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Ninety Six National Historic Site	See also In the Footsteps of 'Light-horse' Harry Southeast Chronicles Home
CULTURAL OVERVIEW by Guy prentice (2003)	Link to Images References Cited

 NATIVE AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY AND CULTURE HISTORY

Unfortunately, at the time of this writing there is little in the way of readily available published material that summarizes the current state of archeological knowledge on Native American sites found in the Greenwood County area. Other than some archeological surveys prompted by federal compliance regulations conducted on the Long Cane Division of the Sumter National Forest along Greenwood County’s western border (e.g., Price 1992a, 1992b; Chapman 2000), limited opportunistic reconnaissance surveys characterize the primary extent of Native American archeological investigations conducted within Greenwood County to date. In both cases, the recovery of temporally and culturally diagnostic artifacts have been relatively few, and this has impaired archeologists’ ability to reconstruct the precolumbian cultural history of the area. As a result, cultural chronologies that have been developed on the basis of more extensive archeological work conducted in adjacent areas have been utilized in the following chapter to provide a logical framework for those past Native American cultures that can be expected to occur within the Ninety Six National Historic Site vicinity. The chronological framework employed here has been largely adopted from information obtained from archeological sites occupying the Savannah River drainage to the west and the Saluda/Broad/Congaree River drainage to the north and east. Only future excavations in and around Ninety Six will be able to determine the local suitability of the chronological scheme presented here.

Paleoindian (ca. 9500-8000 b.c. )

The first well-dated evidence of human occupation in the southeastern United States occurs around 9500 b.c. (Anderson 1990a) with the appearance of the earliest documented Americans, who are now referred to as Paleoindians. Paleoindians were the makers of fluted lanceolate projectile points such as Clovis (Early Paleoindian, ca. 9500-9000 b.c.) and later unfluted points such as Beaver Lake, Quad (Middle Paleoindian, ca. 9000-8500 b.c.) and Dalton (Late Paleoindian, ca 8500-8000 b.c.). Although the general consensus is that large lanceolate points (i.e., Clovis) preceded the more waisted or eared forms (i.e., Beaver Lake, Quad) in the region, the temporal range, ordering, and extent of co-occurrence of these forms remains to be worked out (Anderson 1990a:164-166). Dalton points have been dated to roughly 8500-7900 B.C. (Goodyear 1982; Justice 1987:40), transcending the 8000 b.c. date commonly used as the chronological boundary separating the Paleoindian from the succeeding Archaic period. Given the vagaries of radiometric dating methods and for the sake of convenience, Dalton points are assumed, for the purposes of this summary, to date to the Late Paleoindian period (8500-8000 b.c.).

Low human population densities and vast lands and resources allowed Paleoindian peoples to be selective in the areas they frequented and the faunal resources they exploited. It is commonly assumed that Paleoindians were specialized, highly mobile foragers that hunted late Pleistocene fauna such as bison, mastodons, caribou, and mammoths (e.g., Chapman 1985), although direct evidence along these lines is meager in the Southeast (cf. Meltzer and Smith 1986; Anderson 1990a). Most likely, Paleoindians in the Southeast were fairly generalized hunter-gatherers who pursued a wide range of animals including the megafauna that soon became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age (Goodyear et al. 1989). Pleistocene megafauna were primarily migratory animals that could be hunted as they seasonally traveled across the landscape. Ambushing of animals at salt licks, watering holes and river crossings appears to have been practiced (Tankersley 1990:97). By Late Paleoindian times, the megafauna had disappeared, and white-tailed deer had become the prey of choice for these hunter-gatherers.

Current interpretations of the archeological record portray Paleoindian peoples as nomadic, egalitarian bands composed of several nuclear or extended families. Loose social affiliations were probably maintained with other bands (forming larger macrobands) as a means of obtaining mates and exchanging information. Artifacts and sites dating to this period are relatively rare compared to later periods, apparently because of the generally low population densities, and post-depositional processes that have buried or eroded away sites, but also because lithic tool use focused on the utilization of curated, formal tools (Anderson 1990a:180).

At the close of the Pleistocene, the climate became warmer, the glaciers retreated in eastern North America, and sea levels rose.  With the warming climate, deciduous forests spread northward at the expense of the more cold tolerant jack pine and spruce forests (Delcourt and Delcourt 1981; Watts 1983; Whitehead 1973). As the forest compositions changed, fewer and fewer open patches and coniferous forests were available to support the Pleistocene megafauna while the denizens of oak-hickory forests such as deer expanded in numbers across the region. By the beginning of the following Early Holocene period (ca. 8000 b.c.) most of the megafauna and Paleoindian cultures had vanished and Archaic stage peoples had taken their place.

Anderson and his colleagues (Anderson 1990a; Anderson and Joseph 1988; Anderson and Sassaman 1996) note that there are, relatively speaking, concentrations of Paleoindian diagnostics (i.e., Clovis, Clovis-like, and Dalton points) in western South Carolina, but Paleoindian sites in Greenville County are rare. Most Paleoindian sites in South Carolina are located within or directly adjacent to major river valleys during the Early and Middle Paleoindian periods with slightly greater numbers of Late Paleoindian (i.e., Dalton) sites occurring in the inter-riverine zones, suggesting a shift in settlement and resource exploitation as a result of changing environments associated with the onset of the Holocene and the replacement of patchy boreal forests and grasslands with a closed canopy oak-hickory forest.

Archaic (ca. 8000 -1000 b.c.)

The Archaic stage in the Southeast is typically interpreted as a period during which: 1) the environment changed from a mixed forest to a closed canopy hardwood forest habitat, and 2) the population of hunter/gatherer bands grew, and 3) the hunting territories of the bands shrank in size (Watson and Carstens 1982; Caldwell 1958; Fowler 1959; Griffin 1967; Jefferies 1990).  These changes formed the basis for regional specialization in subsistence, resource utilization, and artifact manufacture.

The Archaic stage has generally been dated from ca. 8000 to 1000 B.C. Within the Archaic stage, three substages are generally recognized: Early Archaic (ca. 8000-6000 B.C.), Middle Archaic (ca. 6000-3000 B.C.), and Late Archaic (ca. 3000-1000 B.C.) which are usually identified on the basis of projectile point styles. The changes in different projectile point styles during the Archaic stage are usually interpreted as reflecting increasing numbers of socially distinct groups and changing subsistence modes. Archaic lifeways have generally been thought of as consisting of semi-nomadic bands that occupied separate territories in which they moved seasonally to take advantage of different natural resources as they ripened or became more easily exploitable within a generally woodland environment.

The Early Archaic (ca. 8000-6000 b.c.) in western South Carolina is characterized by changes in lithic technology where fluted lanceolate forms gave way to side and corner notched forms, including Big Sandy/Taylor (ca. 8000-7000 B.C.) and Palmer/Kirk Corner Notched (ca. 7500-7000 B.C.) types (Michie 1996; Sassaman 1996). In addition, the subsistence base was adjusted with a greater focus on plant foods and small game (with white-tail deer being a favorite prey). The Archaic toolkit was modified accordingly to include tools for plant food preparation and processing (House and Ballenger 1976). Research has shown that Early Archaic sites in the region occur in a wide range of microenvironmental zones, and nonlocal lithic raw materials are common in assemblages (Anderson et al. 1979; Goodyear et al. 1979; Hanson et al. 1978; O’Steen 1983; Anderson and Hanson 1988).

Sometime around 7000 b.c., a number of new projectile point styles exhibiting bifurcate stems appeared in the region. These include MacCorkle (ca. 7000-5800 B.C.), St. Albans (ca. 6900-6500 B.C.), Kanawa and LeCroy stemmed types (ca. 6500-5800 B.C.) (Chapman 1985; Justice 1987; Anderson and Joseph 1988:110). Near the traditional 6000 b.c. boundary line drawn between the Early Archaic and Middle Archaic periods, another new suite of projectile point styles arose. These new point styles are characterized by square to slightly contracting stems and include Kirk Stemmed/Serrated (ca. 6300-6000 b.c.), Stanly (ca. 5800-5500 b.c.), and Sykes/White Springs/Benton-like projectile points (ca. 6000-3500 b.c.) that have also been referred to as “MALA” points (Sassaman 1985; Ledbetter 1995:54-55; Sassaman and Anderson 1995:27). “MALA” points are primarily made from thermally altered cherts obtained from the Coastal Plain (Sassaman 1985; Wetmore and Goodyear 1986; Steen and Braley 1994:22) and the extent to which these are found in the Piedmont has yet to be discerned. This is a lithic resource use pattern which deviates dramatically, however, from the predominant use of quartz/quartzite in the manufacture of Morrow Mountain (ca. 5500-3500 b.c.), and later still Guilford Lanceolate (ca. 4500-3500 b.c.) projectile points (Steen and Braley 1994:21), the last of which are commonly found in the South Carolina Piedmont but are much less common in the Coastal Plain (Blanton and Sassaman 1989; Benson 1995:18; Sassaman and Anderson 1995:26).

