In the decade that followed, a period of latent hostility developed between the two rival nations as they temporarily pursued the mutual goal of thwarting King Louis XIV’s expansionist goals for France. Frictions still persisted, however, between the English and Spanish colonists. African slaves that had been escaping from Carolina since the mid-1680s were promised sanctuary in Spanish Florida if they agreed to convert to Catholicism (Deagan and MacMahon 1995), while the English and their Indian allies continued to capture Spanish Indians for sale as slaves in the Carolinas and abroad. Nonetheless, hostilities remained relatively subdued until the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 threw Europe into political turmoil and the major powers confronted one another in the second of a series of lengthy wars that would be fought simultaneously in the American colonies and in Europe over a period of some seventy-odd years beginning in 1689 (Table 3). In the Southeast, this period of successive wars was fought with native tribes at the forefront of the conflict. In fact, in many cases, Indian parties formed the majority of the participants in the conflicts that were fought between the hostile nations.

This and other transgressions against the Indians, sparked the Yamassee War which ultimately had such disastrous consequences for those who chose to bear arms against the English colonists. Before they were crushed, the Yamassee and their other Indian allies (Creeks, etc.) killed hundreds of Carolinians before the English militia and their Indian allies (Cherokee, Cusabo, etc.) crushed the insurrection by massacring and capturing thousands of Yamassee, Congaree, Santee, Sewee, Wateree, Apalachee and others (Swanton 1952:91-104). The vanquished who were not killed or captured and sold into slavery either surrendered and pledged future loyalty to the English or sought protection by fleeing to western Georgia and Alabama and to what little remained of Spanish controlled Florida. The Yamassee were among those who chose the last option, and some 500 are said to have settled near St. Augustine in 1716 (Bushnell 1994:195).

The Yamassee War and the routing of the Yamassee, Apalachee, Congaree, and other native groups that had previously occupied eastern Georgia and South Carolina prior to 1716 now left the English colony’s Indian trade disrupted and their southwestern frontier deserted with no Indian allies to act as a buffer between them and their not so distant European adversaries, the French in Alabama and the Spanish in Florida. In the geopolitical vacuum that was thus created, the confederation of native groups that made up the Upper and Lower Creek towns that occupied the Alabama and Chattahoochee River drainages now found themselves being courted on all sides by the English, French, and Spanish as the European powers attempted to bring the various remaining Indian tribes in the region under their sphere of influence. English attempts to draw the dispelled Indian groups, including Creek and Yamassee, back toward South Carolina following the Yamassee war were largely unsuccessful, although a small band of Chickasaws did relocate near Savannah Town in 1723. At the same time, the English went about extending and securing their boundaries as best they could by constructing a number of outposts or small forts including, among others, Fort Moore in 1717 at Savannah Town on the bluff overlooking the Savannah River (Crane 1929:187-188) and Fort Congaree in 1718 at the confluence of Congaree Creek and the Congaree River¾where the trading path to the Cherokee via Ninety Six diverged from the path leading to the Catawba (Crane 1929:188; Steen and Braley 1994:27).

