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The Yamasees (also spelled Yamassees, Yemasees or Yemassees) were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans who lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
near the
Savannah River The Savannah River is a major river in the Southeastern United States, forming most of the border between the states of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia and South Carolina. The river flows from the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, ...
and later in northeastern
Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...
. The Yamasees engaged in revolts and
wars War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of State (polity), states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or betwe ...
with other native groups and Europeans living in North America, specifically from Florida to North Carolina. The Yamasees, along with the Guale, are considered from linguistic evidence by many scholars to have been a Muskogean language people. For instance, the Yamasee term "Mico", meaning chief, is also common in Muskogee. After the Yamasees migrated to the
Carolinas The Carolinas, also known simply as Carolina, are the U.S. states of North Carolina and South Carolina considered collectively. They are bordered by Virginia to the north, Tennessee to the west, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the southwes ...
, they began participating in the Indian slave trade in the American Southeast. They raided other tribes to take captives for sale to European colonists. Captives from other Native American tribes were sold into slavery, with some being transported to
West Indian A West Indian is a native or inhabitant of the West Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED''), the term ''West Indian'' in 1597 described the indigenous inhabitants of the West In ...
plantations. Their enemies fought back, and slave trading was a large cause of the
Yamasee War The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee, who were supported by a number of allied Native Americans in ...
.


History


Overview

The Yamasees lived in coastal towns in what are now southeast Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. The Yamasees migrated from Florida to South Carolina in the late 16th century, where they became friendly with European colonists. The Yamasees were joined by members of the Guale, a
Mississippian culture The Mississippian culture was a collection of Native American societies that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building la ...
chiefdom, and their cultures intertwined.


European colonization


Spanish contact

The
Hernando de Soto Hernando de Soto (; ; 1497 – 21 May 1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula. He played an important role in Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru, ...
expedition of 1540 traveled into Yamasee territory, including the village of Altamaha. In 1570, Spanish explorers established missions in Yamasee territory. The Yamasees were later included in the missions of the Guale province. Starting in 1675, the Yamasees were mentioned regularly on Spanish mission census records of the missionary provinces of Guale (central Georgia coast) and
Mocama The Mocama were a Native American people who lived in the coastal areas of what are now northern Florida and southeastern Georgia. A Timucua group, they spoke the dialect known as Mocama, the best-attested dialect of the Timucua language. Their ...
(present-day southeastern Georgia and northeastern Florida). The Yamasees usually did not convert to Christianity and remained somewhat separated from the Catholic Christian Indians of
Spanish Florida Spanish Florida () was the first major European land-claim and attempted settlement-area in northern America during the European Age of Discovery. ''La Florida'' formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and th ...
. Pirate attacks on the Spanish missions in 1680 forced the Yamasees to migrate again. Some moved to Florida. Others returned to the Savannah River lands, which were safer after the
Westo The Westo were an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe encountered in what became the Southeastern U.S. by Europeans in the 17th century. They probably spoke an Iroquoian languages, Iroquoian la ...
had been destroyed.


English contact

In 1687, some Spaniards attempted to send captive Yamasees to the
West Indies The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...
as slaves. The tribe revolted against the Spanish missions and their Native allies, and moved into the English colony of the Carolina (present day
South Carolina South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...
). They established several villages, including Pocotaligo, Tolemato, and Topiqui, in Beaufort County. A 1715 census conducted by Irish colonist John Barnwell counted 1,220 Yamasees living in ten villages near Port Royal. Migration by the Yamasees to Charles Town (in the colony of Carolina) beginning in 1686 was likely in pursuit of trading opportunities with English colonists, or to escape the Spanish. In Charles Town, some Yamasee families looked toward Christian missionaries to educate their children in reading and writing as well as converting them to Christianity. Christian missionaries in Carolina may have had some success in converting the Yamasees and Guale because they had both become familiar with Spanish missionaries and were more open to conversion than other tribes.


