Congaree
The Congaree people are a North American Indian tribe that became extinct in the late 18th century . The tribe, estimated to have 800 people around 1600, was native to the banks of the Congaree River in South Carolina in the United States , not far from today's Columbia in the area of Congaree National Park .
Presumably they were a people of the Sioux and closely related to the Catawba and the Wateree , their neighbors, it is assumed that they belonged to the Sioux language family .
The Congaree settled in the Piedmont region , their exact location on the northeast bank of the Santee River below the confluence of the Wateree River was described by John Lawson . They had already been significantly decimated by epidemics before they took part in the Lake Yamasee War in 1715 . A census that year found a total population of 40 people, 22 of whom were men. Over half the tribe were captured by white settlers in 1716 and sold into slavery in the West Indies . The remaining Congaree were incorporated into the Catawba tribe, the dialect of the Congaree is considered one of the languages spoken by the Catawba people.
literature
- James H. Merrell: The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
- Frederick Webb Hodge: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico V. 1/4 , The Smithsonian Institution (Reprint of 1912 edition), page 338. ISBN 1-58218-748-7