#96: The Legend of Issaqueena, the Stono Rebellion, and a University Hill Walking Tour
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Welcome to the first 100 days of the South Carolina History Newsletter! My name is Kate Fowler and I live in Greenville, SC. I have a 9-5 job in marketing, and outside of work, have a deep love of history. I started this newsletter as a passion project to learn more about our beautiful state and build a community of fellow SC history lovers along the way! To establish a foundation for the newsletter and to grow my expertise on a wide variety of South Carolina historical topics, this past February I challenged myself to post 100 newsletters in 100 days. After this coming May 21st, the newsletter will become weekly. Thank you for joining the journey!
Dear reader,
Welcome to Newsletter #96 of The South Carolina History Newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here.
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Yours truly,
Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
➳ Featured SC History Event
Please enjoy our featured SC History Event below, and click here to visit my SC History Events Calendar that organizes all the upcoming SC history events I have discovered. Please let me know if you’d like to add an event to the calendar! Reply to this email or send me a note at schistorynewsletter@gmail.com.
Sunday, June 9th from 1:00 - 2:30 pm | “University Hill Walking Tour” | Tour starts at The Graduate Hotel | Columbia, SC | Tickets: $5 for members, $10 for non-members, FREE for all youth 17 and under
“Established between 1885 and 1950, the University Hill neighborhood features homes with a mix of architectural styles and designs from prominent regional and local architects. As one of the oldest residential communities in Columbia, this neighborhood has continued to be shaped and defined by urban renewal and the University of South Carolina’s eastward expansion. Bounded by Sumter Street, Gervais Street, Laurens Street, and Blossom Street, this portion of South Carolina’s capital city was listed as a Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places in 2004 and it protected as an architectural neighborhood. The tour will last approximately 75 minutes and begin and end at The Graduate Hotel.”
➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Did you know the Legend of Issaqueena?
In the Upstate of South Carolina, many trails, churches, neighborhoods, and natural landmarks are named either “Issaqueena” or “Cateechee.”
There is an especially beautiful waterfall named Issaqueena Falls in Walhalla, SC — one of Oconee County’s most popular destinations — that is shrouded in legend.
The legend goes that Issaqueena, whose name likely came from the Choctaw word “isi-okhina” which means “deer creek,” was a young Native American woman living in what is now Pickens County.
Most versions of the legend say that Issaqueena, who is occasionally called Cateechee, fell in love with a white settler, but learned that her tribe was planning a surprise attack on a white encampment.
In an attempt to warn the settlers, Issaqueena set out on horseback, naming the landmarks she passed for the distance she had traveled, including names that have stuck today like Six Mile Mountain, Twelve Mile River, Eighteen Mile Creek, and the town Ninety-Six.
According to legend, Issaqueena rode 96 miles from Keowee, the capital of the Cherokee nation, to the trading post to warn Francis and his fellow settlers of the impending attack.
Issaqueena successfully warned the settlers, but when her tribe learned of her betrayal, they swore to hunt her down.
They chased Issaqueena to what is now Issaqueena Falls where she pretended to plunge to her death, but actually hid on a ledge under the fall.
Assuming she had died, her tribe gave up the hunt and Issaqueena lived out the rest of her days.
In 1898, a man named J.W. Daniels published a “descriptive poem” of 90 pages about the Issaqueena legend, called “Cateechee of Keeowee”. Here is an excerpt:
“Plumed, and armed, danced wildly
Round the flowing beacon’s red glare;
While Cateechee whispered softly
To the water-sprites her message
Of deliverance and warning.
Though there is no evidence that Issaqueena was ever a real person, it is clear from the sheer number of locations named after this story that it has been a pillar of Upstate folklore for decades.
Blogger Sarena Ramriell from Upcountry Historical writes:
“While not many actual Native American legends still exist in the folklore of the upstate due to the forced removal of large numbers of Cherokee, Choctaw, Catawba, and other peoples, the legend of Issaqueena Falls does show that the presence of Native Americans in the upstate has made an impact on the folklore of the area. However, it also highlights the way that upstate folklore tends to present an idealized view of the White settlers who entered the area.”
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my source for this section
Please leave a comment below!
II.
Did you know that the Stono Rebellion was the largest and bloodiest slave insurrection in South Carolina history?
(Note from Kate: I am sorry to say that while I found illustrations of other slave rebellions in my research, I could not find any newspaper images or illustrations of the Stono Rebellion)
The Stono Rebellion was a violent, failed attempt by as many as 100 slaves to reach St. Augustine and claim freedom in Spanish-controlled Florida.
The uprising was South Carolina’s largest and bloodiest slave insurrection.
While not a direct challenge to the authority of the state, the Stono Rebellion nevertheless “alerted white authorities to the dangers of slave revolt, caused a good deal of angst among planters, and resulted in legislation designed to control slaves and lessen the chances of insurrection by the colony’s black majority population.”
The revolt began on Sunday, September 9, 1739, on a branch of the Stono River in St. Paul’s Parish, near Charleston.
From the SC Encyclopedia:
“Several factors influenced slaves’ timing of the rebellion, including a suspicious visit to Charleston by a priest who contemporaries thought was “employed by the Spaniards to procure a general Insurrection of the Negroes,” a yellow fever epidemic that swept the area in August and September, and rumors of war between Spain and England. It is also probable that the Stono rebels timed their revolt to take place before September 29, when a provision requiring all white men to carry firearms to Sunday church services was to go into effect. In addition, several of the insurgents originated from the heavily Catholic Kongo, and their religious beliefs influenced the timing of the uprising.”
