Misplaced Pages

#1998

48-568: In colonial times, Pocotaligo was one of several villages for the Upper Yamasee tribe . As colonial development of Beaufort and the surrounding Lowcountry began to expand, tensions escalated between settlers and several Creek tribes. The colonial government sent a party of six to Pocotaligo to ask for Yamasee assistance in negotiating with the Creeks. However, the Yamasee decided on

96-464: A few historic markers and residences, very little of the community remains today. The western intersection of U.S. Highway 17 with U.S. Highway 21 is located in Pocotaligo. Interstate 95 is located one mile to the west at Point South. Yamasee The Yamasees (also spelled Yamassees , Yemasees or Yemassees ) were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans who lived in

144-697: A force which defeated the Yamasees at Salkechuh (also spelled Saltketchers or Salkehatchie) on the Combahee River . Eventually, Craven was able to drive the Yamasees across the Savannah River back into Spanish Florida . After the war, the Yamasees migrated southwards to the region around St. Augustine and Pensacola , where they formed an alliance with the Spanish colonial administration. These Yamasees continued to inhabit Florida until 1727, when

192-573: A process of ethnogenesis . Scholars have not reached a consensus on how to classify the Guale language. Early claims that the Guale spoke a Muskogean language were questioned by the historian William C. Sturtevant . He has shown that recorded vocabulary, which sources had believed to be Guale, was Muscogee . Historical references note that the Jesuit Brother Domingo Agustín Váez recorded Guale grammar in 1569, but

240-561: A rail depot declined shortly after the Port Royal Railroad was finished in 1870 with Yemassee as its established junction depot with the Charleston and Savannah Railway. The creation of U.S. Highway 17 in the 1930s brought some economic vitality back to the community for a few decades, but the opening on Interstate 95 and the creation of Point South as a travelers' commercial center brought further economic decline. Beyond

288-739: A result of duplicitous colonial mercantile practices. Infuriated by the practices of the colonists, the Yamasees resolved to go to war against them, forming a pan-tribal coalition and initiating a two-year long war by attacking the colonial settlement of Charles Town on April 15, 1715. Bolstered by the large number of Indian tribes they had managed to enlist into their coalition, the Yamasees staged large-scale raids against other colonial settlements in Carolina as well, leading to most colonists abandoning frontier settlements and seeking refuge in Charles Town. South Carolina Governor Charles Craven led

336-629: Is now South Carolina . When the Spanish later established themselves in St. Augustine in Spanish Florida , they also contacted the Guale. They soon tried to bring them into their mission system . The Guale territory became one of the four primary mission provinces of Spanish Florida ; the Timucua , Mocama , and Apalachee Provinces , also named after the resident tribes of the territories, were

384-523: Is partially preserved in works by missionary Domingo Báez. Diego Peña was told in 1716-1717 that the Cherokee of Tuskegee Town also spoke Yamasee. Hann (1992) asserted that Yamasee is related to the Muskogean languages. This was based upon a colonial report that a Yamasee spy within a Hitchiti town could understand Hitichiti and was not detected as a Yamasee. Francis Le Jau stated in 1711 that

432-462: Is possible that the La Tama had spent time in missions and become somewhat Christianized. They may have sought out the similarly missionized Guale. In 1702, when Carolina Governor James Moore led an invasion into Spanish Florida , his men destroyed the few "refugee missions" in Guale. By 1733, the Guale were so few in number that they showed no resistance to James Oglethorpe 's establishment of

480-450: Is probably a loanword , as it seems also to have been absorbed into the Timucua language . Thus, the connection of Yamasee with Muskogean is unsupported. A document in a British colonial archive suggests that the Yamasees originally spoke Cherokee, an Iroquoian language, but had learned another language. For a time they were allied with the Cherokee but are believed to have been a distinct people. In 1715 Col. George Chicken stated that he

528-745: The Civil War , Pocotaligo became an important stop on the Charleston and Savannah Railway , with a depot located about one mile northwest of the settlement. When hostilities began in 1861 and the Federal capture of the Beaufort area in the Battle of Port Royal , control of the railway became an objective in disrupting the Confederate economy. Pocotaligo was the closest depot to Port Royal Island and

SECTION 10

#1732776527002

576-649: The English colony of the Carolina (present day South Carolina ). They established several villages, including Pocotaligo, Tolemato, and Topiqui, in Beaufort County . A 1715 census conducted by Irish colonist John Barnwell counted 1,220 Yamasees living in ten villages near Port Royal . Migration by the Yamasees to Charles Town (in the colony of Carolina ) beginning in 1686 was likely in pursuit of trading opportunities with English colonists, or to escape

