Yamasee War

L. Ramsey William

Description

William L. Ramsey provides a thorough reappraisal of the Yamasee War, an event that stands alongside King Philip’s War in New England and Pontiac’s Rebellion as one of the three major “Indian wars” of the colonial era. By arguing that the Yamasee War may be the definitive watershed in the formation of the Old South, Ramsey challenges traditional arguments about the war’s origins and positions the prewar concerns of Native Americans within the context of recent studies of the Indian slave trade and the Atlantic economy.

 

The Yamasee War was a violent and bloody conflict between southeastern American Indian tribes and English colonists in South Carolina from 1715 to 1718. Ramsey’s discussion of the war itself goes far beyond the coastal conflicts between Yamasees and Carolinians, however, and evaluates the regional diplomatic issues that drew Indian nations as far distant as the Choctaws in modern-day Mississippi into a far-flung anti-English alliance. In tracing the decline of Indian slavery within South Carolina during and after the war, the book reveals the shift in white racial ideology that responded to wartime concerns, including anxieties about a “black majority,” which shaped efforts to revive Anglo-Indian trade relations, control the slave population, and defend the southern frontier. In assessing the causes and consequences of this pivotal conflict, The Yamasee War situates it in the broader context of southern history.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• United States of America
• América del Norte
• Local history
• Southern United States
• Indigenous peoples
• North America
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Nebraska
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803237445
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Yamasee War

indians of the southeast Series Editors

Michael D. Green University of North Carolina

Theda Perdue University of North Carolina

Advisory Editors

Leland Ferguson University of South Carolina

Mary Young University of Rochester

the yamasee war

A Study of Culture, Economy, and Conflict in the Colonial South william l. ramsey

University of Nebraska Press

Lincoln and London

Parts of chapters 1, 3, 4, and 6 originally appeared in “‘Something Cloudy in Their Looks’: The Origins of the Yamasee War Re- considered,”Journal of American History(June 2003): 44–75. 90 Copyright © Organization of American Historians http://www .oah.org/. Reprinted with permission.

Parts of chapters 2 and 7 originally appeared in the following ar- ticles: “A Coat for ‘Indian Cuffy’: Mapping the Boundary between Freedom and Slavery in Colonial South Carolina,”South Carolina Historical Magazine 103 (January 2002): 48–66; “‘All & Singular the Slaves’: A Demographic Profile of Indian Slavery in Colonial South Carolina,”Money, Trade, and Power: The Evolution of a Planter Society in Colonial South Carolina, ed. Jack P. Greene, Rosemary Brana-Shute, and Randy J. Sparks (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 170–90.

© 2008 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ramsey, William L., 1961– The Yamasee War : a study of culture, economy, and conflict in the colonial South / William L. Ramsey. p. cm.—(Indians of the Southeast) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn978-0-8032-3972-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Yamasee War, 1715–1716. 2. Yamasee Indians—Wars. 3. Yamasee Indians—Commerce. 4. Indian slaves—South Carolina—History. 5. South Carolina—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. I. Title. e83.713.r36 2008 973.2'5—dc22 2007040974

Set in Quadraat by Kim Essman. Designed by Ashley Muehlbauer.

For Mei-Yee

Contents

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Series Editors’ Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Introduction: The Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

part 1: tinder 1. Carolinians in Indian Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2. Indian Slaves in the Carolina Low Country . . . . . . . 34

part 2: spark 3. Market Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 4. Trade Regulation and the Breakdown of Diplomacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

part 3: fire 5. The Heart of the Alliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 6. Auxiliary Confederates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

part 4: ash 7. Monsters and Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 8. New Patterns of Exchange and Diplomacy . . . . . . 183

Conclusion: New Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Appendix: The Huspah King’s Letter to Charles Craven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Illustrations

maps 1. The Southeast on the eve of the Yamasee War, 1715 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Components of the 1715 Indian Coalition at war with South Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

tables 1. Rate of household ownership of slaves, 1690–1739 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 2. Population statistics for Indian slaves . . . . . . . . . . 175 3. Survey of South Carolina postmortem inventories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Acknowledgments

Daniel Richter once referred to the writing of his classic book on the Iroquois as “the ordeal ofThe Ordeal of the Longhouse.” Likewise, writing the history of the Yamasee War has been a war in its own right for me. That I have managed at long last to stop fighting my way through the numerous problems associated with this topic and stand up in polite society as if I had actually held my own is due mainly to a number of people who encouraged me in the effort or made it possible with their own work or guidance. Academically, these include the handful of scholars who pre- pared the way for me by fighting their own battles against daunting odds: Peter H. Wood, Kathryn E. Holland Braund, J. Lietch Wright Jr., Charles Hudson, Daniel H. Usner Jr., Steven J. Oatis, Steven Hahn, James Merrell, Alan Gallay, Joshua Piker, Tom Hatley, Alex Moore, Theda Perdue, and Michael D. Green. Thanks also to my dissertation director at Tulane, Sylvia R. Frey, who taught me to see history from different perspectives. I am especially grateful to Ken Davis and the members of the Muscogee Red Stick Society who helped me understand Muscogee warrior traditions a little better. It was one of the great honors of my life to meet and speak on several occasions with John Yahola, a venerable elder and warrior in the Red Stick tradition. If I have misunderstood or misrepresented Creek history or culture, it is the fault of my own incompetence in spite of their generous and patient efforts to help me. Funding for research and travel were provided by the American Philosophical Society’s Phillips Fund for Native American Research, by the American Historical Association’s Kraus research grant, and by the University of Idaho.