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PART II The Historic People |
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 (Click images to enlarge) |
1600
to 1776
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The first permanent British settlement in South Carolina began with the arrival in 1670 at Albermarle Point of 150 people who quickly established a waterfront community they called Charles Town, later renamed Charleston. Funded by the Proprietors, investors who, in effect, owned the settlement because their money was at stake, Charles Town soon grew into the seat of power for the entire region.
This
early English beachhead bore no resemblance to the graceful collection
of stately homes and promenades that make Charleston famous today. The
first enterprising families found themselves in a wilderness nearly surrounded
by Indians, as foreign to them as they were to the Indians. Yet, for the
most part, relations were at first cordial as trading between them soon
became commonplace.
Most of the early colonists were hardworking farmers, but many soon learned that bartering with Indians was the path to faster fortune. British and French traders, generally a rough and tumble lot, discovered the value of furs and animal skins, which the Indians could abundantly produce. The traders also valued another commodity-the Indians themselves as slaves. Traditionally barterers, the Indians adapted quickly to exchanges with the White men. One of the prizes the White traders had to offer in return were guns, a weapon that would change the Indians' lives forever.
Many of the Indians stopped hunting deer for the animals' many uses as food, bone tools, and clothing, and began to slaughter them only for their hides, leaving the flesh and bones to rot in the forest. In 1707 alone, 121,355 deer skins were exported from South Carolina, the result of an enormous and unprecedented slaughter that began in the late 1600's and lasted about 100 years, according to anthropologist Charles Hudson.
For animal skins and furs, the Indians received the guns that gave them more equal footing with Whites, as well as other objects which they greatly desired. They especially wanted the radiant glass beads so unlike their own shell jewelry. Metal hatchets that made their stone tools seem cumbersome and inept were also popular, along with English cloth and buttons, which led to another alteration in the Indians' lives: They changed their way of dress to match what they saw Whites wear.
Quickly,
trade with the Indians became a thriving business in the new colony, and
continued to be the dominant enterprise during most of the 1700's, producing
the first fortunes in the New World. As South Carolina slowly expanded
and more settlers moved inland, the slave market became especially lucrative.
White traders enlisted the help of Indians in capturing slaves by capitalizing
on long-standing disputes among different groups. Now, on raids of their
enemies, the Indians took hostages in numbers far beyond any they had
taken before, captives whom they turned over to the traders for guns,
bullets, powder, and other items. Indians from South Carolina wanted the
weaponry so much that they traveled as far as Mississippi and Florida
to catch slaves to exchange for guns.
Not everyone approved of the role the immigrants were playing in this flesh trade, including the Proprietors, who sought to minimize the practice with an edict in 1677 ordering that only the colonial government could engage in Indian trade. Some colonists, particularly those closest to the far reaches of the frontier, where they had a clear view of the havoc slavery was creating among the Indians, also opposed the slave trade. But other settlers resented any interference, and persisted despite the Proprietors' order.
Indians by no means were the only people to suffer bondage at the hands of Whites. The census of South Carolina for 1708 reported that among the 9,500 people officially counted, 3,000 were Black slaves and 1,400 were Indian captives, not far from the equivalent of one slave for every White. Some Indians also owned slaves, which they kept for themselves and did not trade.
Not surprisingly, the wide-scale barter in human life significantly intensified the dangers Indians faced, so much so that in 1693 the Cherokee, who had until then largely avoided trading with Charleston, felt compelled to send a delegation offering friendship, coupled with pleas for protection from other Indians hunting slaves. The Cherokee also now wanted to get their own share of the English guns.
Many Indians felt they had to get the weapons to protect themselves from marauding enemies hunting slaves. But to get the guns, they, too, were often required to pay in slaves. As time passed, however, more Indians became uneasy about the calamities rampant enslaving of one another was bringing; also, many were disgruntled over the ill treatment they received from White traders. When enough of them were aroused, they organized a bloody revolt.
