The Yamasee War: A Study of Culture, Economy, and Conflict in the Colonial South

Introduction: The Problems

Introduction The Problems On April 14, 1715, the Yamasee Indians welcomed a group of South Carolinians in their principal town of Pocotaligo, south of Charles Town (now Charleston) by about sixty miles. Alarmed at reports of Yamasee unrest, the English had come to reassure the Indians of their friendship and alliance, and the talks appeared to have gone well. Everyone went to bed that evening amicably, “as if seeming well pleased.” In the morning, however, Good Friday, the Yamasees killed the majority of the British negotiators. They spent the remainder of the day torturing those unfortunate enough to have survived the massacre at dawn. When the Carolinians cried out in agony, “My God,” Yamasee warriors danced about repeating, “My God, my God.” Thomas Nairne, as Indian agent for the colony, received special attention. He was “loaded” with wood and roasted for several days “before he was allowed to die.” Clearly, the Carolinians had neglected an important step in the dialogue.1 In the weeks following, it became apparent that the English had neglected a great deal across the entire region. Warriors from virtually every nation in the South, from the Catawbas and their piedmont neighbors in the Carolinas to the Choctaws of Mississippi (see map 1), joined together in one of the most potent native coalitions ever to oppose the British in colonial North America. Southeastern Indians destroyed most of South Carolina’s plantation districts and came within a few miles of Charles Town itself during the first year of the war. Shocked and bewildered, South Carolinians found themselves surrounded and under attack “on every side but the sea-side.”2 The Yamasee War, as it has come to be known, has long been recognized as one of the most important events in southern colonial history. According to historian Gary B. Nash, Native American combatants came “as close to wiping out the European colonists as ever [they] came during the colonial period.” By 1718 when peace returned to much of the region, over four hundred colonists and an untold number of Native American warriors had perished, making the conflict a serious candidate for America’s bloodiest war in proportion to the populations involved. The war spurred extensive tribal migrations and alliance realignments that changed the diplomatic and cultural landscape of the region for the remainder of the eighteenth century, and it led directly to the collapse of South Carolina’s proprietary government in 1719. British imperial responses to the war, moreover, prompted the first calls for a Map 1. The Southeast on the eve of the Yamasee War, 1715   
 
  
    Gulf of Mexico Atlantic Ocean Ch att ah oo che e Ri ver T o m b i g b e e R i v e r T e n n e s s e e River M i s s i s s i p p i R i v e r T a l l a p o o s a R i v e r                                      
                  
    
   
 buffer colony to protect Carolina’s southern border, culminating in the establishment of Georgia in 1733.3 The Yamasee War easily ranks with King Philip’s War and Pontiac’s rebellion as one of the major “Indian Wars” of the colonial era, yet it has not received the same level of scholarly attention . Pontiac’s rebellion has been treated by Francis Parkman and, most recently, Gregory Evans Dowd, while King Philip’s War has almost become a field unto itself, boasting at least five major studies in the last six years. For much of the twentieth century, by contrast, the only historical discussions of the Yamasee War were chapter-length treatments in Verner W. Crane’s landmark study The Southern Frontier and Chapman J. Milling’s Red Carolinians, both published more than sixty years ago. The conflict has traditionally been cast in moral terms as a righteous effort on the part of Native Americans to exact vengeance against unscrupulous and abusive Europeans. Verner Crane, for instance, viewed it as a “far reaching revolt against the Carolinian trading regime,” in which Native Americans across the South rose up in anger over the “tyrannies of the Charles Town traders.” John R. Swanton, writing in the same decade, also felt that the “misconduct of some traders” had been the “immediate cause” of the war but went on to add that fears of enslavement may have prompted the Yamasees to action as well...