Waccamaw
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| US (North Carolina, South Carolina) | |
| Languages | |
| unattested, possibly a Catawban language, perhaps closely related to Woccon[1] | |
| Religion | |
| Indigenous religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Winyaw,[2] Catawba[1] |
The Waccamaw people were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, who lived in villages along the Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers in North and South Carolina in the 18th century.[1][3]
Name
[edit source]The meaning of the name Waccamaw is unknown. Francisco of Chicora, a 16th-century Indian man kidnapped by Spanish colonists, wrote it as Guacaya.[1]
Language
[edit source]The Waccamaw language was not recorded and remains unattested. The language likely belonged to the Catawban language family.[1] English explorer John Lawson published a 143-word vocabulary of the possibly related Woccon language in 1709.[4]
History
[edit source]Precontact
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The Indians of the Waccamaw homeland have lived in sedentary towns since at least 3,000 to 500 BP.[a] Maize rapidly became a staple crop in the region. Large countries began to form during the Mississippian period, which first started in the area between 1150 and 1200 AD. Indian tribes neighboring the Waccamaw included the Sewee, Santee, Sampit (Sampa), Winyah, and Pedee.[5]
16th century
[edit source]According to ethnographer John R. Swanton, the Waccamaw may have been one of the first Indian tribes visited by the Spanish conquerors in the 16th century. Within the second decade of the 16th century, Francisco Gordillo and Pedro de Quexos captured and enslaved several Native Americans transporting them to the island of Hispaniola, where they had plantations. Most died within two years, although they were supposed to have been returned to the mainland.[citation needed]
One of the Native men kidnapped by the Spanish in 1521, Francisco de Chicora was baptized and learned Spanish. He worked for Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón. The explorer took him to Spain. Chicora told the court chronicler Peter Martyr about more than 20 Indigenous nations who lived in present-day South Carolina, among which he mentioned the "Chicora" and the "Duhare." Their tribal territories comprised the northernmost regions of Spanish colonial knowledge at the time.[6]
Swanton argued that Chicora was referring to the peoples who became known as the Waccamaw and the Cape Fear Indians, respectively.[7]
18th century
[edit source]European contact decimated the Waccamaw. Having no natural immunity to endemic Eurasian infectious diseases, such as smallpox and measles, the Waccamaw, like many southeastern Native peoples, had high mortality rates from the new diseases. The 1715 Carolina colonial census listed their population as 610 total, with 210 men.[8]
By the early 18th century, the Cheraw tried to recruit the Waccamaw to support the Yamasee and other tribes against English colonists during the Yamasee War in 1715.[1] Escaped slaves also gave intel to the Waccamaw tribe about the English colonists, which caused them to join the war.[9] The Cheraw made peace with the English.[1]
The English colonists founded a trading post in Euaunee, "the Great Bluff," in 1716. The 1720 census recorded that they had 100 warriors.[8] The Waccamaw engaged in a brief war against the South Carolina colony in 1720, and 60 Waccamaw men, women, and children were either killed or captured by the colonists as a result.[10]
Adoption by the Catawba
[edit source]In 1755, John Evans noted in his journal that Cherokee and Natchez warriors killed some Waccamaw and Pedee "in the white people’s settlements."[8] The same year, Governor James Glen informed Catawba chief King Haigler that the South Carolina colony had played a role in persuading the Cheraw, Waccamaw, and Pedee to join the Catawba.[11]
Population
[edit source]While the Waccamaw were never populous, the arrival of settlers and their diseases in the 16th century resulted in devastating population loss and dispersal. Anthropologist James Mooney estimated the 1600s population of the "Waccamaw, Winyaw, Hook, &c" at 900 people, while the 1715 census records only one remaining Waccamaw village with a total population of 106 people, 36 of them men.[12]
State-recognized tribes
[edit source]In the later 19th century, the ancestors of the State-recognized tribe claiming descent from the historic Waccamaw, known as the "Waccamaw Siouan Indians", cultivated corn, tobacco and cotton as commodity crops, as well as swine, oxen, poultry, and sheep, similarly to yeomen among the neighboring African-American freedmen and European-Americans. They slowly sold off their land due to rising taxes and debt, and increasingly turned to wage labor by the end of the century. Men collected turpentine from pine trees to supplement their income, while women grew cash crops, including tobacco and cotton, and worked as domestic laborers or farmhands.[13] In 1910, they organized a council to oversee community issues. A school funded by Columbus County to serve their children opened in 1934. At the time, public education was still racially segregated in the state. Before this, they had been required to send their children to schools for African Americans.[14]
North Carolina recognized the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe of North Carolina in 1971.[15] The community is centered in Bladen and Columbus counties, North Carolina.[3] They have unsuccessfully tried to gain federal recognition.[16] They hold membership on the NC Commission of Indian Affairs as per NCGS 143B-407, and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization in 1977. Lumbee Legal Services, Inc., represents the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe in its administrative process for seeking federal recognition.[17][18][19]
In 2005 South Carolina recognized the Waccamaw Indian People,[20] a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Conway, South Carolina.[21][22] with an office in Aynor, South Carolina.
