THE YAMASEE WAR

THE YAMASEE WAR

By the turn of the eighteenth century many of the southeastern Indian tribes had become an integral part of the Carolina deerskin trade, and several of these nations had moved closer to Charles Town to benefit from the English trade. Among them were the Creeks and the Yamasees. The Upper Creeks had relocated to a settlement midway between the Tallapoosa, Alabama, and Ocmulgee rivers. The Lower Creeks had moved to the banks of the Ocmulgee River, about 150 miles from Charles Town, and the Yamasee had settled approximately 80 to 100 miles from Charles Town. The combined strength of the Creek and Yamasee towns equaled about 2,500 warriors -- a potentially formidable enemy for the young colony.

All of the tribes involved in the Carolina trade complained bitterly about the white traders in their nations, but the Indians closest to Charles Town, the Yamasees, were the ones who seemed to suffer the most from trader abuse. In 1711 several Yamasee headmen arrived in Charles Town to inform the Indian Commissioners about disturbing activities by white traders in their nation. Among other things, they accused the traders of enslaving their women and children.

The Commissioners attempted to reassure the Yamasee, but in fact there was little they could do to control unscrupulous traders hundreds of miles away. Carolinians along the Indian frontier often wrote to England about the "idle and dissolute traders" among the Indians, and clergy in the out-settlements received complaints of trader abuse daily from the Indians. The actions of dishonest and unprincipled traders played a major role in weakening the English's hold on their Indian allies, and ultimately led to revolt by many of the subject Carolina tribes. By 1715 Indian debt to the traders was estimated at more than L50,000, an amount which would require decades to repay.

Pressure on the traders by their own creditors led to the practice of abducting free Indian women and children and selling them as slaves. In addition to being cheated regularly, having their crops and animals used without permission, and knowing their wives were being seduced while the men were away, the Indians now watched helplessly as their families were enslaved to pay off the men's trading debts.

On Good Friday, April 15, 1715 the Yamasee War began with a coordinated attack on all the white traders in Indian towns. Those who escaped the initial massacre warned the settlers along the southern borders of the colony to flee to Charles Town for protection. By early summer frightened settlers from the out-settlements were pouring into Charles Town, as Creeks, Yamasees, Apalachees, Savannahs, and Sarraws attacked the colony from both the north and south.

A counterattack in June, led by Carolina Governor Craven, successfully vanquished the Yamasees in the southern region of the colony, and soon Charles Town merchants were shipping captive Yamasees to the slave markets in the Caribbean. Most of the Yamasee women and children had fled to St. Augustine before hostilities began, and after the English victory, the remaining members of the tribe also escaped south.

From their base in Spanish Florida the Yamasee and their Lower Creek allies invaded Saint Paul's parish and burned 20 plantations. Saint Helena and Saint Bartholomew were almost totally deserted and those who remained found that Saint Paul's parish had suddenly become the Carolina frontier. With most of the Yamasees across the border, the war became almost entirely a Creek effort. In August the head warrior of Coweta, Chigelly, led a force of several hundred Creeks and Apalachees against Charles Town and came within a few miles of the town before being repulsed.

Carolina's only hope for survival lay in convincing the Cherokees, the largest tribe in the Southeast and traditional enemies of the Creeks, to remain loyal to the English. In January 1716 Creek emissaries arrived in the Cherokee towns to ask for support in their war against the whites. The Cherokee not only refused to join the Creeks, but they murdered the emissaries. This overt aggression assured Cherokee allegiance to the English for the rest of the war, and the continued emnity of the Creeks for more than a decade.

From early 1716 until a peace was negotiated in 1717, the Creeks and their allies conducted scattered raids in Carolina, but there were no more large-scale battles. The Creeks were most likely the instigators of the Yamasee War and they fittingly bore the brunt of most of the actual fighting. With their northern flank exposed following the Cherokee defection, and cut off from English trade, the Creeks soon gravitated to the other two European powers along the southern frontier. The Lower Creeks moved back to their old grounds along the Chatthoochee and began courting the French as trading and military partners.

During the war, Carolina's vulnerability was frighteningly clear. The long-held fear of French encirclement was compounded by the fact that the Yamasees had fled to the Spanish for protection. The Spanish were able, for the first time since the English destruction of their mission system, to report that Indians were returning to Florida. For the moment, English control of the southern frontier was eclipsed by the growing influence of the French and the Spanish.

In this period of political instability, Emperor Brims, Lower Creek mico of Coweta seized the opportunity to try his hand at forest diplomacy by playing the European rivals against each other. Brims sent one of his sons to St. Augustine and arranged for an Upper Creek headman to go to Pensacola. The Spanish responded by sending several expeditions into Creek country to find a suitable location for a fort. Brims swore his loyalty to Spain and the Governor of Florida promised supplies and arms to the
Creeks.

During the Yamasee War, Brims embarked on a deliberate policy of neutrality which was to govern Creek actions for several generations. He and his heirs became the custodians of the southern balance of power between competing European nations and they retained this role until the end of the colonial period.

In January 1717 messengers came to Charles Town from both the Upper and Lower Creeks requesting peace talks. The following summer an English peace delegation was sent to Coweta with a caravan of pack horses loaded with trade goods. The Creeks and Carolinians finally agreed to end hostilities in November 1717. By then, however, the French had completed Fort Toulouse on the Coosa River at the invitation of the Upper Creeks, and the English were never able to dislodge their rivals from this strategic position. The Spanish were alternately welcomed and rebuffed by the Creeks until they agreed to a peace with Carolina. From that point on, a pro-Spanish faction among the Lower Creeks continued to welcome Spanish traders, and a small but constant Spanish influence persisted in the Creek nation.

The Yamasee War was one of the most destructive attacks sustained by any of the English colonies, and even though South Carolina survived, the Indian alliances upon which it depended for trade and protection had shifted unalterably. Southern frontier diplomacy would continue to revolve upon the pivot of Creek loyalty for many decades to come, and the presence of French and Spanish among the Creeks remained a source of alarm to the English. The English not only suffered devastating losses of life, property, and Indian trade during the Yamasee War, but in terms of empire their influence on the southern frontier declined dramatically.

SOURCES: Records in the British Public Record Office Relating to South Carolina, ed. A.S.Salley (Columbia,1947); Journals of the Commissioners of the Indian Trade, ed. W.L. McDowell (Columbia, 1955); The Carolina Chronicle of Dr. Francis Le Jau, ed. Frank L. Klingberg (Berkeley,1956); Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, XXVIII, Public Record Office of Great Britain; Boston News, 13 June 1715; Crane, Verner W. The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732 (Durham,1928); Corkran, David H. The Creek Frontier (Norman,1967); Mississippi Provincial Archives, ed. Rowland Dunbar and Albert G. Sanders (Jackson,1927-32); Colonial Records of North Carolina, ed. William L. Saunders (Raleigh, 1886); Ivers, Larry E. Colonial Forts of South Carolina (Columbia, 1970); Swanton, John R. Early History of the Creek Indians and their Neighbors (Washington, D.C.,1922); Wright, J. Leitch. Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in North America (Athens,1971).