Whatever the slaves’ reasoning, the revolt began early on Sunday when the conspirators met at the Stono River.
From there, they moved to Stono Bridge, broke into a store, equipped themselves with guns and powder, and killed two men.
Guns in hand, they burned down a house, killed 3 people, and then turned southward, reaching a tavern before sunup.
There the insurgents spared the innkeeper because they considered him “a good man and kind to his slaves.”
The innkeeper’s neighbors were less fortunate. The rebels burned 4 of their houses, ransacked another, and killed all the whites they found. Other slaves joined the rebellion, and some sources suggest that at this point the insurgents used drums, raised a flag or banner, and shouted “Liberty!” during their march southward.
At about eleven o’clock, Lieutenant Governor William Bull encountered the insurgents on his way to Charleston.
Bull and his four companions “escaped & raised the Countrey.”
As the rebels proceeded southward, their ranks increased from 60 to as many as 100 participants. According to a contemporary account, they then “halted in a field and set to dancing, Singing and beating Drums to draw more Negroes to them.”
By late afternoon the original insurgents had covered 10 miles. Some were undoubtedly tired, and others were “likely drunk on stolen liquor.”
Confident in their numbers and Kongolese military training, the rebels paused in an open field near the Jacksonborough ferry in broad daylight. They paused in order to rest and also to draw more slaves to their ranks, they decided to delay crossing the Edisto River.
By 4:00 pm, between 20-100 hundred armed planters and militiamen, possibly alerted to the revolt by Bull’s party, confronted the rebels in what was thereafter known as “the battlefield.”
The rebels distinguished themselves as courageous, even in the eyes of their enemies, but “white firepower won the day.”
Some slaves who had been forced to join the rebellion were released, other were shot, and some were decapitated, and their heads set on posts.
30 members of the rebel force escaped but were hunted down the following week.
In the 1930s, as a part of the WPA Federal Writers Project, the great-great-grandson of one of the enslaved leaders of the Stono uprising, named Cato, was interviewed about the family history of the Stono Rebellion that had been passed down to him. Here is an excerpt of what he said:
“I reckon it was hot, ’cause in less than two days, 21 white men, women, and chillun, and 44 Negroes, was slain. My granddaddy say dat in de woods and at Stono, where de war start, dere was more than 100 Negroes in line. When de militia come in sight of them at Combahee swamp, de drinkin’ dancin’ Negroes scatter I de brush and only 44 stand deir ground. “Commander Cato speak for de crowd. He say: ‘We don’t lak slavery. We start to jine de Spanish in Florida. We surrender but we not whipped yet and we is not converted.” De other 43 men say: ‘Amen.’ They was taken, unarmed, and hanged by de militia. Long befo’ dis uprisin’, de Cato slave wrote passes for slaves and do all he can to send them to freedom. He die but he die for doin’ de right, as he see it.”
It was thought that the Stono insurrection continued at least until the following Sunday, when militiamen encountered the largest group of disbanded rebels another 30 miles south.
A second battle ensued, this one effectively ending the insurrection. Yet “white fears echoed for months.” Militia companies in the area remained on guard, and some planters deserted the Stono region in November “for their better Security and Defense against those Negroes which were concerned in that Insurrection who were not yet taken.”
Some of the rebels were rounded up in the spring of 1740, and one leader was not captured until 1742.
The rebellion resulted in efforts to curtail the activities of slaves and free blacks.
The 1740 Negro Act made the manumission of slaves (release from slavery) dependent on a special act of the assembly and mandated patrol service for every militiaman.
The colony also imposed a prohibitive duty on the importation of new slaves in 1741 in an effort to stem the growth of South Carolina’s majority black population.
About 40 settlers and probably as many rebels were killed during the Stono insurrection.
The willingness of slaves to strike out for freedom with such force “heightened anxieties among the White population over internal security in the South Carolina slaveholding society for years to come.”
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my sources for this section
Please leave a comment below!
➳ SC History Quote
“Did not the foot of Cateechee
Land on the crag jutting outward,
Just ten feet below the great rock
On which she stood like a statue
While the arrows fell around her?
Then did she not vanish quickly
Out of sight, like a dim shadow.”
—Another excerpt from J.W. Daniels “descriptive poem” about the Issaqueena legend, called “Cateechee of Keeowee”
Issaqueena article sources:
Jeter, John. “Here Are Some Iconic Upstate, S.C. Places and Etymologies.” Greenville Journal, 19 Jan. 2023, https://greenvillejournal.com/community/whats-in-a-name-here-are-some-iconic-upstate-sc-places-and-etymologies/. Accessed 12 May 2024.
“The Legend of Issaqueena Falls | Upcountry Historical.” Upcountry Historical, https://www.upcountryhistorical.org/items/show/93. Accessed 12 May 2024.
Stono Rebellion article sources:
“Africans in America/Part 1/The Stono Rebellion.” PBS: Public Broadcasting Service, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p284.html. Accessed 12 May 2024.
Smith, Mark M. “Stono Rebellion | South Carolina Encyclopedia.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, 1 August 2016, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/stono-rebellion/#:~:text=The%20Stono%20Rebellion%20was%20a,largest%20and%20bloodiest%20slave%20insurrection. Accessed 12 May 2024.
“Two Views of the Stono Slave Rebellion South Carolina, 1739.” National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox, https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/peoples/text4/stonorebellion.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2024.
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