Yamasees tribe

 

A multiethnic confederation of Native Americans, the Yamasees (also called Yamassees, Yemasees, or Yemassees) resided along the Savannah River in what is now northern coastal Georgia and subsequently in northeastern Florida. From Florida to North Carolina, the Yamasees fought battles and revolts against other Native American tribes and European settlers in North America. Many researchers believe that the Yamasees and the Guale were a Muskogean language people based on linguistic data. The Yamasee name "Mico" (chief) is also widely used in Muskogee. The Yamasees started taking part in the Indian slave trade in the American Southeast when they moved to the Carolinas. In order to capture prisoners for sale to European colonists, they conducted raids against neighboring tribes. Other Native American nations' captives were sold into slavery, and some of them were sent to plantations in the West. The Yamasee War was mostly caused by the slave trade, and their adversaries retaliated. The coastal villages in what are now South Carolina, Florida, and southeast Georgia were home to the Yamasees. In the latter half of the 16th century, the Yamasees moved from Florida to South Carolina, where they became close to European settlers. Members of the Guale, a chiefdom of Mississippian descent, joined the Yamasees, and their civilizations merged. The town of Altamaha was part of Yamasee land when the Hernando de Soto expedition visited in 1540. Spanish explorers founded missions in Yamasee region around 1570. Later, the Guale province added the Yamasees to its list of missions. Beginning in 1675, the Yamasees were often included in Spanish mission census records for the missionary provinces of Mocama (modern-day southeastern Georgia and northeastern Florida) and Guale (coast of central Georgia). The Yamasees stayed relatively apart from the Catholic Christian Indians of Spanish Florida and often did not convert to Christianity. The Yamasees had to relocate once again in 1680 as a result of pirate raids on the Spanish missions. A few of them relocated to Florida. After the Westo was destroyed, others went back to the safer territories along the Savannah River. Some Spaniards tried to transport Yamasees who were held captive as slaves to the West Indies in 1687. The tribe migrated into the English colony of the Carolina (modern-day South Carolina) after rebelling against the Spanish missions and their Native allies. In Beaufort County, they founded a number of communities, including Pocotaligo, Tolemato, and Topiqui. In eight communities close to Port Royal, 1,220 Yamasees were listed in a census taken in 1715 by Irish colonist John Barnwell. Beginning in 1686, the Yamasees moved to Charles Town (in the province of Carolina) either to flee the Spanish or to pursue commercial possibilities with English colonists. Some Yamasee families in Charles Town turned to Christian missionaries to teach their kids to read and write and to convert them to Christianity. Because the Yamasees and Guale had become used to Spanish missionaries and were more receptive to conversion than other tribes, Christian missionaries in Carolina could have had some success converting them. Slave raids against Spanish-allied Indian tribes in the American Southeast were carried out for decades by Yamasee raiders, who were often armed with European weapons and collaborated with Carolinian settlers. Additionally, the Yamasees raided St. Augustine, a Spanish colonial colony. Many of the Yamasees' Indian captives were later sold to West Indian slave farms after being taken to colonial communities throughout Carolina and sold to white colonists. Due to dishonest colonial business methods, many Yamasees eventually owed money to the colonists with whom they had dealt. Enraged by the colonists' actions, the Yamasees decided to wage war on them. On April 15, 1715, they attacked the colonial colony of Charles Town, establishing a pan-tribal alliance and starting a two-year conflict. The majority of colonists fled frontier communities and sought safety in Charles Town as a result of the Yamasees' extensive attacks against other colonial towns in Carolina, which were supported by the several Indian tribes they had successfully recruited into their alliance. The Yamasees were routed at Salkechuh (also written Saltketchers or Salkehatchie) on the Combahee River by an army headed by South Carolina Governor Charles Craven. Craven eventually succeeded in forcing the Yamasees back into Spanish Florida by crossing the Savannah River. Following the fight, the Yamasees moved south to the area around Pensacola and St. Augustine, where they allied themselves with the Spanish colonial government. These Yamasees remained in Florida until 1727, when a smallpox outbreak and incursions by Col. John Palmer (who commanded a group of 100 Indians and fifty Carolinian troops) caused many of the surviving Yamasees to leave, some of them joining the Seminole or Creek. Still others lingered around St. Augustine until the