Yamasee

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tribal area of ​​the Lake Yamas in the 17th century.

The Yamasee , also Yemassee , were a multi-ethnic confederation of several Indian tribes in the southern coastal land of today's US states of South Carolina and Georgia . The Yamasee probably belonged to the Muskogee language family and were partly composed of scattered remnants of the Guale . After the Yamasee War (1715-1717), the surviving Yamasee fled to Florida . They were integrated by the Seminole people and other tribes and are now considered extinct.

Tribal area and demographics

The residential area of ​​the Yamasee was temporarily at the confluence of the Savannah River in the Atlantic Ocean in what is now Beaufort and Jasper Counties and extended over offshore islands to the Florida border . Their main town on the Okatie River was called Altamaha . By 1650, their population was estimated at 2,000 tribal members, which had been reduced to 1,215 in 1715.

history

Hernando de Soto crossed the residential area of ​​the Yamasee on his expedition in 1540 and visited the main village of Altamaha. In 1570, Spanish explorers established several missions in the Guale province that were under the jurisdiction of the Spanish government in Florida. However, the majority of the Yamasee could not be converted to Christianity, unlike the indigenous population of Spanish Florida.

When the Spaniards tried in 1687 to bring some Yamasee tribesmen to the West Indies as slaves, the indigenous population revolted. They raided the mission settlements and then had to flee north from the Spanish troops. They crossed the Savannah River and the border of the English colony of South Carolina. There they got permission from the authorities to settle in what is now Beaufort County. Several Lake Yama villages were built here, including the main town Pocotaligo , as well as Tolemato and Topiqui .

The Yamasee War and the indigenous slave trade

By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Indian slave trade had become a lucrative source of income. These were either sold to the slave markets in the West Indies or to the colonists. Around 1708, 1,400 indigenous slaves were working on the English plantations in the Carolinas, the number of which had increased to 1,850 by 1715. Since 1680, slave hunters had taken between 24,000 and 51,000 Indian prisoners of war, most of whom had been shipped to either New England or the Caribbean .

The Yamasee were partners of the English in the slave trade and organized slave hunts against Indians in the Spanish provinces of Florida. In 1708 the Spanish governor reported in St. Augustine that there were only 300 indigenous people there. He estimated the number of enslaved Florida Indians at ten to twelve thousand who had been abducted by the English and their Indian allies. The Yamasee soon realized that the English were neither honest trading partners nor good allies. They felt constantly betrayed by them, beat them, and even enslaved their wives and children. From the Yamasee perspective, the English were greedy, irresponsible and violent.

The colonial governments in the Carolinas knew that the Yamasee felt they were treated unfairly. Therefore, on April 14, 1715, the British Indian agents Thomas Naine and John Wright from South Carolina met with chiefs of the Yamasee in their village of Pocataligo , drank plenty of rum and discussed their problems. The next morning the Yamasee tied Agent Naine to a stake in the center of the village square. They pierced his body with burning splinters of wood and tortured him to death. That was the beginning of the Yamasee War .

Besides the Yamasee, the Muskogee and Choctaw also took part in the joint action against the British colonists, killing some of their traders and raiding several plantations. In the course of the war, around 400 English colonists were killed, that is seven percent of the white population. In response to the Indian attacks, South Carolina raised an army made up of African slaves, volunteers from North and South Carolina, and befriended Indian tribes. Even 70 Tuscarora warriors fought on the side of South Carolina against the Yamasee. The warfare was extremely brutal even for the conditions at the time. In his book about the war, archaeologist David Moore reports: "The South Carolina armed forces were particularly ruthless against the tribes living near Charles Town. The Congaree , Santee , Pee Dee and Waxhaw suffered devastating losses." In the first year of the war, the Yamasee lost about a quarter of their population, either being killed or enslaved. The survivors moved south to the Altamaha River, in a region that had been their tribal territory in the 17th century. But it was not possible for them to live in safety there either and they became refugees.

For the next two years, the British continued their attacks against the Yamasee under South Carolina's Governor Charles Caven, driving them out of the entire region. The survivors either fled to Florida near what is now St. Augustine and Pensacola and rejoined the Spaniards or sought refuge with the Catawba in the north. The Yamasee War officially ended in 1718 with a peace treaty between the colonial governments and the indigenous tribes involved. After the war, the majority of the colonists realized that the enslavement of the Indians was too much of a problem. Although African slaves were more expensive, these were now increasingly used on the plantations in the Carolinas.

In 1727 the British attacked the last village of the Yamasee near St. Augustine, destroyed it and killed many of the residents. The survivors joined the Seminoles, Creek, Hitchiti and Apalachee and lost their tribal identity.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yemassee Indians SC. Retrieved December 10, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b Yamasee Tribe. Retrieved December 10, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f The Yamasee War and the Indian Slave Trade. Retrieved December 11, 2016 .

literature