#129: History of The Yamassee War, Charleston History Bowl 2025, and The Carolina Backcountry
For South Carolina history lovers far and wide! Published weekly on Monday mornings. Enjoy weekly SC history articles, interviews w/ experts, book recommendations, and upcoming SC historical events.
Dear readers,
Welcome to SC History Newsletter #129!
Today, we’re going to learn about one of the deadliest wars in early South Carolina colonial history. It is surprising that not many books or resources that talk about this war, even though it was so destructive that it almost led to the end of the South Carolina colony in its early days. And if the South Carolina colony had failed, none of us may have ended up living here! Very interesting to think about. All will be revealed below…
But before we begin, I wanted to share something exciting and then offer a challenge.
It’s amazing that I started this newsletter almost 1 year ago on February 8th, 2024!
The newsletter started as a “100 day sprint”! Many of you will remember, I wrote 100 newsletters about South Carolina history in 100 days. And mind you, this newsletter is my passion outside of my full-time job, so this challenge was intense! I stayed up late every night writing the newsletter (sometimes until well past midnight), but the excitement of discovering this amazing South Carolina history — and the amazing support of all of you along the way — kept my fountain of inspiration flowing! And I’d also like to acknowledge my amazing husband and stepson who were (and continue to be) my biggest cheerleaders for the newsletter as well.
To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of the newsletter soon, I am wondering if we can have a little challenge! We are at 849 subscribers as of today. Could we try to get to 1,000 subscribers by February 8th?
That’s 151 new subscribers in 19 days.
If each of you sent this newsletter to 2 of your friends, just imagine how we would blow past that goal, and even more wonderful people would join our newsletter community.
Who’s with me?!
Thank you so much, as always for supporting the newsletter — it truly means so much :)
And now, let’s learn some South Carolina history!
Yours truly,
Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
➳ Housekeeping for new subscribers!
New friends! If you are new to the newsletter, please note that there are over 100 previous SC History newsletters on topics ranging from the founding of Charleston, sunken Confederate submarines, railroad tunnels filled with blue cheese, and so much more! I encourage you to take a look at our archive here. And here are a few top posts to start you off:
#32: The "Southern Paul Revere," the Cherokee Nation, and the SC Historical Society's annual meeting
#107: Surviving Hurricane Hugo, a Textile Tour, and the Combahee River Raid
Send me your comments or topic ideas: I love it when subscribers write to me! Have a SC History topic or question you’d like for me to write about? Have additional ideas or feedback for me? Just reply to this email and let me know!
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➳ Featured SC History Events
Please note our featured SC History Event below, and as a perk for paid subscribers, click here or the button below to visit my full 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 to send me your events.
Event Highlight of the Week:
Tuesday, February 11th at 6:00 pm | “Charleston History Bowl 2025” | Tommy Condon’s | Charleston, SC | Tickets are $20 | Website
“Get ready to rumble and start studying up because the Charleston History Bowl is back! In just one month, compete for bragging rights and fun prizes like the coveted Golden Powder Horn! 💥
The ultimate Charleston trivia contest will take place at 6:00pm, Tuesday, February 11th at Tommy Condon's (160 Church Street).
Pre-registration is required. Tickets are $20 per player. Teams up to 4 players are permitted with space limited to 10 teams. Call us at (843) 722-9350 to register!”
➳ Other SC History Recommendations
BOOK: “The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant” by Charles Woodmason and published by the University of North Carolina Press
Publishers’ description:
“In what is probably the fullest and most vivid extant account of the American Colonial frontier, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution gives shape to the daily life, thoughts, hopes, and fears of the frontier people. It is set forth by one of the most extraordinary men who ever sought out the wilderness—Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister whose moral earnestness and savage indignation, combined with a vehement style, make him worthy of comparison with Swift. The book consists of his journal, selections from the sermons he preached to his Backcountry congregations, and the letters he wrote to influential people in Charleston and England describing life on the frontier and arguing the cause of the frontier people. Woodmason's pleas are fervent and moving; his narrative and descriptive style is colorful to a degree attained by few writers in Colonial America.”
Have you read this book before? Tell us your review! Leave a comment below!
➳ SC History Topic of the Week:
The History of The Yamassee War (1715-1718)
Note from Kate: I was inspired to write about this war during my research of portrait artist Henrietta Johnston from last week’s newsletter (See SC History Newsletter #128 here). When Henrietta’s husband returned to Charleston from England in 1715, he “found that his wife and other members of his parsonage were sheltered in place due to fighting between the Yamassee people and European colonizers.”
The Yamassee War was a conflict between the early Carolina colony (now modern day North Carolina and South Carolina) and its trade partners, the Yamassee Indians.
The Yamassee tribe was based along the Savannah River and established early trade with Carolina settlers, exchanging “deerskins for trade items” such as “pots, pans, and guns.”1
The Yamassee were commercial hunters and and deerskins were the core of their trade business with the colonists. Over time however, their lands became overhunted, and they had access to fewer and fewer deerskins to trade.
Without deerskins to sell, the Yamassees turned to slavery as another trade option. They raided native tribes in Florida, such as the Apalchees, and kidnapped individuals to bring back and sell to Carolina traders.
Meanwhile, Carolina traders overextended credit to the Yamassees on purpose with the hopes that one day their debts would force them to extend land concessions to the colonists.
In 1707 the South Carolina government created the Board of Indian Commissioners to “regulate trade and enforce fair trade practices.”2
The Board of Indian Commissioners was run by an Indian agent named Thomas Nairne. Nairne was tasked with reigning in the colonial Indian trade, but the Yamassee debt continued to increase.
