Modjeska Simkins School of Human Rights Summer School 2015

Modjeska Simkins School of Human Rights Summer School 2015 A brief People’s History of South Carolina Part One: Native People (1500’s) through the Civil War (1865) Required reading for class A brief People’s History of South Carolina Part one: Native People (1500’s) through the Civil War (1865) Required reading for class These short items are all taken from theSouth Carolina Encyclopedia published in 2006 by the University of South Carolina Press. They are not meant to an exhaustive account, but a chronological sampler about the people and events that make our state unique. During the long history of the place we have come to know as South Carolina, there have always been brave people who resisted injustice. These are the people and struggles we need to know as we continue the long fight. There are required readings on the enslavement of Native and African people at the Modjeska School web site. Supplemental readings, videos and other links are also posted on the Summer School portion web site. INDEX Native people Cofitachiqui Catawbas Cherokees Barbados Yamassee War Revolution of 1719 Township Plan Stono Rebellion Regulators Revolutionary War Denmark Vesey Nullification Grimke Sisters Free Persons of Color Secession Gov. Benjamin Franklin Perry James Louis Petigru Port Royal Experiment Penn Center Robert Smalls First South Carolina Regiment South Carolina Progressive Network • [email protected] • www.scpronet.com • 803.808.3384 Native people Catawbas. Catawba legend relates that the tribe arrived in South Carolina, near present-day Fort Mill, Cofitachiqui. Cofitachiqui is the name of a sixteenth- from the north a few hundred years before European and seven teenth-century Native American chiefdom as contact. The first recorded contact with these people was wdl as one of the prin cipal towns of that chiefdom. The by Hernando deSoto in 1540. There is no known ori towns of Cofitachiqui and neighboring Talimeco were gin for the name Catawba, as the members called them- located on a bank of the Wateree River bdow the fall selves “Ye Iswa,” meaning “the people of the river,” but line near Camden. In 1540 Hernando DeSoto visited the name was in com mon usage by the beginning of both towns, and between 1566 and 1568 Juan Pardo led the eighteenth century. The Catawbas were ferocious expeditions to the province from the Spanish town of warriors feared not only by neighboring tribes but Santa Elena. On arriving at Cofitachiqui, De Soto was also by Indian nations to the north. For years the mer by a young woman the Spanish called the “Lady Catawbas and the nations of the Iroquois Confederation of Cofitachiqui.” According to her, the province had had trav eled back and forth along the Appalachian trails suffered a great pestilence, and she ruled following the to raid each other’s towns. However, when the British death of a male relative. Her realm included the central arrived, the Catawbas befriended their new neighbors, portion of present day South Carolina and may have and a strong trade alliance began. That alliance led the extended to the coast and as far northwest as the Appa- Catawbas to fight alongside the British in the French and lachian Mountains. Narratives describe Talimeco with Indian War and the Cherokee War. Despite this history approximately-five: hundred houses and as the princi pal of alliance with the British, however, the Catawbas sup- town of the province, but it had been abandoned after ported the patriot cause during the Revolutionary War. the epi demic. In this vacant town was a mound sur- In return for their alliance in the French and Indian mounted by a large temple covered with woven matting War, King George III in the 1763 Treaty of Augusta and containing carved wooden statues, the bones of past ceded the Catawba tribe of South Carolina a tract of leaders, and a large number of pearls. At Talimeco the land “fifreen miles square” comprising approximately explorers also found Spanish anifacts believed to have 144,000 acres. come from the ill-fated 1526 colony of Lucas Vazquez European settlers began moving onto the Cat- de Ayl16n. The English explorer Henry Woodward awba reservation sometime before the Revolutionary visited Cofitachiqui in 1670, and the last known refer- War. One of the first European settlers among the Cat- ence to the town is the name “Cotuchike” on the awbas was Thomas “Kanawha” Spratt. II, who settled on circa 1685 map drawn by Joel Gascoyne and based on the land near present-day Fort Mill about 1761. Though a survey by Maurice Mathews. Scholars differ on the Spratt got along well with his Catawba neighbors, he Ian guage and ethnic identity of the chiefdom. Accord- soon began selling parcels of land that he had leased ing to these argu ments, the people of the Cofitachiqui from the