Corresponding roughly in time with the Hypsithermal (6000-3000 b.c.), the Middle Archaic stage is generally viewed by most archeologists as a period of increased cultural regionalization as a result of growing populations and reduced territorial boundaries. As a result, there was a greater reliance on local raw materials in the manufacture of stone tools, a pattern that is reflected in the South Carolina Piedmont by the contrasting use of crystal quartz and quartzite (more precisely, orthoquartzite) in the manufacture of projectile points and other lithic implements in the Plateau and cherts in the Coastal Plain (Wetmore and Goodyear 1986:20; Blanton and Sassaman 1989; Benson 1995; Sassaman and Anderson 1995). Ground stone implements including atlatl (spearthrower) and axes appear for the first time during this period as do a number of plant processing tools—nutting stones and manos. These, along with the occurrence of storage pits and large quantities of fire-crack rock at some sites suggests there was a greater degree of sedentism and reliance on plant foods compared to previous Early Archaic practices, but a seasonal cycle and frequent movements in search of wild game and plants was still a way of life which has left behind an array of Middle Archaic sites in virtually every environmental setting within South Carolina, a pattern that have been characterized as fluctuating somewhere between short-term specialized extractive sites and longer-term base camps (Coe 1964; House and Ballenger 1976; Elliot 1987). Frequent movement and settlement in a wide array of environmental settings including the inter-riverine hinterlands characterizes the Middle Archaic period in the South Carolina Piedmont.

he Late Archaic (3000-1000 b.c.) was a period of major technological and economic change for South Carolina's native peoples. By the close of this two millennial span, Late Archaic groups over much of the state had, to some extent, adopted the use of pottery, participated in long distance exchange networks to obtain non-local resources, and, although direct evidence is currently lacking in some areas, were probably experimenting with plant husbandry.

Looking to the adjacent upper Savannah River valley (Anderson and Joseph 1988; Anderson 1994; Ledbetter 1995) and lower Broad River valley regions (Steen and Braley 1994; Benson 1995), (where there are better documented archeological records) for patterns of cultural development that one might expect to see replicated in the Ninety Six area, it is evident that Late Archaic lifestyles in northwestern South Carolina, in many respects, were simply a continuation of previous cultural processes. With increasing population levels and concomitantly shrinking territories, Late Archaic peoples experienced reduced residential mobility with riverine and upland base camps occupied for longer periods of time, but still continued a pattern of intraregional movements which accommodated the exploitation of natural resources as they became seasonally available at outlying temporary extractive camps (Sassaman and Anderson 1995; Sassaman et al. 1990).

Projectile point styles continued to change over time, although the exact timing of certain types remains somewhat ambiguous. Large Savannah River Stemmed points that began to appear near the close of the Middle Archaic were probably made throughout the Late Archaic (Sassaman and Anderson 1995:110; House and Ballenger 1976). By the end of the Late Archaic, quartz was no longer the nearly exclusive material of choice in manufacturing stone tools; locally available metavolcanics (e.g., argillite, rhyolite, and slate) now comprised a noticeable portion of the lithic assemblage (Novick 1980). Smaller varieties of Savannah River Stemmed, Ledbetter Stemmed, and Otarre Stemmed (Keel 1976; Sassaman and Anderson 1995) are common projectile point types for the period (3000-1000 b.c.).

Fiber-tempered Stallings and sand-tempered Thom's Creek ceramics are firmly dated to the latter three-quarters (i.e., 2500-1000 b.c.) of the Late Archaic, with a beginning date of 2200 b.c., currently being the best estimate for the introduction of pottery use in the Carolinas (Anderson et al. 1996:31). Their use, however, is largely confined to the Coastal Plain and the major river valleys of the lower Piedmont, with Stallings ceramics centered more toward the Savannah River drainage and Thom's Creek centered more on the Santee and Pee Dee River drainages (Anderson and Joseph 1988:194; Sassaman 1993:Figure 3; Sassaman and Anderson 1995; Anderson [editor] 1996:248-256). Stallings pottery, particularly the plain variety, is assumed to be the earliest pottery to appear in the state, as is the case with all fiber-tempered wares in the Southeast; however, Thom's Creek wares apparently coexist with Stallings wares for a long period of time, with the earliest Thom's Creek varieties dating perhaps as early as 2000 b.c. (Anderson et al. 1996). The terminal date of Thom's Creek wares remains somewhat problematic with many (Anderson et al. 1996; Trinkley et al. 1996) archeologists dating its passing at the traditional endpoint of the Late Archaic (ca. 1000 b.c.), some (e.g., Steen and Braley 1994:20) referring to it as an Early Woodland pottery type, while others call it “transitional Late Archaic-Early Woodland” (Benson 1995:19). Plain, incised, simple stamped, and punctated varieties of both Stallings and Thom's Creek wares occur, with the latter variety of Thom’s Creek ware reported by Rodeffer et al. (1979:331-333) for two sites in Greenwood County.

One of the more interesting practices that appeared during the Late Archaic period in South Carolina was the use of soapstone to make perforated slabs for stone boiling. Soapstone was apparently a highly valued trade item as prehistoric soapstone quarries have only been identified at a limited number of sites in the Piedmont and Fall Line areas of Georgia and South Carolina, and yet soapstone items dating to this time period are found at archeological sites throughout much of South Carolina (Sassaman 1993:53). Trade of perforated soapstone slabs began around 3000 b.c. and persisted in the Piedmont long after improvements in ceramic technology that allowed pots to be placed directly in the fire were adopted among South Carolina’s Coastal Plain inhabitants and diminished their desire for soapstone. This has led Sassaman (1993) to conclude that Piedmont peoples purposely resisted the adoption of ceramic innovations that were occurring on the Coastal Plain in order to preserve their monopoly in the soapstone trade. This may have been part of the impetus for the manufacture and trade of soapstone vessels throughout the Southeast beginning around 2000 b.c. (Sassaman 1993:220) and ending only after the widespread manufacture of serviceable pottery made trade of soapstone bowls simply too hard a sell. Relatedly, a modest traffic of soapstone items into the Long Cane Creek drainage consisting of bowls and perforated slabs and attributed to the Late Archaic period has been documented for the Sumter National Forest (Chapman 2000:22).

Perhaps what would become the most significant change in the lifestyles of some Archaic stage peoples was the adoption of plant horticulture starting sometime near the beginning of the Late Archaic period in some areas of the Southeast. The earliest planted crops included cucurbits (squashes and gourds), sunflower, sumpweed, and chenopod (Crites 1991; Smith 1989; Gremillion 1993). Currently, there is no direct evidence to support the proposition that Late Archaic peoples in the Ninety Six area were horticulturalists; but there is good evidence that peoples in nearby eastern Tennessee were planting gardens using native plant species (Chapman and Shea 1981; Gremillion 1993; Wetmore and Goodyear 1986) and it has been suggested that the adoption of pottery may have been commonly associated with the adoption of plant husbandry. Although the arrival of horticulture signals the beginning of new human/plant relationships in the Southeast, it appears that horticulture did not contribute a significant portion of the diet until well into Woodland times.

Woodland (ca. 1000 b.c.- a.d. 1000)

The Woodland period in South Carolina has also be divided into Early (ca. 1000-500 b.c. ), Middle (ca. 500 b.c.-a.d. 500), and Late (a.d. 500-1000) periods with certain ceramic types and projectile point forms used as general time markers for each of these periods. Overall, this major time period has been characterized by the establishment of semi-permanent or permanent villages occupied much if not all of the year, widespread adoption of pottery use, construction of mounds, and elaboration of an incipient system of horticulture (Struever and Vickery 1973; Smith 1986, 1989).

Again, with respect to the Woodland period, the Ninety Six area lies between better known cultural regions of South Carolina—the South Carolina Midlands, the Upper Savannah River Valley, and the South Carolina upper Piedmont. Near the South Carolina Fall Line, Woodland period sites have been identified at numerous places within the Congaree River drainage (Anderson 1975; Steen and Braley 1994). The Woodland period chronology (Badin, Yadkin, Uwharrie) of ceramic and lithic types which Coe (1964) developed for the Woodland cultures of the North Carolina Piedmont has generally been viewed as applicable to the inner Coastal Plain and lower Piedmont in South Carolina as well (House and Ballenger 1976; Trinkley 1989; Steen and Braley 1994:23; Benson 1995), but as Steen and Braley (1994:363) affirm "the ceramic sequence in the South Carolina Midlands is still in need of considerable refinement." Along the northern Georgia-South Carolina border, data recovery projects associated with dam and reservoir construction have provided a fairly refined chronology for the upper Savannah River Valley (Anderson and Joseph 1988; Ledbetter 1995), but like the other two culture areas its applicability to the current study area is as yet still in question and problems remain in distinguishing Early, Middle, and Late Woodland groups on the basis of ceramic types because of their apparent long history of use (Anderson 1996). And with respect to possible affinities to Woodland groups located to the north, previous researchers have previously pointed out that ceramics apparently related to the Swannanoa-Pigeon-Connestee series, originally defined for the Appalachian Summit of western north Carolina (Keel 1976), have also been found sparsely scattered throughout the upper South Carolina Piedmont including the Ninety Six National Historic Site study area (Rodeffer et al. 1979; Goodyear et al. 1979; Trinkley 1989). Nevertheless, due to the lack of research and development of post-Archaic cultural sequences in the intervening area where the Ninety Six National Historic Site resides, it becomes necessary at this point to extrapolate from the extralocal sequences of the three better known regions just mentioned with perhaps greater likelihood of similarities occurring with the upper Savannah River and upper Piedmont sequences given their closer proximities, and the recovery of Woodland pottery types within the Greenwood County area (Rodeffer et al. 1979) that appear to exhibit closer similarities to these two somewhat related culture areas.