The situation reached a tipping point when “The Yamassee trade debt…eventually required at least two years’ labor from every adult male Yamassee. The Yamassees were further angered by the intrusion of white settlers onto their lands.”3
By 1715, Charleston colonists were hearing rumors of a Yamassee uprising and the city was filled with fear.
On April 14, 1715, colonists William Bray, Samuel Warner, and Thomas Nairne (the Indian trader from above) met with a delegation of Yamassee at Pocotaligo Town, southwest of modern-day Charleston, to help defuse the impending violence.
The Yamassee, it seems, were desperate. They had exhausted their deer populations, as well as the slaves they had captured from the Florida colony. The only other option was to kill their creditors.
On Good Friday, April 15, 1715, the Yamassee killed William Bray and Samuel Warner. Thomas Naire died “after several days of ritual torture.”4
The Yamassee then began to attack plantations along the coast. Despite the fact that it is called The Yamassee War, it also involved the Cherokees, Creeks, and Choctaws in a “far-ranging rebellion from the Savannah River to Charleston.”
The plantation raids killed 100 colonists, while 300 other planter families managed to escape on a ship while the Yamassee attacked their farms and killed their livestock.
By June 1715, 90% of the European Indian traders in the area were killed by this coalition of tribes.
Families fled the colony’s frontier and countryside to what they thought, was the safety of Charleston. However, the colonists were barely able to create a strong defense around the perimeter of the city.
According to the South Carolina Encyclopedia:
“Charles Craven, the governor, utilized all white males and even armed black slaves for the colony’s defense. Surrounding southern colonies sent little or no assistance, although Massachusetts did send weapons to South Carolina. Rumors swirled around the city that either the Spanish or the French had encouraged the uprising.”
The turning point in the Yamassee war came with the battles of Port Royal and Salkehatchie, where the colonists were able to drive back the Indian forces south of the Savannah River. The Yamassee allies, however, continued to gain strength.
One historian described the alliance between the Yamassee and their allies as one of “the greatest in colonial American history because it could have destroyed the Carolinas and Virginia.”
In 1716, the Carolinians managed to convince the Lower Cherokees to side with them, thus weakening the Yamassee alliance. Though this would also begin a conflict between the Cherokee and the Creek Indians that would last for the next 40 years.
The worst days of the Yamassee War were over by April 1716, and South Carolina leaders “brought the conflict to a close by 1718.”5
The damage from the war was enormous. 400 settlers were killed. [Note: I was not able to find how many Yamassee Indians were killed, nor the size of the Carolina population to gauge a percentage of casualities.] Colonial property damage stood at £236,000 sterling and military costs to defend the colony rested at £116,000 sterling, “more than three times the combined value of all exports.” Carolina farmers were driven out from over half of the cultivated land in the colony.
The deerskin trade didn’t reach its former prosperity until 1722, nearly 4 years after the war ended.
No English colony came as close to eradication by a native population as South Carolina did during The Yamassee War.
Denise Bossy, associate professor of history at the University of North Florida, has said:
“The Yamasee as a people have been overlooked by the mainstream and only one book has been written about the war…It’s a really important event in Southern and North American history, yet it is one of the least well known of wars compared with its importance.”
Professor of Transnational/American Studies at SUNY Buffalo, Donald Andrew Grinde Jr. (who of Yamassee heritage) has said:
“There is a reason why it [The Yamassee War] hasn’t been talked about much—because we almost won…Almost 10 percent of the white population in South Carolina were killed.”
Hardened by the circumstances that had brought on the Yamassee War, the South Carolina Government established a monopoly over all Indian trade as of 1716. This essentially replaced all private Indian trading with government agents who were held to very strict trade regulations.
After the devastating losses of the Yamassee War, North Carolina and South Carolina ended the Native slave trade by the British, though “slavery among some of the tribes continued.”
While those native people who had been sold into slavery were not freed, the British “turned exclusively to trading African slaves.”
After the war, the Yamassee tribe scattered in several different locations. Many relocated to Georgia (which was not yet settled) and others merged with the Creek tribe.
The Yamasse became known as a “refugee tribe” and after the war, “those who relocated to Georgia were safe from slave catchers, no matter their race or heritage.”
Professor Donald Andrew Grinde Jr. further explains:
“That explains the rise of our multi-racial heritage. Black slaves who ran away from South Carolina knew if they could make it across the Savannah River they would be free. They could join us [The Yamassee] in the same way they later went into Florida to join the Seminoles. Georgia wasn’t founded until 1733.”
Additionally, a group of “rangers” was formed to patrol the Carolina backcountry and additional men patrolled the South Carolina southern coastline.
In this time, the Lords Proprietors still controlled South Carolina. They were 8 English noblemen granted authority by King Charles II to govern and profit from the Carolina colony.
The failure of the Lords Proprietors to adequately defend and protect their colonists in this time of crisis and war contributed to South Carolina becoming a Royal Colony in 1719.
➳ Sources — The History of The Yamassee War (1715-1718)
"American History Central - Yamasee War." American History Central, www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/yamasee-war/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.
"Native History: Yamasee War Ends Native Slave Trade." ICT News, ictnews.org/archive/native-history-yamasee-war-ends-native-slave-trade-upcoming-conference. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.
"South Carolina Encyclopedia - Yamassee War." South Carolina Encyclopedia, www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/yamassee-war/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.
“Lander Professor Granted Sabbatical to Work on New Book.” Lander University News, 2019, www.lander.edu/news/2019/01/lander-professor-granted-sabbatical-to-work-on-new-book.html. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.
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"Native History: Yamasee War Ends Native Slave Trade." ICT News, ictnews.org/archive/native-history-yamasee-war-ends-native-slave-trade-upcoming-conference. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.
"South Carolina Encyclopedia - Yamassee War." South Carolina Encyclopedia, www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/yamassee-war/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.