Cusabo

Cusabo Indians

Cusabo Tribe: Meaning perhaps “Coosawhatchie River (people).” Cusabo Connections. There is little doubt that the Cusabo belonged to the Muskhogean linguistic family. Their closest connections appear to have been with the Indians of the Georgia coast, the Guale. Cusabo Location.—In the southernmost part of South Carolina between Charleston Harbor and Savannah River and including most of the valleys of the Ashley, Edisto, Ashepoo, Combahee, Salkehatchie, and  Coosawhatchie Rivers. Cusabo Subdivisions. These people should be divided first into the Cusabo proper, who occupied all the coast, and the Coosa, who were inland upon the rivers above mentioned. The Cusabo proper seem … Read more

Sewee Tribe

Sewee Indians. A small tribe, supposedly Siouan, formerly living in east South Carolina. According to Rivers they occupied the lower part of Santee river and the coast westward to the divide of Ashley river, about the present Monks Corner, Berkeley County, where they adjoined the Etiwaw.

Cusabo Indian Tribe

Geographical Names from St. Augustine to Cape Fear

Little as we know about these people, it is a curious fact that their territory was one of the first in North America on which European settlements were attempted, and these were of historical importance and even celebrity. They were made, moreover, by three different nations, the Spaniards, French, and English. The first visitors were the Spaniards, who made a landing here in 1521, only eight years after Ponce de Leon’s assumed discovery of Florida. Accounts of this voyage, more or less complete, have been given by Peter Marytr, Gomara, Oviedo, and Herrera, and in more recent times by Navarrete, … Read more

Ethnological Information Regarding the Cusabo

Ethnological information regarding the Cusabo is scanty and unsatisfactory, the interest of the colonists having been quickly attracted to those great tribes lying inland which they called “nations.” Such material as is to be had must be interpreted in the light of the fuller information to be gathered from larger southern tribes like the Creeks, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. Nevertheless it is of interest to know that certain features of the lives of these peoples were or were not shared by the ones better known. The material gathered by the Spaniards as a result of the Ayllon expedition has been … Read more

Middle Slave Raid Period 1684-1706

Stark changes occurred during the mid-1680s in the Southeast. There were many movements of population as the intensity of attacks on the Spanish mission by the Westo, Chickmawka’s, Yamassee and pirates intensified. The Rickohockens were completely pushed out of their stronghold at the Peaks of the Twin Otter by Iroquois raids. The Iroquois had obtained firearms first from the Dutch, and now from the English. Many minor ethnic groups and villages in the Carolina’s had disappeared during the previous twenty years due to Rickohocken and Westo slave raids. Now African slaves were much more available, so the emphasis of the … Read more