None of the strong, centralized Indian governments from the Mississippian era remained. Instead, there were many independent chiefs whose rule was restricted to a single village or two and nearby hamlets. However, in the face of dangers introduced by the arrival of Whites, disparate groups began forming alliances. In South Carolina and Georgia, coastal Indians called the Yamasee banded together with the Creeks from south and central Georgia to wage war. At times, they indiscriminately attacked any Whites, regardless of whether their victims had participated in the slave trade or in any other way harmed an Indian. Having white skin was reason enough to incur Indian wrath.
From 1715 to 1717, the Yamasee and their allies battled the colonists, attacking settlements along the South Carolina coast. Elsewhere in the Southeast, Indians murdered White traders and stole their supplies. The English responded by cutting off trade: No more guns would be swapped that might be used to kill the merchants. Weapons were not withheld from all Indians, however. Seeking allies for themselves, colonists approached the Cherokee living in the mountains to the north with an offer of guns and low-priced goods in return for help fighting the Yamasee and Creeks.
The Cherokee didn't easily decide to join the Whites against other Indians. Even before their negotiations began with the colonists, some Cherokee may have killed colonists during the early stages of the Yamasee War; reports vary. The issue was forced, though, when Cherokee, favoring a colonial alliance, reportedly murdered visiting Creek ambassadors, violating the unwritten Indian law that such emissaries were guaranteed safe passage. The killings required Creek retaliation, and fueled an enmity between the two groups that burned for years to come.
By joining the colonists, the Cherokee helped break the back of the Indian rebellion, and the Creeks and their allies were subdued. But in defeat, the rebels achieved a victory of sorts because the war contributed to a steep decline in the Indian slave trade. Whites decided to concentrate on the safer pursuit of skins and furs and looked elsewhere for slaves. Peddling of Blacks steadily increased, in part, because Black slaves were worth twice as much as Indians. The Indians were too inclined to revolt and escape into the wilderness they knew so well. To minimize these risks, Indian slaves were often sent far from their homes to New England or the West Indies.
During this early colonial period, the Russell Reservoir area was still unoccupied, although Cherokee lived not far away to the north, and groups allied with their Creek enemies lived nearby to the south. White traders who passed through the vacant land were often illiterate, so they left no written accounts of what they saw. But other Europeans did record their observations, including the British colonel George Chicken, who traveled along the Savannah River in the 1720's en route to meet the Cherokee.
The colonel's aim was to persuade the Indians not to trade with or support the French, who were trying to expand, at British expense, their own toehold in the New World eastward from their settlements in Mississippi and Louisiana. Furthermore, Chicken intended to discourage reconciliation between the Cherokee and Creeks, no doubt because a truce among the Indians could make them formidable adversaries against the colonists. The French also envisioned such a scenario, and tried to bring it to pass by rousing Indian sentiments against the British. If they succeeded, they might win all Indian trade for themselves.
Writings about the reservoir area and surrounding land, including Chicken's account, placed the Cherokee north along the headwaters of the Savannah River in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The study area remained mostly empty, possibly a residual effect of whatever prompted the disappearance of Mississippian people.
The amount of unoccupied land had diminished by colonial times from what had existed in the Mississippian period, but there were still empty miles that now formed a buffer between the Cherokee and Creeks. This stretch was entered cautiously by all, including hunting parties from both tribes, and warriors intent on raiding their foes.
Richard Taylor and Marion Smith of the University of South Carolina, who conducted the major archeological survey of the Russell area, suggested that disease may have been a factor in the prolonged absence of population. Fully half the Cherokees were killed by smallpox in 1738, for example. The empty buffer would have helped limit the spread of such infectious illnesses from one group to another, as well as help limit hostile confrontations.
As their appetite for European goods and need for the colonists' protection grew, the Cherokee began to relinquish their land. In 1747, they signed over to the British property along the upper Savannah River in what is now southern Abbeville County near Long Canes Creek in South Carolina. This tract was the first section of the reservoir territory to become part of the British colony.