624-529: The Savannah phase (1150 to 1300 AD) and the Irene phase (1300 to circa 1600). While the prehistoric ancestors to the Guale shared many characteristics with regional neighbors, they left unique archaeological features that distinguished the "proto-Guale" people from other groups. The prehistoric people were organized into chiefdoms . They built Mississippian -type platform mounds , major earthworks requiring

672-481: The American Southeast. The Yamasees also conducted raids on the Spanish colonial settlement of St. Augustine . Indian captives of the Yamasees were transported to colonial settlements throughout Carolina, where they were sold to white colonists; frequently, many of these captives were then resold to West Indian slave plantations. Many Yamasees soon became indebted to the colonists they traded with, as

720-636: The Catholic Christian Indians of Spanish Florida . Pirate attacks on the Spanish missions in 1680 forced the Yamasees to migrate again. Some moved to Florida. Others returned to the Savannah River lands, which were safer after the Westo had been destroyed. In 1687, some Spaniards attempted to send captive Yamasees to the West Indies as slaves. The tribe revolted against the Spanish missions and their Native allies, and moved into

768-510: The Guale increased their consumption of corn. Bioarcheaologists tested the levels of C4 molecules in the natives' bones to determine the corn intake levels. By comparison, their intake of other foods such as fish, animals, other plants, etc. decreased. These changes were not for the better, as a corn-dominated diet is poor for overall health.   The Guale Indians were forced to work under the Europeans in ways they never had had to before. It

816-506: The La Tama. In Guale Province, some of the Yamasee joined the existing missions, while others settled on the periphery. Between 1675 and 1684, the Westo tribe, supported by English colonists in the colonies of Carolina and Virginia , destroyed all Spanish missions in Georgia . Attacks by English-supported pirates also contributed to the breakup of the missions. In 1680 a group of pirates sacked Mission Santa Catalina de Guale . By 1684

864-630: The Spanish and Indians had abandoned all six missions. The La Tama Yamasee, Guale, and other refugees scattered in the southeast. Some relocated to new missions in Spanish Florida, but most rejected Spanish authority. They felt Spain had been unable to protect them and resented their failure to provide firearms. The Indians of Guale Province moved mostly to the Apalachee or Apalachicola regions. Around or before 1684, one small group of Yamasee-Guale refugees, led by Chief Altamaha, moved north to

912-457: The Spanish mission provinces for their trade in European manufactured goods. Various non-Guale Indians settled in or near the Guale missions during the 17th century. Most were from an Indian province of north-central Georgia called La Tama by the Spanish. In the 1660s the well-armed Westo attacked La Tama and neighboring regions, dispersing the La Tama in several directions. Some migrated to

960-544: The Spanish, choosing to maintain stronger contacts with British colonists instead. The "prince" returned to Charles Town in 1715, right around the period when the Yamasee War broke out, and shortly after his family had been taken captive by Carolinian raiders and sold into slavery. The Yamasee Archeological Project was launched in 1989 to study Yamasee village sites in South Carolina. The project hoped to trace

1008-584: The Spanish. In Charles Town, some Yamasee families looked toward Christian missionaries to educate their children in reading and writing as well as converting them to Christianity. Christian missionaries in Carolina may have had some success in converting the Yamasees and Guale because they had both become familiar with Spanish missionaries and were more open to conversion than other tribes. For decades, Yamasee raiders (frequently equipped with European firearms and working in concert with Carolinian settlers) conducted slave raids against Spanish-allied Indian tribes in

SECTION 20

#1732776527002

1056-608: The Yamasee term "Mico", meaning chief, is also common in Muskogee. After the Yamasees migrated to the Carolinas , they began participating in the Indian slave trade in the American Southeast . They raided other tribes to take captives for sale to European colonists . Captives from other Native American tribes were sold into slavery, with some being transported to West Indian plantations. Their enemies fought back, and slave trading

1104-617: The Yamasee understood Creek . He also noted that many Indians throughout the region used Creek and Shawnee as lingua francas , or common trading languages. In 1716-1717, Diego Peña obtained information that showed that Yamasee and Hitchiti-Mikasuki were considered separate languages. The Yamasee language, while similar to many Muskogean languages, is especially similar to Creek , for they share many words. Many Spanish missionaries in La Florida were dedicated to learning native languages, such as Yamasee, in an effort to communicate for

1152-450: The Yamasees as a multi-ethnic amalgamation of several remnant Indian groups, including the Guale , La Tama , Apalachee , Coweta , and Cussita Creek. Historian Chester B. DePratter describes the Yamasee towns of early South Carolina as consisting of lower towns, consisting mainly of Hitchiti-speaking Indians, and upper towns, consisting mainly of Guale Indians. The Yamasees were one of