Early Woodland (ca. 1000 -500 b.c.)

Various sources (e.g., Anderson et al. 1979; Wood et al. 1986; Hanson and DePratter 1985; Sassaman 1993; Steen and Braley 1994; Ledbetter 1995) identify Thom’s Creek, Refuge, and Deptford wares as forming a basically successional Woodland ceramic sequence for the Georgia-South Carolina Coastal Plain region as a whole with each pottery series slowly evolving into the other during a roughly 700 year time span (ca. 1000-300 b.c.). Currently recognized types included in the three major ceramic series include: Thom’s Creek Plain, Thom's Creek Punctate, Thom's Creek Simple Stamped, Thom's Creek Incised, Refuge Plain, Refuge Simple Stamped, Refuge Punctate, Refuge Dentate Stamped, Refuge Incised, Deptford Plain, Deptford Simple Stamped, Deptford Check Stamped, Deptford Linear Check Stamped, and Deptford Bold Check Stamped (Caldwell and Waring 1968; Waring and Holder 1968; Waring 1968). These types are apparently rare, however, for the middle to upper South Carolina Piedmont (Benson 1995:19) wherein the Ninety Six National Historic Site is situated, and it appears that fabric impressed and cordmarked sand-tempered wares similar to the Swannanoa series may be more characteristic of Early Woodland sites in the Ninety Six area. Nevertheless, a recounting of the Refuge ceramic sequence is provided below in the remote possibility that such wares are found within the vicinity of the park, since Thom’s Creek Punctate pottery has been reported by Rodeffer et al. (1979:332-333) for two sites in Greenwood County.

In the Savannah River valley, a Refuge I phase (1000-800 b.c.) and a Refuge II phase (800-500 b.c.) are presently recognized (Sassaman et al. 1990:13; Ledbetter 1995:96; Anderson [editor] 1996) for the lower portion of the drainage. Refuge I ceramic assemblages contain all of the recognized types in the Refuge series (punctated, dentate stamped, simple stamped, and plain varieties), while Refuge II assemblages contain only simple stamped and plain sherds.  Sand and small lumps of clay (grog) are used as tempering materials among the various types.

Refuge Simple Stamped are primarily distinguished from Deptford Simple Stamped on the basis of execution; the former is generally randomly and sloppily decorated with sharp and broad edged implements that produced V- and U-shaped impressions while the latter is neatly applied in parallel or crossed lines. Refuge pottery is also typically thicker and tempered with coarser sand/grit than Deptford pottery (Waring 1968:200).

According to Anderson and Joseph (1988:208-209), the Early Woodland period in the upper Savannah River drainage is primarily marked by the appearance of sand-tempered fabric marked ceramics which they viewed comparable to Dunlap Fabric Marked and as a fairly “unambiguous marker of an Early Woodland component” (Anderson and Joseph 1988:209) for the eastern Georgia/western South Carolina Piedmont. Early Woodland sites, however, are apparently rare in the mid to upper South Carolina Piedmont (cf. Benson 1995:20), making any generalizations regarding Early Woodland cultural patterns tenuous at best, although Rodeffer and his associates (Rodeffer et al. 1979:50-51, 332-333) variously report having found somewhere between 19 and 23 Early Woodland sites in Greenwood County based on the recovery of a total of about 40 sherds (plain, simple stamped, and fabric impressed) that they assigned to the Swannanoa series. An additional four dozen or so Greenwood County sites were also assigned to the Early Woodland period based on the recovery of Swannanoa Stemmed and Transylvania/Badin Triangular projectile points (Rodeffer et al. 1979:50-51). The Swannanoa series, as defined by Keel (1976:260-266) consists of vessels formed in the shape of large- to medium-sized conoidal jars and hemispherical bowls tempered with either coarse sand or crushed quartz with exterior surface treatments primarily consisting of cordmarking and fabric marking with some plain, simple stamping and check stamping also occurring infrequently toward the end of the phase.

Dating of the Swannanoa phase was originally thought to be sometime around 700-200 b.c. (Keel 1976:17) but more recently the beginning date has been pushed back to ca. 1000 b.c. based on radiocarbon dates obtained at the Phipps Bend site (Eastman 1994; Ward and Davis 1999:142). The earlier appearance of cordmarked and fabric marked wares during the Swannanoa phase in western North Carolina is in accordance with Anderson and Joseph’s (1988) hypothesis that these are the earliest decorative modes among Early Woodland pottery types (Dunlap Fabric Marked and Deptford Cord Marked) in the upper Savannah River drainage, and that the introduction of check stamping and simple stamping as decorative techniques occurred sometime just before the Middle Woodland period.

Rucker’s Bottom, the only extensively excavated site in the upper Savannah River drainage containing a sizeable Early Woodland component, has also produced numerous small-stemmed points similar to terminal Archaic/Early Woodland stemmed types (i.e., Otarre, Plott, Swannanoa, and Gypsy Stemmed types) found elsewhere in the Carolina Piedmont region. Early Woodland Dunlap Fabric Marked pottery was also found in association with a large quartz “Yadkin-like” triangular point at the Big Generostee Creek (38ABN126) site (Anderson and Joseph 1988:213). The presence of medium-large triangular points (Badin, Yadkin) points in the upper Piedmont probably occurs during the later portion of the Early Woodland period (Benson 1995:20), however, as these point types appear roughly comparable to the Transylvania and Garden Creek Triangular points associated with Keel’s (1976) original Swannanoa (ca. 600-200 b.c.) and Pigeon (ca. 200 b.c. -a.d. 200) phases, respectively, in western North Carolina (Keel 1976:17, 130, 224; Anderson and Joseph 1988:219). Surprisingly, there were few instances of sand-tempered cordmarked ceramics represented among the tested Savannah River sites that could be confidently assigned to the Early Woodland period, suggesting that this decorative technique may have been introduced into the region somewhat later than fabric marking.

Middle Woodland (ca. 500 b.c.-a.d. 600)

The initial Middle Woodland ceramic assemblages found in the upper Savannah River drainage appear to consist of combinations of sand and grit tempered Dunlap and Deptford series wares that eventually give way to the finer tempered and smoother finished Cartersville series sometime around 300-200 b.c. (Anderson and Joseph 1988:230). While the appearance of Deptford check stamped, linear check stamped and simple stamped pottery sometime around 600-500 b.c. (Anderson [editor] 1996) is generally viewed as signaling the arrival of Middle Woodland times in much of the Carolinas, these pottery types appear to have carried over into the Late Woodland and perhaps Mississippian times as well (Anderson 1985:52) making them somewhat less reliable for assigning temporal affiliations to sites based on their presence alone. Earlier (ca. 200 b.c.-a.d. 400) and later (a.d. 400-600) Cartersville ceramic assemblages are now recognized for the upper Savannah River region, the former characterized by plain, simple stamped, check stamped, and linear check stamped surface treatments, the latter by plain, simple stamped and brushed finishes (Anderson and Joseph 1988:230). According to Anderson and Joseph (1988), large triangular points with indented bases known as Yadkin Large Triangular (or more simply Yadkin) points are viewed as a good Middle Woodland indicator for the entire length of the period.

Sites with light Cartersville/Deptford components have been found at a few locations in the South Carolina Piedmont, including Abbeville and Anderson Counties (Anderson and Joseph 1988:227-230), Greenwood County (Rodeffer et al. 1979:331-333), and Laurens County (Wood and Gresham 1982), but by and large they have been found in mixed contexts with earlier and later materials, making interpretations difficult. This is the case with Greenwood County sites assigned to the Middle Woodland period by Rodeffer et al. (1987:51) where ceramics classified as Deptford Check Stamped were found on the surface at two sites that also contained ceramics assigned to the Connestee (plain and simple stamped) and Pigeon (check stamped) series.

The Pigeon phase (ca. 200 b.c.-a.d. 200) in western North Carolina is roughly contemporary with early Cartersville components in eastern Georgia. The Pigeon phase ceramic assemblage is characterized by Keel (1976) as dominated by Pigeon Check Stamped with minor amounts of Pigeon Simple Stamped, Pigeon Plain, Pigeon Complicated Stamped and Pigeon Brushed. It seems likely that Pigeon Brushed appears late in the phase given its limited numbers and occurrence only at Garden Creek Mound No. 2. Keel (1976:260) also points out the similarity in motifs that occur between Pigeon Complicated Stamped and Napier Stamped and curvilinear Swift Creek, both of which are generally considered late Woodland pottery types in northeastern Georgia (Anderson [editor] 1996:215).

