Focusing on local history, Gullah culture, genealogy, natural history,and archaeology of lowcountry South Carolina's historic Beaufort, Hampton and Jasper counties.
Showing posts with label BDC Wordpress blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BDC Wordpress blog. Show all posts
The "Diversify Your Reading Challenge: Literary Fiction" choice this month is an easy slam dunk. Who better to represent September's category of Literary Fiction than Pat Conroy?
The Beaufort County Library has a long standing interest in documenting the life and career of author Pat Conroy.
Almost from the moment Pat Conroy arrived in Beaufort as a teenaged military dependent, he embraced the community as his own. It was a sometime contentious relationship as matters seldom were simple in his life. During the course of his writing career, he became internationally recognized as one of the best and best-selling authors of Southern literature.
Once upon a time, Native Americans roamed our wetlands, fished our estuaries, and camped along our riverbanks. Many small Native American groups lived in the area. These former residents left behind shell middens, pottery shards, and their words upon our landscape: Wimbee, Combahee, Kussoh, Yamasee, Pocotaligo, Coosawatchie, Daufuskie, Salkehatchie, etc.
Cassi's display in the Research Room about Native American resources we have shows the breadth and scope of our offerings.
Native American history, up to the point of European contact, can be divided into four main historical periods:
The Paleo-Indian Period
10000 BCE - 8000 BCE
Remnants of Paleo-Indian culture in the Historic Beaufort District are found considerably further inland than today's epicenter of civilization--the coast. It was around fifteen degrees cooler then, 11000-12000 years ago, when the first people inhabited the area. The cooler, wetter climate accompanying a variety and abundance of herding animals (many of which are extinct today) attributed to the highly mobile nature of early American peoples. Although many artifacts of their habitation are found in the more inland reaches of the Historic Beaufort District (namely today's Allendale County,) few indications of their existence can be found in today's coastal regions. But, did you know that during the time of Paleo-Indians the Carolina coast was approximately 50 miles further east than it is now? It is possible that all coastal Paleo-Indian artifacts have been swallowed up by the Atlantic!
The Archaic Period
8000 BCD - 2000 BCE
Glacial retreat and gradual global warming at the end of the Paleo-Indian Period at the beginning of the Archaic Period raised the sea levels to within 13 feet of today's levels. The sea islands and today's Carolina "lowcountry" began to take shape. Indian populations grew while mammoths and mastodon, along with various other large mammals, became extinct. Shellfish, fish, and turtle became Indian diet essentials.
The Woodland Period
2000 BCE - 1000 BCE
While fired-clay pottery shards often indicate the Woodland Period Indian presence, Indian shell mounds are the most prevalent evidence of this Indian culture in the Historic Beaufort District. Evidence of this culture can be found on Hilton Head Island, Coosaw Island, Daws Island, and St. Helena Island. For more information about a few Indian shell mounds in Beaufort County, check out the SC Department of Natural Resources--Managed Lands website.
The Mississippian Period
1000 CE - 1600 CE
Archaeological sites of this period are found on just about every sea island of Beaufort County, as well as many inland rivers and creeks. We know more about this culture than any other Paleo-Indian civilization due to European exploration and expansion. At the time of first European contact, established agricultural practices, artistic expression, and ceremonial practices characterized this diverse and thriving culture. Unfortunately, this golden age of Indian culture would soon be demolished by disease, warfare, enslavement and exploitation.
Many of the 200 or so archaeology reports that we have in the Research Room begin with an examination of the remains of the Native Americans who once lived in Beaufort District.
The groups tended to be rather small in size and unorganized, key factors in the ability of European newcomers to successfully take advantage of them. Some Native Americans did fight back - and one group almost won!
According to Dr. Chester DePratter, the Yamasee tribe moved into the Port Royal Sound area around 1683 and resided here for a short period. They allied themselves with the English, attacking Spanish-allied Indians throughout Florida. Captured Indians were then sold as slaves in Carolina or transported to other British colonies. The Yamasee were critical in a general uprising of Native Americans against the British traders and settlers of the Carolinas beginning with the Good Friday Massacre of 1715 at Pocotaligo. For decades the Yamasee were on the run. Many Yamasee survivors eventually relocated to Cuba with the Spaniards in 1763 at the end of the Seven Years War. [Source: "The Yamasee Indians in South Carolina" by Chester B. DePratter, Legacy, vol. 19, no. 1, July 2015, pp. 14 - 16]
In other words, for a group that only lived here for about 35 years before the Europeans arrived with an approximate population of 1000 persons, the Yamasee played a critical role in the most important colonial war that few remember, the Yamasee War of 1715 - 1717.