Spanish ceded control of the city to the British. They brought around 90 Yamasees to Havana at that time. The Yamasees are a multi-ethnic synthesis of many remaining Indian tribes, such as the Guale, La Tama, Apalachee, Coweta, and Cussita Creek, according to historian Steven J. Oatis and others. According to historian Chester B. DePratter, the Yamasee villages of early South Carolina were divided between higher towns, which were mostly inhabited by Guale Indians, and lower towns, which were primarily inhabited by Hitchiti-speaking Indians. Having obtained guns from European colonists, the Yamasees were a "militaristic slaving society" and one of the biggest slave-rising tribes in the American Southeast in the late 17th century. The Yamasee's alliance with European colonists to preserve their freedom is partly responsible for their use of slave raids to establish supremacy over other tribes. Although the Yamasees soon started bringing their prisoners to Carolina to sell in the slave markets of Charles Town, it was common for Native Americans to capture people during combat, especially women and children. Soon, they started raiding with the express purpose of capturing people and selling them in Carolina. A Yamasees man (whose true identity is unknown since he was often called the "prince" or "Prince George") traveled from Charles Town to London in 1713, supported by Anglican missionaries in South Carolina. According to historians, the "prince" traveled to London as part of the missionaries' "religious diplomacy" to strengthen connections between the Yamasee and British colonists. The missionaries believed that the Yamasee would become steadfast supporters of the British colonists if the "prince" became a Christian while he was in London. The Yamasees were mostly opposed to being culturally absorbed by the Spanish at the time the "prince" visited London, preferring to keep closer ties with British colonists. In 1715, at the time of the Yamasee War, the "prince" made his way back to Charles Town, soon after his family had been captured by Carolinian raids and sold into slavery. In order to investigate the whereabouts of Yamasee villages in South Carolina, the Yamasee Archeological Project was started in 1989. The project's goals were to catalog the items and track out the people's origins. Twelve locations were found by the project. Since then, Pocosabo and Altamaha have been added to the National Register of Historic Places as archeological sites. Perhaps Muskogee yvmvsē, which means "tame, quiet," or Catawban yį musí, which means "people-ancient," are the sources of the term "Yamasee." Records of the Yamasee language are few. Missionary Domingo Báez's writings include some of it. In 1716–1717, Diego Peña was informed that Yamasee was also spoken by the Cherokee people of Tuskegee Town. Yamasee is connected to the Muskogean languages, according to Hann (1992). A colonial report that a Yamasee spy in a Hitchiti town could comprehend Hitichiti and evade detection as a Yamasee served as the basis for this. In 1711, Francis Le Jau said that the Yamasee were aware of Creek. Additionally, he pointed out that Creek and Shawnee were widely utilized as lingua francas, or common trade languages, among Indians in the area. Diego Peña gathered evidence in 1716–1717 that Yamasee and Hitchiti-Mikasuki were regarded as distinct languages. Despite sharing many vocabulary with other Muskogean languages, the Yamasee language is particularly related to Creek. In an attempt to communicate in order to convert, many Spanish missionaries in La Florida were committed to studying local tongues, including Yamasee. Additionally, it enabled the missionaries to discover methods to communicate Christian concepts to the locals while also learning about their own faith. The Spanish papers, according to linguists, are not authentic and could have undergone revisions. Given that it seems to have been incorporated into the Timucua language as well, the term Chiluque is most likely a loanword. Therefore, there is no evidence to substantiate Yamasee's association with Muskogean. The Yamasees may have learnt another language but spoke Cherokee, an Iroquoian language, according to a record in a British colonial archive. Though they are thought to have been a separate tribe, they were associated with the Cherokee for a while. Col. George Chicken claimed to have been informed in 1715 that the Yammasses were the Cherokee people's ancestors. In the Lowcountry town of Yemassee, South Carolina, at the start of the Yamasee War, the Yamasees' name is still used. Additionally, it serves as the title of the University of South Carolina's official literary magazine, Yemassee, and William Gilmore Simms' 1835 historical book, The Yemassee: A Romance of Carolina. The black supremacist organization Nuwaubian Nation, which is connected to Dwight York, has also adopted the name Yamassee Native American Moors of the Creek Nation, and there are presently self-identified Yamasee descendants in Florida and other places.