The following Connestee phase (ca. a.d. 200-600) assemblage is characterized by Keel (1976) as being dominated by Connestee Brushed, Connestee Cordmarked, Connestee Simple Stamped, and Connestee Plain, with minor amounts of Connestee Check Stamped and Connestee Fabric Impressed, all of which were tempered with fine- to medium-sized sand and occasionally small amounts of crushed quartz. Decorated wares sometimes had plain surfaces on the necks of the vessels, which were generally in the form of conoidal jars, hemispherical bowls and flat-bottomed jars with tetrapodal supports (Keel 1976:247-254). A date range of a.d. 200-600 was originally given for the phase (Keel 1976:19), with the caveat that an hypothesized transitional phase presumably followed that eventually evolved into the Pisgah phase sometime around a.d. 1000. Since then, the proposed terminal date for Connestee has been pushed forward to ca. a.d. 800 (Ward and Davis 1999:146) and a tentative Late Connestee period has since been inserted into the chronological framework of western North Carolina to fill in the rest of the Woodland period between a.d. 800-1000 (Ward and Davis 1999:155, Figure 1.5).

Connestee series ceramics have been reported at a number of sites in Greenwood county as a result of Rodeffer and his associate’s (Rodeffer et al. 1979) survey efforts. They are by far the most numerous pottery series encountered during the survey, constituting a full 68.6% (190 of 277) of all ceramics collected during the project. These include plain, brushed, cordmarked, simple stamped, fabric impressed, and incised varieties. A small number of pottery sherds similar to sand-tempered Connestee Simple Stamped and Connestee Brushed have also been found in the extreme northern portion of the Richard B. Russell Reservoir project area (Anderson and Joseph 1988:227). These were found in association with grit-tempered Cartersville Bold Simple stamped and Cartersville Check Stamped pottery at the Big Generostee Creek (38-AN-126) site, and have been interpreted as belonging to the later portion of the Middle Woodland period, dating roughly a.d. 400 to 600 and perhaps later (Anderson and Joseph 1988:230, 246).

According to Chapman (2000), Pigeon (check stamped, simple stamped, and brushed types) and Cartersville (cordmarked, simple stamped, and check stamped types) are the primary Middle Woodland pottery series found in the lower Enoree River drainage of adjacent Newberry County, with Connestee wares also appearing in relatively few numbers during the last half (ca. a.d. 50-600) of the period. Chapman (2000:23) is of the opinion that this represents “the periphery of its [Connestee] influence” (Chapman 2000:23).

Connestee sites appear to be somewhat larger and more numerous in riverine floodplain and terrace settings than their earlier counterparts, which has been interpreted by some as indicative of increased sedentism (Purrington 1983:139), but use of upland sites also persists, indicating a continued reliance on the natural resources (e.g., nuts, deer, turkey) found in these woodland settings. The Connestee phase is also marked by the first appearance of earthen mounds in the Appalachian Summit, a development that is probably linked to Connestee participation in the Hopewell Interaction Sphere and the provisioning of mica from the Appalachian Summit region to Hopewellian cultures to the west (Chapman and Keel 1979).

Late Woodland (ca. A.D. 600 -1000)

Any attempts at construing Late Woodland lifeways in Greenwood County and the upper South Carolina Piedmont at the present time are hampered by a lack of well understood cultural analogs in the adjacent culture areas. The Late Woodland time period is generally viewed by archeologists as the period in which the economic and social underpinnings that later led to the development of Mississippian culture were established by the appearance of fairly permanent village sites and the widespread adoption of maize agriculture, although it appears that it remained a minor contribution to the overall Late Woodland diet. The degree to which this characterization applies to the upper South Carolina Piedmont remains very much in doubt, however, because well documented Late Woodland occupations have yet to be identified in the immediate or surrounding areas. This conundrum is probably at least partially due to the proposition that locally produced Late Woodland pottery types in the upper South Carolina Piedmont are so similar to Middle Woodland types that Late Woodland components at many sites have simply not been recognized. For example, fine sand-tempered, simple stamped wares (e.g., Connestee Simple Stamped, Santee Simple Stamped, Camden Simple Stamped) long considered Middle Woodland pottery types have recently been recognized as also being Late Woodland/Mississippian (ca. a.d. 500-1400) pottery forms for a large area extending from central Georgia to northern coastal North Carolina (Anderson [editor] 1996:20; Ward and Davis 1999:157-158). Similarly, projectile point types of the period consist primarily of medium to small triangular forms (Haywood Triangular, Pisgah Triangular) comparable to Hamilton Incurvate and Madison types (Keel 1976:132-133; Justice 1987:224-229) which also span the entire Late Woodland to Mississippian time frame. The paucity of well dated ceramic trade wares has also hindered the recognition of Late Woodland occupations in the region.

The readily identifiable grog-tempered pottery of the Hanover series is generally agreed to be Late Woodland in age, but its distribution appears largely confined to the Coastal Plain (Anderson 1975; Trinkley et al. 1996; Herbert and Mathis 1996). And similarly, late Swift Creek (a.d. 500-750) and Napier (ca. a.d. 650-850) ceramic assemblages, which are readily assignable to the Late Woodland period and have been recorded in the upper Savannah River drainage, are fairly uncommon and occur with even less frequency as one travels eastward from the main river valley (Anderson and Joseph 1988:246-247). For example, there were only two instances where Swift Creek Curvilinear Complicated Stamped ceramics were collected during the

Greenwood County survey conducted by Rodeffer and his associates (Rodeffer et al. 1979:331-333).With little in the way of clearly identifiable Late Woodland occupations in the Greenwood County area, it may be assumed that Late Woodland peoples lifestyles had changed little from the preceding Middle Woodland period other than the demise of the regional exchange networks that characterize Middle Woodland Hopewellian times. On the otherhand, the lack of a readily recognizable Late Woodland presence in the upper South Carolina Piedmont may also simply reflect a conscious decision on the part of Late Woodland peoples to live elsewhere. This possibility seems all the more likely when the settlement patterns that arose during the ensuing Mississippian period are also examined.

Mississippian Period (ca. a.d. 1000-1600)

During the first six centuries of the most recently concluded millenium, the upper South Carolina Piedmont was encompassed within a wide reaching cultural manifestation that has come to be referred to by archeologists as South Appalachian Mississippian (Ferguson 1971), which is a regional expression of the Mississippian cultural stage. The Mississippian stage is generally characterized as the time in Southeastern U.S. history when native cultures reached their greatest socio-economic complexity (Griffin 1967, 1985; Jennings 1974; Muller 1983; Peebles and Kus 1977; B. Smith 1978, 1986). This complexity is reflected in a hierarchy of site types ranging from single family habitations or "farmsteads" to multi-mound ceremonial centers, a stratified social/political organization that has been broadly compared to chiefdom level societies, specialization in the production of various traded commodities (shell, copper, salt, etc.), and a heavy reliance on maize (corn) horticulture for subsistence.

The adoption of an economic system with a major emphasis on horticulture for food production had great ramifications with respect to Mississippian settlement patterns. The majority of Mississippian villages were settled along the fertile river bottoms of major tributaries where light alluvial soils conducive to hoe tilling methods made horticulture most productive. Within these fertile valleys Mississippian peoples planted their gardens of maize, squash, sunflowers, and other domesticated plants. They also fished in the nearby river, lakes, and streams and made regular trips into the uplands to gather nuts and hunt deer, turkey, squirrel, and other small game.

The rise of Mississippian cultures was also intimately tied to the development of chiefdoms. Chiefdoms, with their highly structured social and economic relationships, permitted larger numbers of people to share the greater productive potential of maize agriculture while also disbursing the potential risks which a major crop failure would bring to any one portion of the larger society. The ability to redirect surpluses from one part of the chiefdom to another portion which had suffered lower productive success or crop loss was an economic advantage chiefdoms enjoyed over less regimented social organizations. The political and economic nature of chiefdoms, however, resulted in persistent competition as individuals vied for the few highest positions in the chiefdom in order to benefit from the greater affluence and prestige that were afforded to the elite. Continual attempts to expand the influence of the chiefdom and bring neighboring groups under economic and political subservience, rapid increases in population numbers, and a preference for limited floodplain areas for farming led to regular armed conflict, another major factor which also affected settlement placement and site plan.

Although the development of South Appalachian and other Mississippian cultures from their Late Woodland cultural forebearers clearly was a process that brought intertribal competition to the forefront, it was also a period of sharing and dissemination of new ideas and beliefs, new ways of cooperation, and new ways of coping with the uncertainties of everyday life. Archeologists, trying to understand this process have subdivided South Appalachian Mississippian history into three major substages that reflect the initial amalgamation of Mississippian cultures into simple chiefdoms (Early Mississippian), the rise of complex chiefdoms that exerted broad-reaching political influences (Middle Mississippian) and the full maturation of Mississippian lifestyles such as those encountered by the first European explorers (Late Mississippian). In the South Appalachian Mississippian cultural sphere, these three substages have been roughly equated with Etowah, Savannah, and Lamar cultures (Williams and Shapiro 1990).