Learn about intrepid English adventurer Henry Woodward who voluntarily stayed behind to live among the Native Americans in 1666. He learned Indian languages and the geopolitics of the Southeast by forging personal relationships with leaders of some of the Indian tribes in the area. He actively gathered intelligence for his employers to wrest control of the southeastern United States from the Spanish.
There are a host of resources about the local Native Americans in the BDC's WordPress blog. As is customary for that blog, resources are divided into materials you can find online, materials you can borrow from the Library, and those materials that are only available by appointment in our Research Room.
For the time being, access to the Research Room remains limited. Be sure to call at least a few days in advance of your preferred appointment date and time. That way, you'll have the best chance of securing the slot you most want.
Reminder: The Thanksgiving holidays draw nigh. The Research Room will be closed on Thursday and Friday, November 25 - 26, 2021. We will re-open for customers with appointments on Monday, November 29th.
January 19, 1907 was a very
important date in the history of the City of Beaufort as a fire purportedly
caused by three little boys naughtily smoking cigarettes behind F.W. Scheper's
Barn on the corner of Bay and Carteret Streets ended up burning down a good
portion of the town.
The fire was noticed about 1:30pm on that Saturday and
fanned by stiff winds from the southwest. Windblown embers ignited other
structures spreading the fire rapidly and with catastrophic consequences.
Ironically the Beaufort Gazette
January 19, 1907 issue contained a front page notice about a small "Fire
on the Bay" the previous day. That fire occurred at George
Waterhouse's cotton gin and "was put out by the women operatives at once
and little damage done."
Read more about "Red Saturday" in a series of posts to our BDCBCL Wordpress blog last January. https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/. If you'd like for the news to unfold now as it did 112 years ago:
Reminder: The Library system will be closed Monday, January 21, 2019 in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. day. Regular hours resume Tuesday, January 22, 2019.
Way back in 2000, I wrote book reviews for the Palmetto Dunes newsletter. In one issue, I reviewed Hilton Head by Josephine Pinckney (New York: Farrar, Rinehart, 1941) and Dr. Henry Woodward: Forgotten Man in History by Effie Leland Wilder (Columbia, SC: Sandlapper, 1970) that I repeat here with some updates to reflect more recent historical research as well as to be more politically and gender correct:
As drawn for Leland’s Dr. Henry Woodward: Forgotten Man in History, (1970)
The facts of a person's life are usually very genealogical [pun intended]. A person is born, parented by two people, and lives until s/he dies. It is what a person accomplishes and how a person treats other people between their birth and death that measures the mettle of a human being. By any one's measure, Henry Woodward was quite a man.
The early facts of his life are sketchy. Historians offer Barbados or Nevis or England as his probable birthplace sometime around 1646. He married at least twice, appears to have been given an Indian concubine who produced no progeny, and fathered at least two children with his second wife Mary Godfrey Browne, a widow. [Some sources indicate that he had three legitimate children.] From his loins arose numerous and talented descendants. Among the Beaufort District luminaries who count Henry Woodward among their ancestors are Stephen Elliott, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Rev. Richard Fuller, the Gonzales brothers, Ambrose and Narciso, and Robert Y. Hayne.
Woodward has two unique distinctions. On the one hand, he is considered the first permanent settler of South Carolina. On the other hand, he is falsely credited with the introduction of rice culture to America. While it makes for an entertaining story that a slave-running sea captain happened to have a few rice seeds left over from his oceanic crossing that he gave to Dr. Woodward, historians generally agree that he was not personally responsible for the introduction of rice culture in the Lowcountry. Instead they credit the slaves from rice producing areas in Africa for the introduction of rice in South Carolina or like Dr. Richard Porcher, Jr. in Market Preparation of Carolina Rice: An Illustrated History of Innovations in the Lowcountry Rice Kingdom, they credit Col. Hezekiah Maham (1739 - 1789) with Carolina Gold. However, even if Woodward did not bring rice to Carolina, his accomplishments with the Indian trade make him one of the key figures in the early Proprietary Period of South Carolina history.
Dr. Henry Woodward: Forgotten Man in History: A Sketch of South Carolina's Intrepid Pioneer by Effie Leland Wilder addresses the significance of her ancestor to the successful English settlement in South Carolina at Charles Towne. Leland emphasizes the facts of Woodward's life that can be supported by written documentation. By all accounts, it was a rather short life. Woodward died around age 40 having put excitement in his 20 years of adulthood than most people can hope to experience in 100!