Yamasee War and aftermath

For decades, Yamasee raiders (frequently equipped with European firearms and working in concert with Carolinian settlers) conducted slave raids against Spanish-allied Indian tribes in the American Southeast. The Yamasees also conducted raids on the Spanish colonial settlement of St. Augustine. Indian captives of the Yamasees were transported to colonial settlements throughout Carolina, where they were sold to white colonists; frequently, many of these captives were then resold to
West Indian A West Indian is a native or inhabitant of the West Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED''), the term ''West Indian'' in 1597 described the indigenous inhabitants of the West In ...
slave plantations. Many Yamasees soon became indebted to the colonists they traded with, as a result of duplicitous colonial mercantile practices. Infuriated by the practices of the colonists, the Yamasees resolved to go to war against them, forming a pan-tribal coalition and initiating a two-year long war by attacking the colonial settlement of Charles Town on April 15, 1715. Bolstered by the large number of Indian tribes they had managed to enlist into their coalition, the Yamasees staged large-scale raids against other colonial settlements in Carolina as well, leading to most colonists abandoning frontier settlements and seeking refuge in Charles Town. South Carolina Governor Charles Craven led a force which defeated the Yamasees at Salkechuh (also spelled Saltketchers or Salkehatchie) on the Combahee River. Eventually, Craven was able to drive the Yamasees across the Savannah River back into
Spanish Florida Spanish Florida () was the first major European land-claim and attempted settlement-area in northern America during the European Age of Discovery. ''La Florida'' formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and th ...
. After the war, the Yamasees migrated southwards to the region around St. Augustine and
Pensacola Pensacola ( ) is a city in the Florida panhandle in the United States. It is the county seat and only city in Escambia County. The population was 54,312 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Pensacola metropolitan area, which ha ...
, where they formed an alliance with the Spanish colonial administration. These Yamasees continued to inhabit Florida until 1727, when the combination of a smallpox epidemic and raids by Col. John Palmer (leading fifty Carolinian militiamen and one hundred Indians) eventually led many of the remaining Yamasees to disperse, with some joining the
Seminole The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, ...
or Creek. Still others remained near St. Augustine until the Spanish relinquished control of the city to the British. At that time, they took with them around 90 Yamasees to Havana.


Culture

Steven J. Oatis and other historians describe the Yamasees as a multi-ethnic amalgamation of several remnant Indian groups, including the Guale, '' La Tama'',
Apalachee The Apalachee were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, specifically an Indigenous people of Florida, who lived in the Florida Panhandle until the early 18th century. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River,Bobby ...
, Coweta, and Cussita Creek. Historian Chester B. DePratter describes the Yamasee towns of early South Carolina as consisting of lower towns, consisting mainly of Hitchiti-speaking Indians, and upper towns, consisting mainly of Guale Indians.


Slavery

The Yamasees were one of the largest slave raiding tribes in the American Southeast during the late 17th century, and have been described as a "militaristic slaving society", having acquired firearms from European colonists. Their use of slave raids to exert dominance over other tribes is partially attributed to the Yamasee aligning with European colonists in order to maintain their own independence. It was typical of Native Americans to take captives during warfare, particularly young women and children, though the Yamasees soon began to transport their captives to Carolina to sell in Charles Town's slave markets. They soon began to conduct raids specifically to take captives and sell them in Carolina.


Diplomacy

In 1713,
Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
missionaries in South Carolina sponsored the journey of a Yamasees man (whose actual name is unknown, as he was generally referred to as the "prince" or "Prince George") from Charles Town to
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
. Historians have noted that the motivation of the "prince" to visit London was a form of "religious diplomacy" on the part of the missionaries to further ties between the Yamasee and British colonists. The missionaries hoped that if the "prince" converted to Christianity while in London, it would ensure the Yamasee would become firm allies of the British colonists. Around the period that the "prince" travelled to London, the Yamasees were largely unwilling to be culturally assimilated by the Spanish, choosing to maintain stronger contacts with British colonists instead. The "prince" returned to Charles Town in 1715, right around the period when the
Yamasee War The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee, who were supported by a number of allied Native Americans in ...
broke out, and shortly after his family had been taken captive by Carolinian raiders and sold into slavery.