The archeological vestiges of these three successive Mississippian substages or cultures are most recognizable today by the distinctively made ceramics that were with the passage of time adopted by the peoples living in northeastern Alabama, northern Florida, Georgia, eastern Tennessee, most of South Carolina and western North Carolina from approximately a.d. 1000-1600. Archeologists researching the cultural developments leading up to and culminating in this extensive adoption of South Appalachian Mississippian culture have once again focused their attentions to the north, south, east and west of the present study area. Toward the west, extensive investigations in the upper Savannah River valley had resulted in a well documented sequence of Mississippian cultures best known through the publishing efforts of David Anderson (Anderson and Joseph 1988; Anderson 1989, 1990b, 1994, 1996). Toward the north, the Mississippian cultural sequence of Pisgah and Qualla phases in the North Carolina Appalachian Summit is primarily based on the synthetic work of Roy Dickens (1976). To the east there is much less in the way of readily available information to draw upon, but cultural sequences and some patterns have been identified as a result of site inventories and limited testing largely associated with federal and state land management policies. The lower Broad River valley, for example, contains Mississippian ceramics that show strong affinities to the Pee Dee related culture area of the Wateree River valley to the east and to Pisgah peoples to the north (Teague 1979:63; DePratter 1989; DePratter and Judge 1990:56-58; Hudson et al. 1990; Steen and Braley 1994; Benson 1995:12). These are the better documented areas we have at our disposal to deduce the Mississippian culture history of the upper South Carolina Piedmont.

The investigation of Mississippian culture in the area around Ninety Six National Historic Site has been made somewhat difficult by the relative paucity of documented Mississippian sites in Greenwood County and the Saluda River drainage. For example, during the reconnaissance survey conducted on selected plowed and timbered lands in Greenwood County by Rodeffer and his associates in the 1970s (Rodeffer et al. 1979), only five (1.7%) of the 295 total precolumbian sites found contained ceramics (classified as Etowah, Pisgah, and Pee Dee types) that could be confidently associated with Mississippian occupations (Rodeffer et al. 1979:53). None of these were interpreted as being anything more than “light” or short term “base camps”, with the recovery of Late Woodland/Mississippian Triangular projectile points from 22 other sites possibly representing additional brief Mississippian hunting forays into the area.

The paucity of a demonstrable Mississippian presence in the Greenwood County area is probably a reflection of Mississippian settlement and hunting patterns which resulted in the establishment of relatively expansive, unoccupied borderlands between independent and at times hostile chiefdoms that were centered upon major river drainages to the east, west, and north. Anderson (1994:267) has postulated that western South Carolina in general and the middle to lower Saluda River drainage in particular was most likely part of a broad buffer zone and hunting territory separating the Mississippian polities of the upper Savannah River drainage laying to the west and northwest of the Ninety Six National Historic Site from the Mississippian polities located to the east along the Broad River with mound centers located at the McCollum (38CS2) and Blair Mound (38FA48) sites in Chester and Fairfield counties, respectively (Ryan 1971; Teague 1979).

The Mississippian mound centers located along the lower Broad River contain ceramics that show minor similarities with the Lamar (Irene) complexes of the Savannah River area but show greatest affinities to the Pee Dee and Pisgah culture areas to the east and north, respectively (Teague 1979:63; Benson 1995:12), and are believed to have been abandoned as political centers by sometime around a.d. 1400 (DePratter 1989; Hudson et al. 1990), thereby creating an even larger western buffer zone for the Mississippian chiefdoms occupying the Wateree/Catawba drainage during the remainder of the precolumbian and early contact era (i.e., a.d. 1400-1700). In addition, Anderson (1994:270) notes that during the late 1600s and early 1700s the middle to lower Saluda region was a well documented buffer zone and hunting ground separating the Underhill Cherokees living along the upper reaches of the Savannah River drainage from the Catawba peoples living along the upper Broad and Catawba rivers.

This buffer zone was also apparently respected by the earlier Mississippian peoples that occupied sites like Lindsey Mound along the upper Saluda River valley near the North Carolina/South Carolina border (Dickens 1976:17), where the ceramic assemblage has been tentatively assigned to the Pisgah series (Dickens 1976:92; Anderson 1994:162). Notably, however, only a single (incised) sherd recovered during the entire 1979 Greenwood County archeological survey was assigned to the Pisgah series (Rodeffer et al. 1979:331), suggesting that Pisgah occupation of the Saluda River drainage on an extended basis probably did not reach downstream much beyond the confluence of the North Saluda and South Saluda Rivers, as Dickens (1976:189) already surmised (Image 1). Similarly, Chapman (2000:26) reports that the lower Enoree River drainage represents “the southern periphery of Pisgah influence” in nearby Newberry County. Much the same can be said regarding the origin of the mere handful of sherds (eight in all) collected throughout Greenwood County by Rodeffer and his associates that were classified as Pee Dee types, and presumably represent minimal forays or interactions with Mississippian groups centered on the Broad and Wateree Rivers to the east (Teague 1979:63; DePratter 1987; DePratter and Judge 1990; Benson 1995:12).

In all likelihood then, the Ninety Six and Greenwood County area would have been part of a large buffer zone and hunting territory visited by Mississippian peoples only on a transient basis during the period a.d. 1000-1600. The Mississippian peoples visiting the Ninety Six area would probably have come only on an occasional basis, and most likely entered either from the uppermost reaches of the Saluda drainage to the north where the Pisgah phase (which is roughly separable into early and late subphases, ca. a.d. 1000-1250 and a.d. 1250-1450, respectively) is followed by a Qualla phase (Dickens 1976:14; Ward and Davis 1999:169), or from the nearby upper Savannah River drainage to the west where the Mississippian cultural sequence has been divided (Anderson 1994:159) into five distinguishable subperiods: Woodstock (ca. a.d. 900-1100), Jarrett phase (ca. a.d. 1100-1200), Beaverdam phase (ca. a.d. 1200-1300), Rembert phase (ca. a.d. 1300-1450) and Tugalo phase (ca. a.d. 1450-1600). This cultural sequence is believed (Anderson and Joseph 1988; Anderson 1994) to encompass the initial appearance of Mississippian influences into the area, the initial rise of simple chiefdoms and later development of complex chiefly societies, followed by their economic and political collapse and the abandonment of all but the upper sections of the Savannah River basin by around a.d. 1450. Limited to the upper Savannah River drainage, the Tugalo phase appears to represent the direct cultural antecedents of the Cherokee peoples who were found occupying the area at the time of the earliest European explorations into the region.

The appearance of Woodstock Complicated Stamped ceramics, which is currently viewed as the initial arrival of Mississippian traits in the Savannah River drainage of northwest Georgia and South Carolina (Anderson 1994:375), have been rarely encountered in the upper Savannah River area, suggesting that the first century of the second millenium a.d. may have been a time of protracted Mississippian cultural coalescence and/or perhaps lower population densities for the region. Each of the subsequent Mississippian phases are well documented, however, and are distinguished on the basis of changes in ceramic assemblages as well as shifts in settlement and mortuary patterns.

The Jarrett phase (ca. a.d. 1100-1200) is characterized by the appearance of Etowah Complicated Stamped, check stamped, and red filmed pottery (Anderson 1994:375). The complicated stamped designs during this phase consist primarily of nested diamond motifs with corncob impressions occurring in low numbers along the necks and upper shoulders of some vessels. The majority of sites dating to this period appear to be scattered homesteads, with perhaps the Clyde Gulley site representing a small village or large hamlet during this phase. Two single mound centers, Chauga and Tugalo, were also established near the headwaters of the Savannah River during this period, and the Rembert site may also have begun to exist during this phase.

The Beaverdam phase (ca. a.d. 1200-1300) sees a decline in the numbers of Etowah Complicated Stamped ceramics and the disappearance of red filmed pottery. Check stamping increases and Savannah Complicated Stamped appears, with concentric circles being the most common motif. There is an abrupt shift in settlement patterns with the establishment of new ceremonial sites, hamlets, and farmsteads within the settlement hierarchy. The Chauga and Tugalo sites were apparently abandoned as ceremonial centers, and ceremonial activities were established downstream at the Beaverdam Creek, Tate and Rembert mound sites. It is possible that by the end of the Beaverdam phase Rembert was already established as a multiple mound center and that the single mound Beaverdam Creek and Tate sites were the residences of chieftains who were subservient to a paramount chief living at Rembert. Maize agriculture was also well-established by this time, although its contribution to the overall diet is still open to question.

By the Rembert phase (ca. a.d. 1350-1450), the Rembert Mound group with its five platform mounds had become the premier ceremonial center for the entire upper Savannah River basin. Occupations at Beaverdam Creek and Tate had apparently ceased, suggesting local political power was concentrated in the hands of the Rembert elite, while the previously abandoned single mound center at Tugalo was reoccupied. Political struggles with outside polities may be evidenced by the erection of fortifications around entire sites such as Rucker’s Bottom and possibly Chauga and Tugalo during this time. Lamar Complicated Stamped pottery with both rectilinear and curvilinear designs (concentric circles, figure nines, filfot crosses, line blocks, and herringbones) dominate the ceramic assemblage while check stamping nearly disappears. Also, Lamar Bold Incised pottery characterized by designs involving two or three broad lines appears in low numbers for the first time during the Rembert phase.