The Yamassee War had another unforeseen consequence for the Lord Proprietors of South Carolina: widespread dissention among the colonists against proprietory rule. During the Indian uprising of 1715-1716 and also as a result of continuing postwar raids by the Yamassee and hostile Creeks, many South Carolinians viewed the Lord Proprietors as unresponsive to the dangers faced by the colonists directly at the hands of their Indian attackers and indirectly by the French, who were commonly perceived as the instigators of the Indian insurrection. This feeling was amplified among the colonists when the French began to make inroads on their western frontier with the establishment of Fort Toulouse in central Alabama in 1717. Lack of decisive action on the part of the Lord Proprietors to counter the perceived “encroachments” of the French came to a head during the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718-1720). Again, political developments in Europe led to conflict in the New World; this time the quadruple alliance of Austria, England, France, and Holland opposed the aspirations of King Philip V of Spain in Italy. In the short-term conflict during which France found itself at war with Spain, the French attempted to extend their influence from Mobile eastward by taking Pensacola. The Spanish garrison at Pensacola surrendered to the French on May 15, 1719, and were put aboard two vessels bound for Cuba. They were met on the way by a Spanish fleet enroute to attack Charles Town, but learning of the recent capture of Pensacola by the French, changed course to recapture Pensacola instead, thereby saving the English colony from a seaward assault. Although the Spanish attack on Charles Town never materialized, news of Spanish plans to attack Charles Town reached the Carolinians, who brought the matter to the proprietary government. When their requests for better defenses were largely ignored (Crane 1929:217), a bloodless insurrection ensued and anti-proprietary leaders named James Moore as governor of South Carolina in the name of the King. After the colonists’ list of grievances were presented to the government in London, the Lord Proprietors were unable to overcome the political opposition that was brought against them. On August 11, 1720, the government of South Carolina was provisionally placed in the hands of the Crown (Crane 1929:220). And, although they continued to hold title to their Carolina estates for another nine years, the Lord Proprietors no longer held any effective power in the administration of the colony. In 1729, when seven of the eight proprietors with interests in the colony were finally bought out by the crown, South Carolina was formally established as a Royal Colony (Crane 1929:290).

While the Carolinians worked toward strengthening their colony’s military preparedness following the Yamassee War, the Spanish did likewise. In their recruitment of refugee Indian groups, the Spanish were successful in getting some of the displaced Apalachee to relocate near the presidio of San Marcos, established at present day St. Marks, Florida in 1718 to help counter French ambitions in western Florida (Crane 1929:258; Hann 1988:313). The Spanish attempts to lure other native groups, particularly the Lower Creeks (called the “Apalachicola” by the Spaniards), to also resettle in Florida were much less successful, however, as the Lower and the Upper Creeks saw greater advantages in taking a relatively neutral position between the three rival European colonies in order to reap the economic benefits of lavish gifts and offers of favorable trading terms by the competing English, French and Spanish envoys. With their former English trade links in disarray, the “Grand Chief” of the Alabama (one of the four principal divisions of the Upper Creeks, the others being the Abihka, the Tallapoosa and the Okfuskee) invited the French colonists at Mobile, which had been founded as a means of checking British influence among the western Indian tribes at the onset of Queen Anne’s War, to establish a trading post (Fort Toulouse) at the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers. This they did under the command of lieutenant La Tour on July of 1717 (Crane 1929:256). Only a month later, however, English emissaries arrived in the region and began winning over the friendship of the neighboring Abikha and Tallapoosa, in large part due to the failure of the French to present adequate gifts (Crane 1929:257-258). Meanwhile, the Spanish had impressed a congregation of Apalachee and Lower Creek headmen, particularly Seepeycoffee, the son of the Coweta chief, Brims, at a meeting held at St. Augustine (Crane 1929:258). They returned to their villages with a dozen Spanish soldiers to pick a site for establishing a Spanish post among the Lower Creeks, only to find that “Emperor” Brims and others of the Lower Creek towns had come to friendly terms with the recently arrived English traders, and were unwilling to commit to a strictly Spanish alliance despite heated debate and fractional dissidence among those Lower Creek members who favored committing their allegiance to the Spanish (Crane 1929:258).

Although they were referred to as the “Creek Indians” by the English, the use of this singular term greatly glossed over what was actually an amalgam of fairly autonomous Muskogean speaking peoples who politically and ethnically distinguished themselves from one another on the basis of the talwa (“town”) they belonged to (Paredes and Plante 1975; Waselkov and Smith 2000; Worth 2000). As the crises that affected the Creek Indians grew during the late 17th and early 18th century, the loosely aligned towns sometimes acted together in dealing with the competing European powers, but at other times they conducted their affairs quite independent of one another. In their various dealings with the Europeans, the Creek seem to have made little secret of the fact that obtaining European trade goods and ammunition were among their primary purposes in establishing political alliances (Hann 1988:312; Bushnell 1994), and in this regard the English traders soon proved most able to provide the requisite supplies. English relations with the Creeks were complicated, however, by the continued state of hostilities that existed between the Creeks and the Cherokee following the Yamassee War.