Archaeological research

The Yamasee Archeological Project was launched in 1989 to study Yamasee village sites in South Carolina. The project hoped to trace the people's origins and inventory their artifacts. The project located a dozen sites. Pocosabo and Altamaha have since been listed as archeological sites on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
.


Language

The name "Yamasee" perhaps comes from Muskogee ''yvmvsē'', meaning "tame, quiet"; or perhaps from Catawban ''yį musí:'', literally "people-ancient". Little record remains of the Yamasee language. It is partially preserved in works by missionary Domingo Báez. Diego Peña was told in 1716-1717 that the Cherokee of Tuskegee Town also spoke Yamasee.Hudson 1990 Hann (1992) asserted that Yamasee is related to the
Muskogean Muskogean ( ; also Muskhogean) is a language family spoken in the Southeastern United States. Members of the family are Indigenous Languages of the Americas. Typologically, Muskogean languages are highly synthetic and agglutinative. One docume ...
languages. This was based upon a colonial report that a Yamasee spy within a Hitchiti town could understand Hitichiti and was not detected as a Yamasee.
Francis Le Jau Francis Le Jau (1665 – September 10, 1717) was a missionary to South Carolina with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG). Born into a French Huguenot family in the La Rochelle region of France he later fled to England during the ...
stated in 1711 that the Yamasee understood Creek. He also noted that many Indians throughout the region used Creek and
Shawnee The Shawnee ( ) are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language. Their precontact homeland was likely centered in southern Ohio. In the 17th century, they dispersed through Ohi ...
as ''
lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
s'', or common trading languages. In 1716-1717, Diego Peña obtained information that showed that Yamasee and
Hitchiti-Mikasuki The Mikasuki, Hitchiti-Mikasuki, or Hitchiti language is a language or a pair of dialects or closely related languages that belong to the Muskogean languages family. , Mikasuki was spoken by around 290 people in southern Florida. Along with the Co ...
were considered separate languages.Goddard 2005 The Yamasee language, while similar to many Muskogean languages, is especially similar to Creek, for they share many words. Many Spanish missionaries in La Florida were dedicated to learning native languages, such as Yamasee, in an effort to communicate for the purpose of conversion. It also allowed the missionaries to learn about the people's own religion and to find ways to convey Christian ideas to them. There is limited, inconclusive evidence suggesting the Yamasee language was similar to Guale. It is based on three pieces of information: * a copy of a 1681 Florida missions census that states that the people of ''Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de la Tama'' speak "la lengua de Guale, y Yamassa" he Guale and Yamasee language * a summary of two 1688 letters, sent by the Spanish Florida governor, that mentions prisoners speaking the "ydioma Yguala y Yamas, de la Prova de Guale" he Yguala and Yamas language of the province of Guale and * the Guale referred to the Cusabo as ''Chiluque'', which is probably related to the Muscogee word ''čiló·kki'', meaning "Red Moiety." For this reason, Yamasee and Guale are linked together, sometimes as a single entity. Linguists note that the Spanish documents are not originals and may have been edited at a later date. The name ''Chiluque'' is probably a
loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...
, as it seems also to have been absorbed into the Timucua language. Thus, the connection of Yamasee with Muskogean is unsupported. A document in a British colonial archive suggests that the Yamasees originally spoke
Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...
, an Iroquoian language, but had learned another language. For a time they were allied with the Cherokee but are believed to have been a distinct people. In 1715 Col. George Chicken stated that he was told that the Yammasses were the ancient people of the Cherokee.