During the ensuing Tugalo phase (ca. a.d. 1450-1600), the instabilities inherent within the socioeconomic structure of the Savannah River chiefdoms, made even more tenuous by an extended period of lower than normal rainfall within the region, coupled with competition from surrounding Mississippian polities resulted in the political collapse of the societies occupying the middle and lower Savannah River basin, which appears to have been largely unpopulated during this period. Only the upper reaches of the Savannah River exhibit evidence of having been occupied during this late precolumbian/protohistoric phase. The previously abandoned single mound center at Chauga was reoccupied, and Estatoe was also established as a mound center for the first time during this period with both sites presumably absorbing peoples fleeing the areas abandoned down river. Anderson (1994) believes the abandonment of all but the upper Savannah River drainage by Mississippian peoples represents the establishment of the region as a buffer between the competing paramount chiefdoms of Cofitachequi and Ocute, who occupied the Santee/Wateree and Oconee River drainages respectively, at the time of first European contact.

Once again, changes in the ceramic assemblage are also evident within this final precolumbian phase. Lamar Complicated Stamped and Lamar Incised pottery retain their popularity during the Tugalo phase (ca. a.d. 1450-1600), but the stamping on the former is generally executed less carefully and the designs are more complicated while the designs on the latter ware are typically composed of a greater number of narrower lines than the preceding phase. Red filming appears once again as a minority ware (Anderson 1994:376).

Early Contact Period (ca. a.d. 1540-1700)

At the time of the De Soto entrada into South Carolina in the spring of 1540, the rival provinces of Cofitachequi and Ocute were separated by an extensive buffer zone or "vacant quarter" that was described by the Spanish explorers that accompanied De Soto as the "desert of Ocute" (Hudson et al. 1984:72). The Hudson et al. (1984) reconstructed route for Hernando De Soto's expedition places the chiefdom of Ocute above the Georgina fall line on the Oconee River and Hymahi (Aymay, Guiomae), the southernmost town encountered by De Soto subject to Cofitachequi in the vicinity of present day Wateree, S.C., near the confluence of the Congaree and Wateree Rivers (Hudson et al. 1984:72; DePratter 1989:134, 148). De Soto’s route through the desert of Ocute had apparently passed through the headwater areas of the South and North Forks of the Edisto River (Image 2), approximately 40 miles south of the Ninety Six area (Hudson et al. 1984:72; DePratter 1989:137).

Although Cofitachequi and Ocute were powerful tribes at the time of the De Soto entrada, their political prominence and cultural existence were doomed along with those of their neighboring brethren with the arrival of the first Europeans. At the time of first European contact, South Carolina was inhabited by a number of Indian tribes that shared a Late Mississippian (Lamar) way of life, but were distinctive in terms of cultural and linguistic traits. Three major linguistic families were represented in 16th century South Carolina: Siouan, Muskhogean, and Iroquoian. The Piedmont and northern two-thirds of the Coastal Plain of South Carolina were occupied primarily by Siouan linguistic groups (Image 3) that included the Catawba, Iswa, Shakori, Wateree, Santee, Congaree, Pee Dee, Waccamaw and Winyaw (Swanton 1946, 1952), although if Swanton (1946:46), Milling (1969:66), and others are correct in their linguistic assessments, the Cofitachequi were apparently Muskhogean speakers. Muskhogean related peoples living in South Carolina during the 16th century consisted primarily of the Cusabo who occupied the Coastal Plain between Charleston Harbor and the Savannah River and were closely related to the Guale of coastal Georgia (Swanton 1952:94; Bushnell 1994:60). At the time of European contact, the Appalachian Summit or Blue Ridge Province of North and South Carolina was part of the territory inhabited by the Cherokee, a large Iroquoian-speaking group with principal settlements mainly distributed along the upper Savannah, Hiwassee, and Little Tennessee River drainages (Schroedl 2000; Ward and Davis 1999:266). Their somewhat distant relationship to other members of the Iroquoian language family and a Cherokee legend of migration from the northeast (Swanton 1952:221) has led some scholars to propose that the ancestors of the Cherokee moved to the Southern Appalachians from the Iroquoian heartland many centuries before early Spanish explorers entered the region and briefly encountered Cherokee peoples for the first time during the 16th and 17th centuries. The scant information available from these earliest encounters and the vagaries of the limited archeological evidence have left the prior history of the Cherokee people very much open to debate, and it is not until the English arrived on the continent in the mid-18th century, that an extensive record of Cherokee culture becomes available.

A Brief History of the Cherokee, 1674-1842

One of the earliest English accounts that unambiguously mention the Cherokee occurs in Henry Woodward’s description of his visit among the Westo (Chichimeco) in 1674 (Crane 1929:16; Swanton 1946:111). The “Chorakae” peoples Woodward referred to in his 1674 narrative were said to inhabit the headwaters region of the Savannah River and to be the enemies of the Westo who then occupied the middle Savannah drainage. The Cherokee peoples that were encountered by the English as they first began to settle and explore the Carolinas were found distributed in five geographically distinct areas, the largest geographic group being the Lower Towns settlements located along the upper drainages of the Chattahoochee and Savannah River in northwestern South Carolina and northeastern Georgia (Schroedl 2000). The inhabitants in this area spoke a distinct Cherokee dialect known as Elati (Mooney 1900), and lived in a dozen or so politically independent towns that include the archeologically investigated sites of Chattooga, Estatoe, Tugalo, Chauga, and Keowee. Contacts between the Cherokee and the earliest English colonists in coastal South Carolina were limited at first due to the intervening presence of the frequently warring Westo who had come to occupy the middle Savannah River area and counted the Cherokee among their many enemies. After the defeat of the Westo by the South Carolinians in 1681, English contacts with the Cherokee and other western tribes became a regular occurrence as the English pursued their policy of establishing trade relations with the interior tribes.

Trade formed the primary basis for Cherokee-British relations during these early years with British traders frequently taking up residence in the Cherokee towns where they provided their hosts with guns, axes, hoes, knives, blankets, and other utilitarian items in exchange for deerskins and, more importantly, Indian slaves. While they benefited materially from their trading relationships with the British, the Cherokee also suffered greatly as a result of increased intertribal warfare directly attributable to the slave trade. In the century following the establishment of Charleston, S.C. in 1670, the Cherokee were involved in numerous conflicts with the Guale, Westo, Shawnee, Catawba, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Congaree, Creek, and Tuscarora, often with the encouragement of the British as a means of providing captives for the slave market (Crane 1929:24, 40, 109-120, 138-139; Swanton 1946:111-112; Swanton 1952:221-222). The casualties of intertribal warfare paled in comparison, however, to the losses suffered from deadly epidemics caused by the introduction of European diseases for which the Cherokee had little immunity. In 1738, for example, a smallpox epidemic devastated the Cherokee, reducing their population of some 20,000 people by nearly half. As a result, many of the Lower towns, particularly those in northwest South Carolina (e.g., Chattooga) were completely abandoned (Schroedl 2000:214).

Cherokee relations with the British were not always on an entirely friendly basis either. Charges of thievery and unfair trading practices including the unlawful taking of slaves were frequently raised by the Cherokee before Carolina’s colonial officials with calls for retribution that often went ignored. As a result, some 70 Cherokee are reported (Milling 1969:270; Swanton 1946:111) to have initially participated in the Indian uprising known as the Yamassee War (1715-1716), that primarily involved the Yamassee, Creek, Congaree, Wateree, Waxaw and other Siouan speakers who had had enough of the abuses they had suffered at the hands of callous English traders, particularly the enslaving of women and children as collateral for unpaid debts (Milling 1969). During the Yamassee War, Creek emissaries tried to persuade the Cherokee to join them against the British, but the Lower Towns led by Conjuror and the Overhill Towns led by Caesar of Echota, promised to remain allies with the English and joined them in putting down the rebellious tribes (Crane 1929:179-182). Following the Yamassee War, the Cherokee maintained a fairly amicable relationship with the British until the latter end of the French and Indian War (1754-1763), when a number of British affronts (Swanton 1946: 112, 1952:222; Schroedl 2000:217-218) against the Cherokee precipitated the relatively brief Cherokee War (1760-1761), during which the Cherokee enjoyed initial successes such as the capture of Fort Loudon, but were later compelled to make peace after the English and their Indian allies laid waste to most of the Lower Towns in South Carolina and Georgia as well as the Middle and Outer Town Cherokee settlements of the upper Tennessee River (Swanton 1946:112; Schroedl 2000:218).