Although much of his early life is in shadow, we know that by 1664, Woodward was a settler at Cape Fear in what is now North Carolina. In 1665 around age 20 Woodward joins the Carolina expedition of sea captain Robert Sandford to explore coastal Carolina around Port Royal Sound. As a surgeon, Woodward is chosen to go along on the expedition and to provide medical treatment when it should come necessary. Sandford sails his ships up the Broad River to the Tullifinny and Coosawhatchie Rivers and around Daufuskie and Hilton Head Islands, befriends the Escamacu and Edisto Indians of the area, and intends to provide a beach head for further English settlement of what became South Carolina.
From South Carolina Indian Lore …, edited by Bert W. Bierer, (Self-published, 1972), p. 139
As Wilder states, and Pinckney describes in her novel Hilton Head, Woodward was quite the explorer and pioneer. He volunteered to stay behind with the Escamacu Indians in order to learn their language and culture and to conduct espionage for the Lords Proprietors when Sandford returns to Cape Fear. By forging personal relationships with the leaders of some of the Indian tribes in the area, Niquesalla of the Escamacu, the Edistos, and the Cassique of Kiawah, Woodward learns much about the geopolitics of the Southeast. In a sense, then, Woodward is the first English spy in Carolina. He actively gathers intelligence for his employers, the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, about the area's Native Americans, geography, potential sources of profit, and how to wrest control of what becomes the southeastern United States from the Spanish Crown.
It is not long before word reaches Spanish Florida about the resident Englishman of the Sea Islands. Such a man cannot be left alone. Spaniards go ashore at Port Royal, capture Woodward and imprison him in their fortress at St. Augustine. Among his many adventures are conversion to Catholicism, appointment as official surgeon at St. Augustine, a raid by pirates (this time of the English variety) and freedom, and surviving a shipwreck near Nevis. He finally returns to the Carolina colony with the 1669-1670 English expedition to establish what became Charles Towne. All these adrenaline producing experiences in the space of less than five years!
Woodward is considered the first English settler of South Carolina since he used what became South Carolina as his home base from approximately 1665 until his death about 1686. What made him so special? Pinckney, the novelist, maintains that the key to Woodward's success was his openness to change and his adaptability to the situation of the moment. Wilder, the descendant historian, says that the key to Woodward's success was his interpersonal skills. His involvement with the various Native American tribes throughout the Southeast allowed him to smooth the path for trading relationships thereby making him critical to the early economic life of the colony.
I must confess that I adore sweeping historical novels. Josephine Pinckney captures the essence of the frontier environment that was early Carolina in her 1941 novel, Hilton Head. It was a very unsettled time. Numerous small tribes of Native Americans were roaming the area, the Spanish had claims to Carolina and missionary settlements to back up those claims, and the English appeared unprepared to meet the challenges. Then enters Dr. Woodward. Hilton Head makes a very satisfying read because Pinckney is a deft creator of characterization. Dr. Woodward is shown to be part master negotiator, part political bungler, part capitalist, and something of a religious chameleon.
Please note: All units of the Beaufort County Library will be closed Wed., April 18, 2018 for staff development. Regular hours resume on Thurs., April 19.
November is Native American Heritage Month. Once upon a time, Native Americans roamed the wetlands, fished the
estuaries, and camped along our riverbanks. Many small Native American
groups lived in the area. These former residents left behind shell
middens, pottery shards, and their words upon our landscape: Wimbee,
Combahee, Huspah, Yamasee, Pocotaligo, Sadkeche, Coosawhatchie, etc.
Archibald Rutledge, Jr., South Carolina's Poet Laureate from 1934 to 1973, penned the following poem:
"Indian Days"
Coosawhatchie, Waccamaw, Yauhannah, Edisto! What singing memorial of long ago, Of Yemassee, Tamassee, and Pocotaligo.
The homes of our primal man, hard by God's ancient sea, Oconee, See-Wee, Wateree, Cherokee. Gone now, gone forever from Cumbahee, Jocassee.
The braves' change here no more shall ring by Peedee, Socastee. Their maids' bright smiles no more shall cheer on golden Congaree. Quiet, quiet, all is quite, deep on the dark Santee.
I hope that you were able to hear Dr. Poplin's lecture about the archaeological record of the "Combahee Ferry Historic District" on November 15th. Native American trading paths had crossed the river for thousands of years. Unfortunately artifacts left along trading paths are usually much fewer in number than those found in settlements or at trading sites.
For a group that only lived here for about 35 years, the Yamasee played a
critical role in the most important colonial war that few remember. Our "Yamasee War, 1715 - 1717" Wordpress blog post outlines some of the materials we have on the topic.
For a broader discussion of Native Americans based in this general area, I recommend our "Native Americans" Wordpress blog post.