Catawbas. Within a few years, almost all of the spoke either a Muskhogean or a Siouan language. If most fertile tracts within the reservation they spoke Muskhogean, they were likely related to the Creek Indians of Georgia and Alabama. and they probably migrated westward in the late seventeenth century. If, how ever, they spoke a Siouan language, then the Catawba and related tribes are probably descendants of the chiefdom. CHESTER B. DEPRATTER Baker, Steven G. “Cofitachiqui: Fair Province of Carolina”, USC Mas- ter’s thesis, 1974. DePratter, Chesrer B. “Cofitachiqui; Ethnohistorical and Archaoo- logical Evidence.” In Studies in SC Archaelo, edited by Alben C. Goodyear III and Glen T. Hanson. Columbia: South Carolina lnsti- ture of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 1989. A Catawba family at the turn of the last century. Courtesy, CCPP Archives, Catawba Cultural Center had been leased to English colonists. In 1782 the Cataw- continued to try to rid themselves of the “Catawba bas peti tioned Congress to secure their land so that problem.” Congress appropriated money in 1848 and it would not be “Intruded into by force, nor alienated again in 1854 in an effort to remove the Catawbas even with their own consent.” Not wanting to deal with west of the Mississippi. Conflict between South Carolina the tribe, Congress the following year passed a resolu- and the tribe over the provisions of the Treaty of Na- tion stating that the British title over the Catawba Na- tion Ford con tinued until 1905, when the Catawbas tion had passed into the hands of South Carolina. Con- launched a legal battle to recover their lands. gress rec ommended that South Carolina “take such The Catawba tribe, unlike many eastern bands, measures for the satis faction and security of the said was able to maintain its internal cohesiveness and so- tribe as the said legislature shall, in their wisdom, think cial identity throughout the nineteenth century despite fit.” Thus, the Catawba Nation became the beneficiary the lack of federal or state protec tion. In 1911 Charles of a trust relationship with the state of South Carolina Davis of the Bureau of Indian Affairs reported that, rather than with the United States. in his opinion, the four leading factors in maintain ing Settlers continued to invade Catawba lands. By tribal identity were size, tribal organization, religion, the early 1800s virtually all of their remaining land had and char acter. The tribe was small at that time, been leased out. The non Indian leaseholders worried consisting of only ninety-seven individuals recognized about the permanence of their leases, so in 1838 Gov- by South Carolina as living on or near the Catawba ernor Patrick Noble authorized commissioners to enter reservation. Since the tribe had not intermar ried much into negotiations with the Catawbas for the sale of their with their white neighbors and virtually not at all with land. The Catawbas were willing to part with full tide their black neighbors, according to one observer, “[t]he if the state provided enough money for land acquisi- large major ity are so nearly full blood as to retain the tion near the Cherokees in North Carolina. In 1840 Indian characteristics, and by reason thereof they have the Catawba Nation and the state of South Carolina retained their tribal life and organiza tion.” During the entereq into the Treaty of Nation Ford, which provided twentieth century there was more intermarriage with that the Catawbas would cede the land granted to them non-Indians, which affected the physical characteris- under the Treaty of Augusta in 1763 in return for a tract tics of the tribal members but not their Indian starus. of land of approxi mately three hundred acres in North Because the Catawba membership rolls have been Carolina; if no such tract could be procured to their sat- based on “descendancy’’ rather than “blood quantum,” isfaction, they were to be given $5,000 by the state. The as found among the western tribes, intermarriage with commissioners further promised that the state would non-Indians did not affect the legally recognized Indian pay the Catawbas $2,500 at or immediately after the status of the Catawba children. time of their removal and $1,500 each year thereafter Religion also affected internal cohesion. Most for the space of nine years. members of the Catawba tribe converted to the Mor- Unfortunately, in its haste to remove the Cat- mon religion in the 1880s, and as late as the 1950s the awbas, South Carolina had neglected to secure North majority of the tribe still affiliated with the Mormon Carolina’s permission to have the Catawbas moved to Church. The double minority status of tribal mem- the Cherokee reservation. When the permission was bers (race and religion) tended to bind them together belatedly requested, North Carolina refused.

Load more