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CHAPTER II CAROLINIAN EXPANSION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY The two decades from the Westo affair to the outbreak of Queen Anne's War saw but meagre growth in the area of settlement in South Carolina, or in the number of planters. In 1700 the population of the province was a scant five thousand , mostly living within a few miles of Charles Town, though now the Port Royal region was also attracting settlers. The transition from mixed farming and cattle raising to rice culture was just beginning, and with it the development of negro slavery.! But in another sort of enterprise this weak border province had revealed forces of expansion without parallel in the English colonies. Neglected by the Proprietors, unsupported by the Crown, the Carolinians had contrived to push the first frontier of the province, the frontier of the Indian trade and of Indian alliances, farther into the wilderness than English traders elsewhere were wont to venture. Before the end of the century, therefore, they were in contact and keen rivalry not only with the Spanish of Florida, but also with the French in the region of the Gulf and the lower Mississippi. Throughout the colonial period, the Indian trade was the chief instrument of Carolinian expansion. Other forces, to be sure, played a part. In an age of projects this debatable land of the South( became the favorite field for colonial promoters. The record of these schemes, from the days of Doncaster and Cardross and Coxe to those of Montgomery and Purry and Oglethorpe, reveals a significant transition from the seventeenth -century era of colonization to that of the eighteenth century, with the westward movement as the new setting. The colony promoters, even those who failed, helped to advertise the South as a land of vast promise, and to awaken the government at home to its special strategic importance. But, meanwhile , the actual penetration of the southern wilderness and the 1 Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719, 1897, p. 316. U. B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery, 1918, p. 87. On the occupation of the southern border, see below, pp. 162-3. [22 ] CAROLINIAN EXPANSION 23 spread of English influence was accomplished under other auspices, by obscure and often nameless explorers and traders. More than any other English colony, except possibly New York, South Carolina was favored by geography in the development of a western Indian trade. The mountain ranges, so long an effective obstacle to penetration from Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania, were easily avoided by all but the Cherokee traders. Nor did any southern tribes in imitation of the Iroquois maintain the role of middlemen in the interior trade, and thus block the advance of the English traders.2 Yet Carolina was geographically less fortunate than either Florida or Louisiana. The Spanish could reac4 the Lower Creek towns by the Apalachicola River, and the French, once Mobile was established, had easy water carriage to the Alabama, Talapoosa, and Abikha. The Carolina traders had to convey their goods on the backs of Indian burdeners or on packhorses by overland paths which intersected nearly all the important rivers of southeastern North America. However, even possession of the water-routes, and the finesse which the Latins everywhere displayed in Indian diplomacy, were more than offset by the superiority, as complete in the South as in the North, of English trade. The fundamental reason for the successes of the English in the tortuous politics of the wilderness was pithily expressed by the first provincial Indian agent of South Carolina . In 1708 Thomas Nairne asserted that 'the English trade for Cloath alwayes atracts and maintains the obedience and friendship of the Indians, they Effect them most who sell best cheap.'3 Moreover, one important and peculiar branch of the Carolina trade, the commerce in Indian slaves, depending as it did upon intertribal wars, was extraordinarily wasteful in its effects, and led to rapid penetration of the interior. Then, too, the South Carolina trade was actively fostered by the provincial government. Indeed, the leaders in the government and in the trade were identical. Charges of monopolistic practises were freely made against the great traders who controlled the council 2 See Wraxall, An Abridgement of the India,n Affairs, 1678-1751, 19\5, especially the Introduction, pp. xlii, lxii-Ixiv; A. H. Buffinton, 'The Policy of Albany and English Westward Expansion,' in MVHR, VIII. 327-66; Helen Broshar, 'The First Push Westward of the Albany Traders,' ibid., VII...

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