Guale

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Guale refers to a tribal principality and a North American Indian people who became part of the mission system in the Spanish colonized Florida in the late 16th century . The Guale lived along the coast of what is now the state of Georgia and the Sea Islands , the Florida coast, Georgia and South Carolina's barrier islands. During the 17th and 18th centuries the tribe was dispersed. Some of the surviving descendants of the Guale migrated to the Spanish mission areas in Florida while others stayed near the coast of Georgia. They allied with other survivors from other tribes. The ethnically mixed Yamasee tribe emerged from these connections .

language

It is not certain which language the Guale spoke. One option is the assignment to the Muskogee languages , but this is doubted by the historian Sturtevant, who was able to prove that the vocabulary that was assumed to be Guale can be assigned to the Creek . There are some references to records of Guale grammar written in 1569 by the Jesuit Domingo Agustín Váez, but the documents were never found.

history

Prehistory and early history

Archaeological studies suggest that the ancestors of the Guale lived along the coast of Georgia and the Sea Islands. The later people of the Guale lived in this region at the latest from 1150 AD. The prehistoric cultures of the Guale are distinguished by archaeologists into the Savannah phase from 1150 to 1300 and the Irene phase from 1300 to about 1600. While the prehistoric Guale resembled their neighbors in the region in many ways, there are distinctive archaeological features between the Proto-Guale and other groups. They were socially organized in tribal principalities and built hill systems, the so-called mounds , based on the model of the Mississippi culture .

Spanish Mission

The Guale tribal area became the third province of the Spanish colony of Florida . The first two were the Timucua and Apalachee provinces, and the establishment of a fourth province along the lower reaches of the Chattahoochee River , known as Apalachicola Province, failed before a missionary station could be established in the area. The Mission Province of Guale ran on the Atlantic coast and the Sea Islands and was bordered by the Altamaha River in the north and the Savannah River in the south. The area also included Sapelo Island , St. Catherines Island , Ossabaw Island , Wassaw Island and Tybee Island , among other islands . In the middle of the 16th century there were six mission stations in the ancestral area of ​​the Guale, the largest settlements were probably on St. Catherine's Island. Of the three mission provinces, Guale was the most unstable. Although already occupied and conquered in the 1580s, the Guale rebelled in 1597 and 1645 and nearly managed to drive the missions out. They continued to trade with French privateers , although illegal .

Merger of La Tama and Lake Yamas

Indians from all over southeast North America were drawn to the Spanish missions and trade in goods made in Europe. Many indigenous people from tribes other than the Guale Principality moved to the area around the missions in the Guale tribal area in the 17th century. Most came from an Indian province in northwest Georgia, which the Spanish called "La Tama". In the 1660s, both the La Tama province and the neighboring areas were the target of numerous raids by the well-equipped and armed Westo . This led to the fact that the La Tama Indians fled in different directions, including to the settlements Coweta and Cussita on the lower course of the Chattahoochee in the area of ​​the Apalachee and Guale missions. The La Tama, like the Coweta, Cussita, and Apalachee, spoke a Hitchiti dialect from the Muskogee language family . It is not known whether the Guale language was also related to this dialect.

First of all, in 1675 the Spaniards used the term “Yamasee” to describe the newly arrived refugees from the different tribes and thus all of them belonged to the La Tama group. In Guale Province, some of these Yamasee joined the existing missions while others settled in their vicinity.

Destruction and dissolution

Between 1675 and 1684 the Westo, with the support of the provinces of Carolina and Virginia , accompanied by attacks by pirates supported by the English , destroyed the mission system in the province of the Guale. The Santa Catalina de Guale Mission was destroyed in 1680 and by 1684 all six missions were abandoned. The La Tama Yamasee and other refugees dispersed, as did the Guale themselves. Some moved to other missions in Spanish-controlled Florida, but most rejected Spanish authority, partly because it had proven unable to protect them and refused to do so To provide firearms. Most of the Indians of the Guale Province settled in the areas of the Apalachee or the Apalachicola.

Creation of the Yamasee

Shortly before 1684, a small group of the Yamasee-Guale refugees under Chief Altamaha, unlike the other refugees, moved north to the mouth of the Savannah River . That year a Scottish colony called Stuarts Town was founded in Port Royal Sound not far from the Savannah River in South Carolina. The colony only existed for two years before it was destroyed by the Spaniards, but during that time close ties with the Yamasee-Guale had developed.