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, the Cherokee again remained loyal to the British and suffered the consequences of numerous American military raids into Cherokee territory. In 1776, General Griffith Rutherford and Colonel William Moore led the North Carolina militia in attacks against the Middle, Valley, and Outer Towns while South Carolina forces led by Colonel Andrew Williamson attacked the Lower Towns (Schroedl 2000:221-222). Finally, in November of 1776, a Virginia force led by Colonel William Christian burned five more Overhill Towns, while sparing Chota and several others (Schroedl 2000:222). Despite the establishment of a truce the following year, sporadic actions between the Cherokee and colonists occurred for the duration of the war, including an expedition led by Colonels John Sevier and Arthur Campbell against the Overhill Towns in 1780 in which ten towns including Chota were destroyed (Schroedl 2000:222). The ravages of the Revolutionary War eventually forced the Cherokee to flee the Lower Middle, Out and Valley Towns of North Carolina, South Carolina and eastern Georgia with many resettling within the Coosa River drainage in northwest Georgia (Smith 1979; Smith 1992:38); most of the Lower towns of east Georgia and South Carolina were never reoccupied. Even after armed conflict between the American colonists and Britain had ceased with the victory at Yorktown in 1781, the Cherokee continued hostilities with the fledgling nation. Peaceful relations were eventually restored following the Tellico conference held in 1794, but in the process the Cherokee had ceded nearly 50,000 square miles of land, lost virtually all their material possessions, and had diminished in population as a result of starvation, exposure, and disease.

In the ensuing years some Cherokee tried to maintain their traditional ways of life but many chose instead to adopt Euroamerican ways and agrarian lifestyles with the encouragement of the new U.S. government, including the adoption of a form of government modeled on that of the United States. The Cherokee also later aided American interests by serving as allies during the Creek War of 1813-1814, particularly at the decisive Battle at Horseshoe Bend in which 800 Redstick Creeks perished at the hands of Lower Creek, Cherokee, and American troops led by Andrew Jackson (de Grummond and Hamlin 2000). But continued encroachment by white settlers displaced many from their claimed lands until the signing of the treaty of New Echota in 1835, when the Cherokee sold all their remaining territory and conceded to American demands that they move west of the Mississippi River. Their forced migration to the “Indian Territories” of Oklahoma in the winter of 1838-39 was a journey of extreme hardship that resulted in the death of nearly one in four during the mass migration that has come to be known as the Trail of Tears (Milling 1969:332). At the time of their forced exodus to Oklahoma, several hundred Cherokee chose instead to flee to the mountains of western North Carolina where they survived as refugees until the Qualla Reservation was established for their use in 1842.

A Brief History of the Catawba

The Catawba were one of the Siouan-speaking tribes that occupied the upper Piedmont area during the time of the early Spanish expeditions into South Carolina during the mid 16^th century. They were apparently closely related to the Issa (Ysa, Iswa) that were encountered during Pardo’s expedition into the South Carolina interior in 1566-67. When John Lederer entered the North Carolina interior from Virginia in 1670, he too met the Catawba, referring to them as Ushery (Lederer 1672; Alvord and Bidgood 1912). What little is known regarding the Catawba way of life shortly after the arrival of the English to the Carolinas is derived largely from the writings of John Lawson (1709), who explored the Piedmont territory and visited the Catawba in 1701. When Lawson encountered the Catawba (“Kadapau”) at the beginning of the 18^th century, they were described as a distinct group, living less than a day’s travel from the Iswa (“Esaws”) (Lawson 1709:43) shown on Lawson’s map of the Carolinas as being located at the headwaters of the “West Branch” of the “Clarendon River” (i.e., the Catawba River); but as native populations in the Carolinas rapidly declined as a result of war and epidemic disease, the Catawba later merged with the Iswa and with the remnants of many other Siouan-speaking groups in the region. The Catawba were quick to make friends with the English, and remained faithful allies during most of the 18^th century, except for a brief period in 1715 in which they joined the Yamassee in their fight against the Carolinians. Their relationships with other neighboring tribes were not as friendly, however, as they alternately waged wars against the Shawnee, Delaware, Yuchi, Iroquois, Mobile, and Tuscarora Indians before they turned to join the Yamassee during their uprising in opposition to the slave-raiding of the Carolinians in 1715.

The Yamassee, Catawba, and their other native allies (Congaree, Santee, Sugeree, Wateree, Waxhaw) enjoyed some early successes, capturing several British forts and taking the lives of an estimated 200-400 colonists (Swanton 1952:115; Steen and Braley 1994:26), but the Carolinians eventually prevailed, exacting a terrible revenge of death and enslavement that virtually eliminated many native groups. The Catawba had sued for peace earlier than the other participating tribes (Swanton 1952:91) and therefore survived to absorb many of the remaining refugees, including the Iswa, Congaree, Santee and Wateree (Swanton 1952:93, 98, 101). Maintaining peaceful relations with the Carolinians after the Yamassee War, the Catawba nonetheless continued to suffer the attacks of their archenemies, the Shawnee and the Iroquois, despite attempts by the British to intervene and stop the fighting. Whittled down by warfare and decimated by disease epidemics in 1738 and 1759, they were able to muster only 60 warriors by the early 1760s (Swanton 1952:91-92). After they lent the English their assistance in fighting the Cherokee War (1760-1761), the Catawba were rewarded with the establishment of a small reservation along the upper Catawba River near the South Carolina border.

Almost immediately, the Catawba reservation suffered from the encroachment of the Carolina colonists, and despite assurances from the colonial government that the trespassers would be evicted, nothing was ever done. The lack of fidelity on the part of the English may have been a key reason the Catawba sided with the Patriots during the American Revolution, serving as scouts during the conflict. When the British army invaded South Carolina in 1780, the Catawba withdrew northward into Virginia and did not return until the Battle of Guilford Courthouse (March 15, 1781).

After the Revolutionary War, the South Carolina government still refused to deal with the problem of white encroachment on Catawba lands, and by 1826 almost all the reservation had been sold or leased to non-Indians (Swanton 1952:91). Finally, in 1840, the state of South Carolina agreed to purchase the Catawba’s lands and arrange for a new home for them in North Carolina. But North Carolina refused to set aside any property for such a purpose, and the Catawba were forced to return to South Carolina where a new reservation of 800 acres was eventually set aside for them, and where the main body of Catawba have remained ever since.

EUROPEAN COLONIZATION OF SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE HISTORY OF NINETY SIX

 Prior to the settlement of the English colony at Charles Town (Charleston, S.C.) in 1670, the South Carolina coast had been claimed and defended by the Spanish against rival European powers for over one and a quarter centuries. During that time, they attempted to bring the lands and the native peoples who already occupied the country the Spaniards called “La Florida” under their political and economic control.

The earliest documented contact between the Spanish and the Indians of South Carolina apparently occurred in 1521 when two Spanish ships sailing along the Georgia/South Carolina coast stopped at the mouth of a major river, brought on board some 70 natives and carried them off to Santa Domingo. Among the 70 was a member of the Shakori tribe known as Francisco of Chicora who became a servant of the man who had initiated the 1521 Spanish expedition that led to his capture, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllón. During his stay on Santa Domingo, Francisco of Chicora meet the historian Peter Martyr de Anghierra, who obtained from him an account of the Siouan peoples who apparently inhabited portions of the South Carolina coast at this time. Some 130 year later, when the English were exploring North Carolina in 1650, they found the “Shockoories” had relocated to an area between the Meherrin and Nottoway rivers (Swanton 1946:183). As happened with so many Native American tribes, dwindling numbers due to disease and military conflicts prompted subsequent migrations and eventually led to their amalgamation with the Catawba in the early 18th century.

The first attempt by the Spanish to settle in South Carolina began in 1525 when two ships under the command of Pedro de Quexos traveled along the Georgia/South Carolina coast to reconnoiter for favorable locations to establish a new colony, picking up one or two Indians from each province along the way to be trained as interpreters (Swanton 1946:36-37). The following summer Lucas Vasquez de Ayllón set off with 600 settlers in three large ships to the mouth of a river they dubbed the Jordan. They soon became dissatisfied with the location and relocated to another river which they called the Gualdape some 40 or 45 leagues south of the Jordan. The noted ethnohistorian, John Swanton (1946:37), of the opinion that Gualdape was part of the province of Guale, believed the Gualdape River was the Savannah River and that the Jordan was probably the Santee River (A conclusion that was also reached by DePratter [1989:136]). At Gualdape the Spanish settled again but briefly, abandoning the colony a few month later that winter as many of the colonists including its leader, Ayllón, died of disease.

Spanish Defense Against the French and English, 1560-1670

Spanish claim to South Carolina was threatened briefly by the French with the establishment of Charlesfort at the southern end of Paris Island in 1562 (DePratter et al. 1996) under the leadership of Jean Ribault. Learning of the French attempts to settle on their claimed lands, King Philip II of Spain ordered Captain Manrique de Rojas to find and destroy Charlesfort in 1564, unaware that the small detachment of men Ribault had left behind to guard the fort had already abandoned the small outpost and returned to France (DePratter et al. 1996). De Rojas leveled and burned what little remained standing of the abandoned French outpost, and returned to Cuba unaware that another expedition led by René Goulaine de Laudonnière was already enroute to the St. Johns River to establish another French colony, Fort Caroline (Brewer 2000). Fort Caroline soon fell on hard times, however, as food supplies ran low and Ribault failed to appear as scheduled that spring with additional supplies and men.

