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The eighteenth century brought enormous changes to the Siouan peoples and their neighbors. The Yamassee War of 1715 transformed many independent societies into “Settlement Indians,” living dependent within the boundaries of or along the edges of colonial settlements (Wood 1989:48). The colonial economy grew increasingly dependent on enslaved African labor , forever altering the ratio between whites, African slaves, and Indians. Resettlement and realignment of tribes toward the “Catawba Nation,” as revealed through a study of Indian maps (Waselkov 1989), shows just how far the changes penetrated Indian life. The Catawba Nation, itself a conglomeration of tribes and languages, symbolized the reorganized “New World” of the Indian, according to historian James Merrell (1989). In this chapter, I look at the society along the borderlands where the Waccamaw, Cape Fear Indians, and others found themselves in the eighteenth century. These borderlands encompassed the sparsely settled regions outside Charleston , South Carolina, north and northeast toward the border with North Carolina and the Cape Fear River region. The Siouan Indians lived in the borderland society, where they were harassed by Algonquian and Iroquoian enemies,cheated by traders making deals to buy their lands,and encouraged to join the colonial militia where they became indispensable to the colonial defense system. The Yamassee War of 1715 changed the Indians’world forever.The small coastal tribes, allied with the English, numbering perhaps eight hundred at the start of the war, suffered the heaviest loss and experienced the greatest disruptions. The Wimbee, Combahee, Kussah, and Ashepoo, for example, fought the war in their home territory, south of Edisto Island and the Port Royal area. At the end of the war, they became heavily dependent on the English, who thereafter referred to them as “Indians residing within the Settlement.” Their numbers continued to drop so that by 1730 there were only ¤ve hundred or so left. After 1743, most of their names were never  Society along the Borderlands recorded again in the colonial record. Scattered about the settlements, they lived in small family groups. Waccamaw and Cape Fear Indians lived just beyond the borders of the English settlements, where they fared a little better than their coastal neighbors. At the start of the Yamassee War, the Waccamaw were the largest of the smaller Siouan nations living in the frontier north of Charleston. According to an Indian census taken in 1715, there were 57 Seawees (Sewee), 106 Weneaws (Winyaw), 125 Santees and Congarees, 206 Cape Fears, 510 Sarows (Cheraw), 610 Waccomassus (Waccamaw), and 1,470 Catapaws (Catawba ) (Milling 1969:222,n.57).After the Yamassee War,the frontier proved to be a dangerous place for the European settlers, as well as the Waccamaw, Cape Fear, Cheraw, and other small tribes. Before 1730, the southern colony of Carolina was “a squat triangle of settlement the base of which was the coast between Winyah Bay and Port Royal Sound, its apex the great bend of the Santee ¤fty miles inland, its white population ten thousand, its slaves twice that number” (Meriwether 1974:3). Many changes occurred in the white settlements during this period . In 1719, the South Carolinians overthrew the rule of the Lords Proprietors , whose political power was transferred to the crown. Under a more liberal government and the protection of the British crown, the colony was set to expand.German and Scotch-Irish immigrants ®ooded in,pushing the colony’s boundaries northward and pressuring the Indians. The rice plantations located within the boundaries of the colony drew upon the labor of thousands of African slaves. As the slave population expanded to meet this demand, the white population shrank to one-third of the total of thirty thousand by 1729 (Meriwether 1974:6). Colonists feared both an internal rebellion of their slaves and the external threat of hostile Indians. The Crown centralized all functions of the colonial government in Charleston, and the General Assembly met there each fall. The journals of the government meetings provide an extensive record of Indian affairs. From these journals, we can see that attention turned toward the frontier and the “middle country,” where settlement, trade, and military activity shifted away from the coast toward the “pine belts, between the tidewater and the sand hills” (Meriwether 1974:10). Between the settlements and the middle country, in the tidewater region, there remained small pockets of Indians, like the “Cape Fairs,” “Ittewans, Cussoes, Winyas, St. Helenas and others.” They survived along the margins of the settlements, ranging freely but subject to punishment by the local justices of the...

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