In late 1684 these Indians, armed with Scottish firearms, attacked the province of Timucua and destroyed the Mission Santa Catalina de Afuyca . They returned to Stuarts Town with 22 prisoners and sold them as slaves. Similar raids occurred repeatedly over the next two years. Word of the success of the Yamasee-Guale, allied with Stuart's Town, spread in the region and the population of the “Yamasee” increased rapidly. Although the Indians came to be known as the Yamasee, the Guale remained a significant and independent part of the tribe.

After the destruction of Stuarts Town and fierce Spanish resistance counter-attacks on the former Guale Province by the South Carolinians, who were supported by the Yamasee, the ties between the colonists and the Yamasee became even closer.

Those "Yamasee" who had moved to the area around Port Royal were part of a reunification of the original La Tama tribal principality, but also had large populations from the Guale tribe, as well as other groups mainly descending from the Muskogee. The Yamasee lived in South Carolina until the Yamasee War in 1715, after which they became widely dispersed and ultimately ceased to exist as a tribe. However, throughout their history, the Yamasee have shown pronounced multi-ethnic skills. The British divided their settlements into "Upper and Lower Settlements".

In the lower settlements mostly La Tama Indians lived, the places had names like Altamaha (after the chief who lived there), Ocute and Chechesee (Ichisi). The upper settlements were largely inhabited by Guale, although other ethnic groups were also integrated there. The places with predominantly from the Guale originating inhabitants included among others Pocotaligo, Pocosabo and Huspah. The upper settlements such as Tulafina, Sadketche (Salkehatchie) and Tomatley were likely inhabited by a mixed population of Guale, La Tama and others. It is possible that the La Tama of these places came from missions and were partially Christianized and felt most comfortable in coexistence with the similarly missionary Guale.

The few "refugee missions" that survived in the Guale area were destroyed in the 1702 invasion of the Spanish colony of Florida. The Guale were ultimately too few and too helpless to oppose the establishment of the province of Georgia in 1733 by James Oglethorpe .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ International Journal of American Linguistics, 60 (2), 139-148: William C. Sturtevant: The Misconnection of Guale and Yamasee with Muskogean
  2. ^ Rebecca Saunders: The Guale Indians of the Lower Atlantic Coast: Change and Continuity. In: Bonnie G. McEwan (ed.) Indians of the Greater Southeast: Historical Archeology and Ethnohistory. University Press of Florida 2000, page 27, ISBN 0-8130-1778-5
  3. ^ Saunders: The Guale Indians of the Lower Atlantic Coast , 2000, p. 30
  4. ↑ Steven J. Oatis: A Colonial Complex: South Carolina's Frontiers in the Era of the Yamasee War, 1680-1730. University of Nebraska Press 2004, page 24, ISBN 0-8032-3575-5
  5. ^ Oatis (2004), A Colonial Complex , page 25
  6. ^ Oatis (2004), A Colonial Complex , pages 25-26
  7. ↑ Oatis (2004), A Colonial Complex , page 27
  8. ↑ Dr. Chester B. DePratter: The Foundation, Occupation, and Abandonment of Yamasee Indian Towns in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1684-1715 (PDF; 592 kB), National Register Multiple Property Submission

See also

List of North American Indian tribes

literature

  • Christopher R. Moore, Richard W. Jefferies: Who were the Guale ?: Reevaluating Interaction in the Missuin Town of San Joseph de Sapala. In Lee M. Panich, Tsim D. Schneider (Eds.): Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archeology and Ethnohistory. University of Arizona Press, Tucson 2014, ISBN 978-0-8165-3051-9 , pp. 79-92.
  • Steven J. Oatis: A Colonial Complex: South Carolina's Frontiers in the Era of the Yamasee War, 1680-1730 . University of Nebraska Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8032-3575-5 .
  • Rebecca Saunders: The Guale Indians of the Lower Atlantic Coast: Change and Continuity . In: Bonnie G. McEwan (ed.) (Ed.): Indians of the Greater Southeast: Historical Archeology and Ethnohistory . University Press of Florida, 2000, ISBN 0-8130-1778-5 .

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