Following the renewed colonization efforts initiated by Laudonnière, King Phillip II ordered Captain Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to find the colony and destroy it. Assembling a force of over 1000 men and ten ships, Menéndez immediately set forth to drive the French out of Florida. In the meantime, Jean Ribault had arrived with five ships containing much needed supplies and reinforcements to the now beleaguered French colony. Arriving at the mouth of the St. Johns River within days of Ribault, Menéndez drove off four of the ships anchored offshore still waiting to offload their cargoes. An attempt to land ashore by Menéndez was thwarted by French cannon, so he sailed south approximately 36 miles to the next available inlet suitable for harboring his fleet where he found a village headed by the Cacique Seloy. There Menéndez founded St. Augustine on September 8, 1565.

Determined to prevent the Spanish from establishing a foothold in the area, Ribault decided to attack the Spanish with approximately 600 of his best men, using the ships just arrived from France—and not yet unloaded—leaving a nominal force of just over 200 behind to defend Fort Caroline. When Ribault and his fleet arrived off the bar at St. Augustine, his immediate plan to attack the Spanish encampment was thwarted by a low tide, which prevented his ships from entering the harbor. While he waited for high tide, a hurricane blew in from the north, scattering his ships southward and wrecking them along the Florida coast.

On the morning of September 20, 1565, taking advantage of Ribault's misfortune at the hands of the storm, Menéndez and some 400 Spaniards marched overland to attack Fort Caroline, routing the garrison and capturing the fort. Having eliminated the French, Menéndez returned to St. Augustine to strengthen its defenses. The following spring Menéndez sailed to the former site of Charlesfort on Parris Island which he renamed Santa Elena and established as the new capital of La Florida. Later that summer, Captain Juan Pardo arrived at Santa Elena with 250 men and was promptly sent inland to search for an overland route to Mexico and make contact with the natives to obtain food stuffs to supplement those on hand at Santa Elena (DePratter 1989:135).

That same year, Menéndez built Fort San Pedro on Cumberland Island after having negotiated a settlement in a dispute between the Guale of coastal Georgia and the Cusabo who were situated along the coast north of the Savannah River (Smith and Gottlob 1978). The name Guale was a blanket-term applied by the Spaniards to linguistically related Muskhogean-speaking peoples they found inhabiting the Atlantic coast from Georgia to South Carolina. Spanish missionization efforts by the Jesuits were begun among the Guale in 1570, but were deserted after only two years and were not re-established until the Franciscans arrived in 1584 (Smith and Gottlob 1978). The relations that were to follow between the Guale and Spaniards were somewhat tumultuous, to say the least, as the Spanish attempted to compel the Guale to abandon their native ways and become loyal subjects of the Spanish crown and church. Periodic Indian revolts, intertribal warfare, frequent abandonment, consolidation, and relocation of missions, devastating plagues, and eventual cultural extinction were the ultimate results of the Spanish colonial policy of bringing civilization to the Guale people (Swanton 1946:193; Worth 1995:13). It was a process that was to be hastened by the British resolve to strengthen their own claims in the New World and to do everything possible to subvert the attempts of the Spanish of doing likewise. South Carolina and Georgia would soon become disputed territory, with the English making further and further inroads into previously Spanish-claimed lands. The first of these inroads occurred in 1586 when Sir Francis Drake captured and burned St. Augustine. After this, the Spanish thought it prudent to consolidate their forces and abandoned Santa Elena to withdraw to more secure locations to the south. Although the Spanish had been compelled to remove their main forces southward, they continued to view South Carolina as part of their territory and attempted to defend it as their own as best they could.

Toward this end, Captain Francisco Fernandez de Ecija was dispatched from St. Augustine in 1605 and again in 1609 to search for an English colony that was said to be located somewhere along the coast of the Carolinas (Hann 1988), but failed in both instances to find any evidence of an English presence. Similar searches were conducted some years later under the command of Pedro de Torres, who led a small force of Spaniards and Indians in search of alleged European interlopers but failed on successive attempts in 1627 and 1628 to find any evidence of foreign intruders. Two decades earlier, of course, the English had already established a permanent foothold in the colony of Virginia with the establishment of Jamestown in 1607. After a shaky start in which the initial colonists suffered severe starvation and nearly abandoned the colony, Jamestown and Virginia began to experience an economic boom, in large part due to successes in the growing and marketing of tobacco. English settlers soon began to emigrate to Virginia in greater and greater numbers. And as the English population grew, the inhabitants of the tidewater area of southeastern Virginia began to seek out new lands, moving into the Albemarle area of northeast North Carolina by around 1650.

At first, many of the Indians of Virginia and Carolina viewed the English settlers as a welcome means of support against the Spaniards and their Guale and Timucua allies. The English too saw advantages both militarily and in the highly profitable fur and slave trades of arming their new Indian partners with musket and shot. This was a practice that was generally avoided by the Spanish and thereby placed their Indian allies at a disadvantage to their British supplied counterparts. Among these were the greatly feared Rechahecrians. Known to the Spanish as the Chichimeco and to the later English settlers of the Carolinas as the Westo (Worth 1995:17), the Rechahecrians/Chichimeco were regularly obtaining guns and ammunition from English traders in Virginia by the late 1650s. Armed and encouraged to raid their neighbors to obtain captives for the Virginia slave market, the Chichimeco had apparently occupied the middle Savannah River area in 1659 and began attacking the Spanish missions of coastal Georgia in 1661. Their first such target was Santo Domingo de Talaxe (Talaje), a Guale village near the mouth of the Altimaha River, where an estimated 500 to 2000 Chichimeco in the company of a few English traders seized a number of the village’s inhabitants, sending the rest fleeing to the safety of Sapalo Island (Worth 1995:15-16). After the Chichimeco had withdrawn inland, the survivors of Talaxe established a new mission called Santo Domingo de Asajo at the northern end of St. Simons Island, which already was home to the Mocama mission village of San Buenaventura de Guadalquini. Slave raids by the Chichimeco were not confined to the Guale missions, however, and attacks were frequently aimed at other native groups occupying Georgia and South Carolina. For example, when John Lederer entered the North Carolina interior from Virginia in 1670, he found that the Catawba were already among those experiencing the hostility of the Westo (Lederer 1672; Alvord and Bidgood 1912; Swanton 1922:296). And when the itinerant trader, Dr. Henry Woodward made first contact with the Chichimeco/Westo at their palisaded village ‘Hickauhauga’ midway along banks of the Savannah River four year later (Crane 1929:16), he found that they counted the Yuchi, the Lower Creeks, and the Cherokee living at the headwaters of the Savannah River among their many enemies. The depredations of the Chichimeco on these and other Native Americans inhabiting Carolina and Georgia would contribute substantially to the rise of an amalgamation of recently fragmented tribes that came to be known collectively as the Yamassee.

The Yamassee were a Muskhogean-speaking peoples who probably lived in the “Province of Altamaha” that was encountered by the members of the De Soto entrada as they passed through northeast Georgia in 1540 (Swanton 1952:115). They remained relatively unnoticed by the Spanish and English occupying the South Carolina and Georgia coast until 1663 when some Spanish friars mentioned that the “Yamasis” had settled within the province of Escamaçu immediately to the north of Guale to escape the aggression of the Chichimeco (Worth 1995:19-20). With continuing Chichimeco hostilities, the Yamassee relocated once more to the south and settled along side the remnants of the Spanish coastal missions where the Spanish welcomed their arrival as a means of bolstering the rapidly dwindling numbers of Guale and Mocama subjects upon which the Spaniards relied so heavily for labor and provisions. Unfortunately for the Spanish and their allies, the added protection which the influx of Yamassee afforded against British-incited Chichimeco aggression would quickly vanish with the founding of the English colony of Carolina in 1670.

Seven years earlier, in 1663, King Charles II granted a charter for a new colony south of Virginia to eight English noblemen¾Lord John Berkeley; Sir William Berkeley; Sir George Carteret; Sir John Colleton; Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper; Lord William Craven; Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon; and George Monck, Duke of Albemarle¾who had helped him to gain the throne of England. The eight “Lords Proprietors” were confident they could lure immigrants to settle their new colony not only from England but from previously established colonies in the New World, particularly Barbados where plantation owners sought to escape the now overcrowded island. It was the Barbadians, in fact, who sent Captain William Hilton to explore the Carolina coast in 1663 in preparation for such a move. Based on the glowing report that Hilton provided following his return (Hilton 1664), Barbadian settlers attempted to found a settlement at Cape Fear but were eventually forced to abandon the project just a few years later. During that time, Colonel Robert Sanford embarked southward from the short-lived Cape Fear settlement to explore the Carolina coast further. Like Hilton three years before him, Sanford described the lands of South Carolina in glowing terms upon his return (Salley 1911; Crane 1929:5; Wright 1971:50).

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 t