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Appendix The Huspah King’s Letter to Charles Craven The Yamasee message to Governor Charles Craven had been a tantalizing legend in South Carolina history for three centuries, reported in several period documents and noted in early histories of the colony. Yet no text from the letter was found in the records until June 10, 2000, when I stumbled upon it while doing research at the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh. I was using the British Records Calendar there to identify ships that had put in at Charles Town harbor during 1715 and 1716; my hope was that their captains had included information about the Yamasee War in reports to Admiralty officers. Captain Jonathan St. Lo’s letter was remarkable in itself in this regard. His was the first ship to arrive at Charles Town following the outbreak of hostilities, and the governor was so happy to see it that he rowed out himself rather than wait for St. Lo to anchor and come ashore. While on board, Governor Craven related everything that had happened during April of 1715 and gave an account of the Yamasee letter, dictated by the Yamasees to a captured English boy who mixed gunpowder and water to make ink. Toward the end of his report, Captain St. Lo indicated that he was enclosing a copy of the Yamasee letter. I immediately leafed forward to see if the enclosure was still present, anticipating disappointment . I still have a vivid mental image of the letter as I first saw it, with the Huspah king’s name at the bottom. At that point I had spent nearly a decade of my life on the project and had begun to exhaust my hopes for any further breakthroughs. For some time I sat listening to the air hum through the air conditioner vent before I mustered courage to begin reading the letter. I believe it is a transcription rather than the original letter itself, since it appears to be written in Captain St. Lo’s hand. The full text is published here for the first time: Mr. Wright said that the white men would come and [ fetch] [illegible ] the Yamasees in one night, and that they would hang four of their head men and take all the rest of them for Slaves, and that he would send them all off the Country, for he said that the men of the Yamasees were like women, and shew’d his hands one to the other, and what he said vex’d the great Warrier’s, and this made them begin the war, and the Indians have kill’d forty or fifty white persons, and the Indians are all comeing to take all the Country, they are three hundd. that are goeing to watch to take the Fort at Capt. Woodwards and that at Well Town for in short all the Indians upon the main are comeing and they say that the white People will not be a handful for them for they say they will fight Six year’s but they will take the Country Charles Craven may goe off himself, for the Indians love him, and they say that he and they are like Brothers. The Indians say that they that will not fight of the White men, they will save alive, but they that do fight, they will kill, as for the Women and Children them they will save alive, this is all from the Huspaw King To Charles Craven King att Charles Town 228 Appendix ...

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