Pee Dee (people)

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The Pee Dee (other spellings: Pedee or Peedee ) are a Native American tribe who are native to the southeastern United States . Both the Pee Dee River and the region Pee Dee in South Carolina are named after the tribe.

history

The history of the pee dee is largely unknown. The anthropologist Charles M. Hudson regards the prehistoric and early historical Pee Dee as a "southern tribal principality" of the Mississippi culture . The Town Creek Indian Mound created by the Pee Dee near Mount Gilead in Montgomery County in North Carolina has been preserved from this time . The mound , which is now a listed building , was built in the pre-Columbian era between around 1100 and 1400.

Around 1550, the Pee Dee migrated from the lower section of the Pee Dee River on the Atlantic coast to the upper reaches of the river in the Piedmont region , where they settled for about a century. The Yamasee War from 1715 to 1717 caused serious changes in the tribal relations of the southern states . According to some records, the Pee Dee were considered "completely exterminated" like other tribes, but there were survivors who found a new home with the Catawba . Other survivors either stayed on the lower reaches of the Pee Dee River or moved there in the years after the Yamasee War. South Carolina referred to the Indians who lived within the populated areas of the colony as "Settlement Indians" and a list of these Indians published in 1740 also contained the tribe of the Pee Dee. In addition, in 1752 the Catawba asked the government of South Carolina to encourage the Pee Dee "Settlement Indians" to migrate north and unite with the Catawba. During the American War of Independence , a company of Pee Dee fought under Francis Marion for the United States, the company was called the "Raccoon Company" (raccoon company).

The Pee Dee tribe received official recognition from the state of South Carolina in the spring of 2005 after the descendants of the historic tribe applied for it. The descendants of the Pee Dee are today split into different tribes, most of which live in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia . Among these tribes are, for example, the "Pee Dee Indian Nation of Beaver Creek" (recognized in South Carolina 2007), the "Pee Dee Nation of Upper South Carolina" (recognized in South Carolina 2005) and the "Pee Dee Indian Tribe of South Carolina “(Recognized in South Carolina 2006). No branch of the Pee Dee has received recognition from the federal government so far; this was only granted to the closely related tribe of the Catawba.

language

Little is known about the language of the historical Pee Dee. According to a theory by James Mooney , which he presented in his book Siouan Tribes of the East , published in 1894 and which was taken up again by John R. Swanton in his 1936 essay Early History of the Eastern Siouan Tribes , it is assumed that the Pee Dee Have used a language related to the Sioux languages , more precisely one of the eastern or south-eastern languages ​​of the language family. Mooney's theory, however, was not based on linguistic evidence and he had very little ethno-historical evidence as a basis.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles M. Hudson: The Catawba Nation . University of Georgia Press, 1970, p. 16.
  2. ↑ Hudson (1970), pp. 16-17.
  3. ↑ Hudson (1970), p. 42.
  4. ↑ Hudson (1970), pp. 47-48.
  5. ↑ Patrick O'Kelley: Nothing But Blood and Slaughter Military Operations and Order of Battle of the Revolutionary War in the Carolinas 1771–1779 . Book Locker, 2004, p. 54.
  6. ↑ SCInformation Highway: Pee Dee
  7. ↑ Hudson (1970), pp. 6-8.

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