Both organizations claim to descend from the historic Waccamaw people.
Unrecognized organization
[edit source]The Waccamaw Sioux Indian Tribe of Farmers Union is an unrecognized tribe based in Clarkton, North Carolina, that incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 2001.[23]
See also
[edit source]Notes
[edit source]References
[edit source]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Swanton (156), p. 100
- ↑ Swanton 102–103
- 1 2 Lerch 328
- ↑ Mithun, Marianne (2001). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 506. ISBN 9780521298759.
- ↑ Proposed Establishment of Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge, Georgetown County, Horry County, and Marion County: Environmental Impact Statement. Vol. 1. United States Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. April 1997. pp. 92–93.
- ↑ "First Descriptions of an Iroquoian People: Spaniards among the Tuscarora before 1522", Dr. Blair Rudes, Coastal Carolina Indians Center, 2004.
- ↑ John R. Swanton, "Early History of the Creek Indians and their Neighbors", Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 73 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1922), 32–48
- 1 2 3 Swanton 101
- ↑ Gallay, Alan (2008). The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717. Thomas Nairne, John Stewart. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p. 348. ISBN 978-0-300-13321-9.
- ↑ Swanton 100–101
- ↑ Rudes et al., "Catawba and Neighboring Groups", p. 311.
- ↑ Swanton 103
- ↑ Lerch 330
- ↑ Learch 331
- ↑ "Chapter 71A. Indians". North Carolina General Assembly. Retrieved 14 August 2016.
- ↑ Learch 330
- ↑ See Clarke Beach, "Congress Asked to Recognize Waccamaw Indians in State," Daily Times-News Burlington, N.C., (18 April 1950).
- ↑ "Congress Hears of Lost N.C. Tribe," Asheville Citizen, Asheville, N.C. (27 April 1950)
- ↑ Ross, American Indians in North Carolina, pp. 137-148
- ↑ "Native American Heritage Federal and State Recognized Tribes". State Historical Preservation Office. SC Department of Archives and History. Archived from the original on 3 August 2016. Retrieved 14 August 2016.
- ↑ "Waccamaw Indian People The". OpenCorporates. Retrieved 22 January 2022.
- ↑ "Waccamaw Indian People". Cause IQ. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
- ↑ "Waccamaw Sioux Indian Tribe of Farmers Union, Inc". OpenCorporates. Retrieved 25 April 2024.
- Books
- Lerch, Patricia B. (2004). "Indians of the Carolinas Since 1900". Handbook of North American Indians: Southeast. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 328–336. ISBN 0-16-072300-0.
- Swanton, John Reed (1952). The Indian Tribes of North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution (Reprinted by Genealogical Press). ISBN 9780806317304.
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) - Rudes, Blair A., Thomas J. Blumer, and J. Alan May. "Catawba and Neighboring Groups." In Handbook of North American Indians: Volume 14, Southeast. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004. ISBN 0-16-072300-0.
External links
[edit source]- Waccamaw Indians, state-recognized in South Carolina
- Waccamaw Siouan Indians, state-recognized in North Carolina
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