1200-448: The Yamasees soon began to transport their captives to Carolina to sell in Charles Town's slave markets. They soon began to conduct raids specifically to take captives and sell them in Carolina. In 1713, Anglican missionaries in South Carolina sponsored the journey of a Yamasees man (whose actual name is unknown, as he was generally referred to as the "prince" or "Prince George") from Charles Town to London . Historians have noted that

1248-478: The alliance between the Yamasee and colonial South Carolina grew stronger in reaction. The "Yamasee" who migrated in 1685 to the Port Royal area were rebuilding the old La Tama chiefdom, but they also included numerous Guale, as well as other Indians of mostly Muskogean stock. The Yamasee lived in South Carolina until they were defeated in the Yamasee War of 1715, after which survivors were widely dispersed and

1296-522: The black supremacist group Nuwaubian Nation associated with Dwight York has also used the name Yamassee Native American Moors of the Creek Nation . Guale Guale was a historic Native American chiefdom of Mississippian culture peoples located along the coast of present-day Georgia and the Sea Islands . Spanish Florida established its Roman Catholic missionary system in

1344-491: The chiefdom in the late 16th century. During the late 17th century and early 18th century, Guale society was shattered by extensive epidemics of new infectious diseases and attacks by other tribes. Some of the surviving remnants migrated to the mission areas of Spanish Florida, while others remained near the Georgia coast. Joining with other survivors, they became known as the Yamasee , an ethnically mixed group that emerged in

1392-556: The coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida . The Yamasees engaged in revolts and wars with other native groups and Europeans living in North America, specifically from Florida to North Carolina. The Yamasees, along with the Guale, are considered from linguistic evidence by many scholars to have been a Muskogean language people. For instance,

1440-566: The combination of a smallpox epidemic and raids by Col. John Palmer (leading fifty Carolinian militiamen and one hundred Indians) eventually led many of the remaining Yamasees to disperse, with some joining the Seminole or Creek . Still others remained near St. Augustine until the Spanish relinquished control of the city to the British. At that time, they took with them around 90 Yamasees to Havana. Steven J. Oatis and other historians describe

1488-425: The documents have not been found. The Guale are believed to have been a Mississippian culture group that had a chiefdom along what is now the Georgia coast in the early period of Spanish exploration. Archaeological studies indicate that the precursors of the historically known Guale lived along the Georgia coast and Sea Islands, from at least 1150 AD . Archaeologists identify the prehistoric Guale cultures as

Pocotaligo, South Carolina - Misplaced Pages Continue

1536-496: The largest slave raiding tribes in the American Southeast during the late 17th century, and have been described as a "militaristic slaving society", having acquired firearms from European colonists. Their use of slave raids to exert dominance over other tribes is partially attributed to the Yamasee aligning with European colonists in order to maintain their own independence. It was typical of Native Americans to take captives during warfare, particularly young women and children, though

1584-535: The lower Chattahoochee River towns of Coweta and Cussita , the Apalachee mission provinces, and the Guale province. The La Tama spoke a dialect of Hitchiti , a Muskogean language , as did several towns in Apalachicola Province . The Guale language may or may not have been related. In 1675 the Spanish first used the term Yamasee to refer to the newcomer refugees. They thought them similar to

1632-520: The motivation of the "prince" to visit London was a form of "religious diplomacy" on the part of the missionaries to further ties between the Yamasee and British colonists. The missionaries hoped that if the "prince" converted to Christianity while in London, it would ensure the Yamasee would become firm allies of the British colonists. Around the period that the "prince" travelled to London, the Yamasees were largely unwilling to be culturally assimilated by

1680-626: The mouth of the Savannah River . That year, a Scottish colony called Stuarts Town was founded in South Carolina on Port Royal Sound near the Savannah River. Stuarts Town survived only about two years, but during that time the Scots residents formed a strong bond with the Yamasee-Guale. In late 1684, armed with Scots firearms, these Indians raided Timucua Province , devastating the mission Santa Catalina de Afuyca . They returned to Stuarts Town with 22 captives, whom they sold as slaves . Over

1728-600: The next two years, word of similar successes of the Stuarts Town-allied Yamasee-Guale carried throughout the region. The population of "Yamasee" Indians near Port Royal Sound grew rapidly. Although the Indians became known collectively as "Yamasee", the Guale continued to be a significant portion of the population. Spanish forces destroyed Stuarts Town. In the old Guale Province, they strongly resisted counterattacks by South Carolina. Nonetheless,

1776-426: The night after the party's proposal to attack the party, killing four of the six men. That event launched the start of the Yamasee War , the most serious challenge to colonial rule in South Carolina's history. Pocotaligo was eventually taken over by settlers, who established a bridge over the creek and allowed the community to be an important stop along the overland route between Charleston and Savannah . Prior to