Hostilities among the Indians mounted, often fanned by self-serving Europeans. The Cherokee were embattled with many enemies besides the Creeks, some of them based far away, such as the Siouan of Virginia, the Tuscarora and Catawba of South Carolina, the Chickasaw and Shawano to the west, and the Iroquois to the north. But fighting the Creeks was especially destructive for the Cherokee, who abandoned many of their towns in South Carolina because of the battles between them. They fled to the north and west into the safety of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The Cherokee wanted the British to establish forts within Cherokee territory to protect them, as well as to promote trade, and by 1753 secured such a promise. When the British began building Fort Prince George, many Cherokee began returning to South Carolina. The fort was built adjacent to the Keowee River, a source for the Savannah River. The spot was ideally close to the well-worn Cherokee Path, also called the Keowee Path, which extended south to Charleston and north to the mountains. Across the river from the fort stood Keowee, an important Cherokee village.
The Cherokee were widely scattered across the foothills and mountains of the Southeast. They never operated as a monolithic, totally united force. Consequently, anthropologists have developed labels to distinguish distinct groups among them. Those who lived near Fort Prince George in northwestern South Carolina and northeastern Georgia are identified as the Lower Cherokee, and Keowee was their most prominent village. They differed slightly culturally and in their dialect from those Indians living in the North Carolina mountains who are labeled Middle Cherokee. Those who lived on the other side of the mountains in east Tennessee are referred to as the Overhill Cherokee.
The three clusters sometimes cooperated with one another, and sometimes did not, but, regardless, the many chiefdoms among them prized their autonomy.
Michael Harmon of the University of South Carolina has documented just how the Lower Cherokee became dependent on British goods, while they still retained aspects of their own culture. Their artifacts, discovered near the headwaters of the Savannah River, revealed that the Indians traded for many goods, including ceramic jugs, pewter spoons, tin pots, frying pans, and brass kettles. Even though they used and valued these European utensils and cooking gear, they did not abandon traditional communal eating habits, maintaining them throughout the 1700's.
When
the brass kettles they obtained through trade wore out, they recycled
the metal to make jewelry and arrowheads; and when the English ceramics
broke, Indians drilled holes in the sherds and turned them into pendants
for necklaces and bracelets. The Cherokee also adapted
European glass to their own use, transforming it into tools such as scrapers,
which they had made before from sharpened stone. Glass stems were reserved
for important mystical functions-the Indians carried them as good luck
charms and for divining the future. Quartz crystals were used similarly
before the Europeans arrived, perhaps because the dragon-like monster
of Cherokee myth, the Uktena, supposedly had a sparkling, diamond-like
crystal in its forehead. Anyone resourceful enough to capture that crystal,
called the Ulunsuti, would win special powers. The abundance of
glass brought to North America by the colonists must have contributed
to the awe the Europeans originally inspired among the Indians.
European influence extended beyond what could be found inside the Indians' homes and affected the structures themselves. By the mid-1700's, the custom of building separate houses for warm and cool weather began to decline, and various Cherokees erected only one rectangular dwelling for year-round use. In some places, though, dual housing persisted until the end of the century. The Cherokee also ceased building walls of upright posts arranged side by side, and instead, by the 1780's, copied the European method of placing logs horizontally. They also adopted fireplaces and wooden floors, and stopped using woven mats to cover floors.
Cherokee furnishings followed tradition awhile longer, with cots for beds and seats, and baskets for storing clothing. However, those who could afford to, did add one more European feature-a big, wooden trunk for storage. Indians may have also salvaged traders' shipping crates for the same purpose. They also liked the cloth Europeans bartered, and traded for scissors, needles, and metal awls to help transform the material into clothes. Cherokee men took to donning European-style shirts, but continued wearing loin cloths and moccasins, or went barefoot. Indians did not customarily wear trousers until the 1800's.
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