Legacy

The name of the Yamasees survives in the town of Yemassee, South Carolina, in the Lowcountry close to where the Yamasee War began. It is also used for the title of William Gilmore Simms' 1835 historical novel '' The Yemassee: A Romance of Carolina'', and by extension, '' Yemassee'', the official literary journal of the
University of South Carolina The University of South Carolina (USC, SC, or Carolina) is a Public university, public research university in Columbia, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1801 as South Carolina College, It is the flagship of the University of South Car ...
. There are currently self-identified Yamasee descendants in Florida and elsewhere, and the black supremacist group Nuwaubian Nation associated with Dwight York has also used the name ''Yamassee Native American Moors of the Creek Nation''.


See also

* John Barnwell, Irish colonist


Notes


References

* Anderson, William L. and James L. Lewis (1983) ''A guide to Cherokee documents in foreign archives''. p. 269. * Chicken, George (1894) "Journal of the march into the Cherokee Mountains in the Yemasse War", ''City of Charleston Yearbook'' - 1894. * Goddard, Ives. (2005). "The indigenous languages of the Southeast", ''Anthropological Linguistics'', ''47'' (1), 1-60. *Green, William, Chester B. DePratter, and Bobby Southerlin
"The Yamasee in South Carolina: Native American Adaptation and Interaction along the Carolina Frontier"
''Another's Country: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Cultural Interactions in the Southern Colonies.'' Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2001. . * Hudson, Charles M., Jr. (1990). ''The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Explorations of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568''. Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution Press.


Further reading

* Bossy, Denise I., ed. (2018). ''The Yamasee Indians: From Florida to South Carolina.'' Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. * Boyd, Mark F. (1949). "Diego Peña's expedition to Apalachee and Apalachicolo in 1716", ''The Florida Historical Quarterly'', ''16'' (1), 2-32. * Boyd, Mark F. (1952). "Documents describing the second and third expeditions of lieutenant Diego Peña to Apalachee and Apalachicolo in 1717 and 1718," ''The Florida Historical Quarterly'', ''32'' (2), 109-139. * Hann, John H. (1991). ''Missions to the Calusa''. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. * Hann, John H. (1992). "Political leadership among the natives of Spanish Florida," ''The Florida Historical Quarterly'', ''71'' (2), 188-208. * Hann, John H. (1994). "Leadership nomenclature among Spanish Florida natives and its linguistics and associational implications", In P. B. Kwachka (Ed.), ''Perspectives on the Southeast: Linguistics, archaeology, and ethnohistory'' (pp. 94–105). Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. * Hann, John H. (1996). "The seventeenth-century forebears of the Lower Creeks and Seminoles", ''Southeastern Archaeology'', ''15'', 66-80. * Hudson, Charles M., Jr. (1997). ''Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms''. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. * Sturtevant, William C. (1994)
"The Misconnection of Guale and Yamasee with Muskogean"
''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''60'' (2), 139-48. * Waddell, Gene. (1980). ''Indians of the South Carolina lowcountry, 1562-1751''. Spartansburg, SC: The Reprint Company. * Worth, John E. (1995). ''The struggle of the Georgia coast: An eighteenth-century Spanish retrospective on Guale and Mocama''. Anthropological papers of the American Museum of Natural History (No. 75). New York. * Worth, John E. (1998). ''The Timucuan chiefdoms of Spanish Florida'' (Vols. 1 & 2). Gainesville: University of Press of Florida. * Worth, John E. (2000). "The Lower Creeks: Origins and early history", In B. G. McEwan (Ed.), ''Indians of the Greater Southeast: Historical archaeology and ethnohistory'' (pp. 265–298). Gainesville: University Press of Florida. * Worth, John E. (2004). "Yamasee". In R. D. Fogelson (Ed.), ''Handbook of North American Indians: Southeast'' (Vol. 14, pp. 245–253). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.


External links



{{authority control Muskogean tribes Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands History of the Thirteen Colonies Native American tribes in Georgia (U.S. state) Native American tribes in South Carolina Unattested languages of North America