1824-568: The organized labor of many people, and using highly skilled soil and engineering knowledge. They used the mounds for ceremonial, religious and burial purposes. French explorers under Jean Ribault contacted the Guale, whom they called the Oade after their chief, during their voyage to the Atlantic coast of North America in 1562. The Guale maintained good relations with the ephemeral French settlement known as Charlesfort on Parris Island in what

1872-698: The others. The boundaries of the Spanish Guale Province corresponded to the people's territory along the Atlantic coast and Sea Islands , north of the Altamaha River and south of the Savannah River . It included Ossabaw , St. Catherine's , Sapelo , Tybee , and Wassaw islands, among others. By the mid-17th century, the Spanish had established six Catholic missions in Guale territory, including Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Tolomato and Santa Catalina de Guale . Their largest settlements were probably on St. Catherine's Island. Guale

1920-745: The people disintegrated as a polity. But while they lasted, the Yamasee exhibited multi-ethnic qualities. Their towns were described by European colonists as being Upper Yamasee or Lower Yamasee towns. The Lower Towns were populated mainly by La Tama Indians and included Altamaha (after the chief who lived there), Ocute, and Chechesee (Ichisi). The Guale were the majority in the Upper Towns, although other ethnicities were incorporated as well. Upper Yamasee Towns with mostly Guale populations likely included Pocotaligo, Pocosabo, and Huspah. Other Upper Towns, such as Tulafina, Sadketche (Salkehatchie), and Tomatley, were probably mixed, with Guale, La Tama, and others. It

1968-475: The people's origins and inventory their artifacts. The project located a dozen sites. Pocosabo and Altamaha have since been listed as archeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places . The name "Yamasee" perhaps comes from Muskogee yvmvsē , meaning "tame, quiet"; or perhaps from Catawban yį musí: , literally "people-ancient". Little record remains of the Yamasee language. It

Pocotaligo, South Carolina - Misplaced Pages Continue

2016-419: The purpose of conversion. It also allowed the missionaries to learn about the people's own religion and to find ways to convey Christian ideas to them. There is limited, inconclusive evidence suggesting the Yamasee language was similar to Guale . It is based on three pieces of information: Linguists note that the Spanish documents are not originals and may have been edited at a later date. The name Chiluque

2064-492: The village of Altamaha . In 1570, Spanish explorers established missions in Yamasee territory. The Yamasees were later included in the missions of the Guale province. Starting in 1675, the Yamasees were mentioned regularly on Spanish mission census records of the missionary provinces of Guale (central Georgia coast) and Mocama (present-day southeastern Georgia and northeastern Florida). The Yamasees usually did not convert to Christianity and remained somewhat separated from

2112-482: Was a large cause of the Yamasee War . The Yamasees lived in coastal towns in what are now southeast Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. The Yamasees migrated from Florida to South Carolina in the late 16th century, where they became friendly with European colonists. The Yamasees were joined by members of the Guale , a Mississippian culture chiefdom, and their cultures intertwined. The Hernando de Soto expedition of 1540 traveled into Yamasee territory, including

2160-686: Was a sought-after target for Union troops to disrupt rail service. For a short time in 1862, General Robert E. Lee was assigned to South Carolina to protect the railway, establish defensive units, and prevent Union incursion onto the mainland from the Sea Islands . Periodic raids were attempted by Union forces to attack the railway at Pocotaligo, of which, the most serious one was deflected in October 1862. Pocotaligo fell to General William Tecumseh Sherman in early 1865 shortly after his army's capture of Savannah in Christmas 1864. Pocotaligo's status as

2208-473: Was labor-intensive. Spencer Larsen and Christopher Ruff concluded this based on their analysis of the second moments of area on humerus and femur bones. This is an engineering approach used to show the strength of the bone. They found that there was an increased strength of the bones due to higher repetitive usage, supporting the original statement. Indians throughout the American southeast were drawn to

2256-400: Was the least stable of the four major mission provinces. The first Guale rebellion, often labeled Juanillo 's Revolt, began on October 4, 1597. The Guale rebelled again 1645, nearly shaking off the missions. They kept up a clandestine trade with French privateers , which provided them with alternate sources of goods. After the arrival of Europeans and their intervention in Guale villages,

2304-809: Was told that the Yammasses were the ancient people of the Cherokee. The name of the Yamasees survives in the town of Yemassee, South Carolina , in the Lowcountry close to where the Yamasee War began. It is also used for the title of William Gilmore Simms ' 1835 historical novel The Yemassee: A Romance of Carolina , and by extension, Yemassee , the official literary journal of the University of South Carolina . There are currently self-identified Yamasee descendants in Florida and elsewhere, and

#1998