The Cherokees had fought on the side of the British against the Creeks during the Yamassee War, and the Creeks and the Cherokees remained bitter foes toward one another even after both groups has established relatively peaceful relations with the British. Although some English colonists welcomed the rivalry that existed between the Creek and Cherokee as a means of preventing their uniting together to form another Indian uprising against the colonists, ultimately, the English viewed the Creek and Cherokee rivalry as a threat to English interests and tried to establish peace between them, but were unable to get representatives of the Upper and Lower Creeks to smoke the peace pipe with the Cherokee until January 1727 (Crane 1929:269-270). Some factions of the Upper and Lower Creeks remained at odds with the English, however, particularly those who were being courted by the French operating out of Mobile and Fort Toulouse.

During the time the English colonists were trying to end the hostilities between the Cherokee and the Creek, English slave traders were pursuing friendly relations among the Chickasaw and Choctaw, who were also hostile toward one another. English overtures among the Chickasaw were more successful, which led to Chickasaw attacks on the Yazoo, Koroa, Choctaw, and other French allies living along the lower Mississippi (Swanton 1946:117). In return, the French were able to induce their Choctaw allies to wreak revenge on the Chickasaw. In a brutal attack that was launched in early 1723, the Choctaw destroyed the largest Chickasaw town and reportedly killed some 400 Chickasaws (Crane 1929:273). Fleeing the onslaught of their Choctaw attackers, small groups of Chickasaw refugees found asylum among the Creek and Cherokee. One small body of Chickasaw migrated to the banks of the Savannah River near Fort Moore where they subsequently assisted the South Carolinians in their clashes with the Yamassee (Crane 1929:190; Milling 1969:188). The western Chickasaw towns soon made peace with the French, however, and stayed in northern Mississippi, where they remained an important objective of South Carolina’s trade entrepreneurs despite the great distance and attempts by the French to prevent English influences.

England’s worries regarding European competition in the Southeast during the early 18th century had become greatly focused on France’s continuous efforts to extend its influence eastward from the Mississippi valley and Mobile, but the continuing threat posed by the Yamassee in Florida also required the attentions of the English colonists. The military outposts that had been constructed along South Carolina’s southern border following the Yamassee War had not been enough to allay the Yamassee raids on English plantations. The English responded by encouraging their Indian allies to strike back at Yamassee towns in Florida (Swanton 1946:210; Bushnell 1994:196; Hann 1988:292). In 1728, the Carolinians decided to bring the conflict directly to the doorsteps of St. Augustine as punishment for sheltering marauding Yamassee. On March 9th of that year, an army of 100 South Carolinians and 100 Indians led by Colonel John Palmer attacked the Yamassee town of Nombre de Dios within view of the Spanish capital. The firing of cannon from Castillo de San Marcos helped persuade the attackers from attempting to take the Spanish town itself, but the Spaniards did little more than watch from the safety of the Castillo de San Marcos as the attacking force burned and looted the Yamassee town. Although Palmer’s three day siege had resulted in the death of only 30 Yamassee and taking of 15 prisoners (Crane 1929:250), it greatly reduced Spanish prestige in the eyes of the interior tribes, particularly among the Lower Creek who now received English overtures with greater favor.

At the dawn of the third decade of the 1700s, the English colonists of South Carolina were enjoying improved relations with the majority of their Indian neighbors, and English trade was once again burgeoning across the frontier. The Cherokee, who had been the most steadfast of South Carolina’s Indian allies, were now among their most important trading partners, and the founding of Ninety Six would be a consequence of that trade.
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