Cusabo

Tribal area of the Cusabo in the 17th century.

The Cusabo (also Corsaboy ) were a North American Indian people who lived on the Atlantic coast of today's state of South Carolina in the southeastern United States . The settlement area probably extended between what is now Charleston and the Savannah River . The Cusabo are often referred to as the Settlement Indians of South Carolina.

Tribes

The Cusabo Confederation comprised a total of nineteen tribes, including the Ashepoo, Combahee, Coosa (also Coosaw, Cussoe or Kussoe), Edisto, Escamacu (or the St. Helena Indians), Etiwan (also Irwan or Eutaw), Kiawah, Stono, Wando , Wappoo and Wimbee. Other non-Cusabo groups in the area were the Sewee and Santee , according to a 1696 report

language

The language of the Cusabo is unknown and no longer exists today. There is evidence that there was a common language spoken by at least five tribes on the coast and between the lower reaches of the Savannah to the Wando River , east of Charleston. It was different from the Guale and Sewee languages. It is likely that the Ashepoo, Combahee, Escamaçu, Etiwan, and the Kiawah used the language known as Cusaboan . Only a few words of the language were recorded by René Goulaine de Laudonnière in the 16th century , including Skorrye or Skerry , which roughly corresponds to the word "evil" or "enemy". Most words have no translation. About 100 of the words received are place names and 12 more are names. The place names do not seem to be related to the languages of the Algonquian , Iroquois or Muskogee . There are only a few place names related to the Catawba language in the areas where the Sewee and Santee also lived.

John Reed Swanton suggested that the element " bou " or " boo " corresponds to the " bou " in the word Westo boe , which means "Westoe River". This is repeated in many names of the coastal region and is possibly related to the -bok of the Choctaw , which is also significant . On this basis, he speculated that the Cusabo were a tribe of the Muskogee . According to other research, this is a pure coincidence, especially because the older Choctaw form was “ bayok ” and means “small river” or “part of a delta”. Blair Rudes, however, suspects that the suffix " bo " suggests a relationship to the Arawak languages .

history

The settlement area of the Cusabo was in the middle of the British colony of South Carolina and close ties developed between the tribe and the colonists. In the first decade after the founding of the city of Charles Town in 1670, there was conflict and dispute between some Cusabo and the colonists. The Kussoe (Coosa) were the first Cusabo to spark a military conflict, and South Carolina declared war on them in 1671. As a result, Kussoe retreated into hiding, but stayed in the region. In the early years of the colony, it was easy for the Indians to rule the colony if they wanted to. However, there were no reports of the Kussoe or the war with them for the next three years. The colony's documents suggest that an attack by the Kussoe in 1674 cost three settlers their lives. In the same year there was another conflict with another tribe of the Cusabo, the Stono. This conflict was similar to the Kussoe War and is often confused with the later Stono uprising , in which, however, African slaves were involved. The documents do not reveal how the conflicts ended, but obviously in the interests of the settlers of South Carolina, to whom large areas of land were ceded. The Kussoe were obliged to pay a symbolic tribute in the value of a deer's skin once a month . Despite these conflicts, the Kussoe and the Stono, like other Cusabo tribes, lived relatively amicably with the colonists of the region until the outbreak of the Yamasee War in 1715.

One of South Carolina's truly powerful allies was the Westo , who committed numerous raids on nearly every other tribe in the region during the 1670s to rob slaves. In the late 1670s, South Carolina itself came into conflict with the Westo. One of the demands of the colonial government was to end the raids on the Cusabo and other Settlement Indians by the Westo. Since these attacks did not stop, there were joint actions between the colonists and the allied Cusabo between 1679 and 1680, which ultimately led to the destruction of the Westo.

By the turn of the century, the Cusabo were largely integrated into South Carolina's white society, although they retained their indigenous and tribal identity and lived in their own villages. A relationship developed, for example, because the Indians acted as a kind of police and security force in exchange for goods, weapons and money. The Indians were paid for the pelts of "vermin" hunted, including wolves, pumas and bears. They also hunted game and sold the meat to the settlers. Their main task, however, was to recapture escaped slaves. South Carolina supported and encouraged the Indians in their hatred of Africans, while in return it fueled the fears of the Africans of the Indians. A number of laws resulted in the Indians being amply rewarded for capturing slaves and impunity should one of the slaves be killed while hunting. However, severe penalties were imposed on Africans who attacked an Indian. From the middle of the 18th century there are reports that there were more than 400 Settlement Indians whose main tasks were "to hunt game, destroy vermin and predators and catch escaped slaves".

During the Tuscarora War , the Cusabo joined South Carolina's First Army under John Barnwell , who fought the Tuscarora in North Carolina in 1711 and 1712. However , there were fewer than fifteen Cusabo warriors in the Yamasee Company . In 1712, South Carolina transferred the island of Palawana Island near St. Helena Island to the Cusabo , on which several tribal members already lived. A census carried out by John Barnwell in the spring of 1715 determined a population of 95 men, 200 women and children for the Cusabo (Corsaboy) who lived in five villages. The Itwan , another Cusabo tribe listed separately, comprised 80 men and 160 women and children in a village. During the Yamasee War in 1715, the Cusabo were one of the few indigenous groups to side with South Carolina. After the war, however, most of them left and joined either the Creek or the Catawba.

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b ^c South Carolina Indians: Cusabo
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Alan Gallay: The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South 1670-1717 . Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-300-10193-7 .
↑ cusabo. Retrieved December 12, 2016 .
↑ Anthropological Linguistics, Issue 47/2005, pages 1-60: Ives Goddard: The indigenous languages of the South East. , Jack Martin: Languages , pages 68-86 and Gene Waddell: Cusabo , pages 254-264 in RD Fogelson: Handbook of North American Indians: Southeast , Smithsonian Institution, 2004
^ Blair A. Rudes: Pre-Columbian Links to the Caribbean: Evidence Connecting Cusabo to Taino , 2004
^ Alan Gallay: The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South 1670-1717 . Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-300-10193-7 .

Web links

[sciway-1] A ^b ^c South Carolina Indians: Cusabo

[gallay-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Alan Gallay: The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South 1670-1717 . Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-300-10193-7 .

[3] cusabo. Retrieved December 12, 2016 .

[4] Anthropological Linguistics, Issue 47/2005, pages 1-60: Ives Goddard: The indigenous languages of the South East. , Jack Martin: Languages , pages 68-86 and Gene Waddell: Cusabo , pages 254-264 in RD Fogelson: Handbook of North American Indians: Southeast , Smithsonian Institution, 2004

[5] Blair A. Rudes: Pre-Columbian Links to the Caribbean: Evidence Connecting Cusabo to Taino , 2004

[6] Alan Gallay: The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South 1670-1717 . Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-300-10193-7 .