University of Virginia Library

1. THE YEMASSEE.
A ROMANCE OF CAROLINA.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“GUY RIVERS,” “MARTIN FABER,” &c.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

1. CHAPTER I.

There is a small section of country now comprised
within the limits of Beaufort District, in the State of
South Carolina, which, to this day, goes by the name
of Indian Land. The authorities are numerous which
show this district, running along, as it does, and on its
southern side bounded by, the Atlantic Ocean, to have
been the very first in North America, distinguished by
an European settlement. The design is attributed to
the celebrated Coligni, Admiral of France,[1] who, in the

reign of Charles IX., conceived the project with the ulterior
view of securing a sanctuary for the Huguenots,
when they should be compelled, as he foresaw they
soon would, by the anti-religious persecutions of the
time, to fly from their native into foreign regions. This
settlement, however, proved unsuccessful; and the
events which history records of the subsequent efforts
of the French to establish colonies in the same neighbourhood,
while of unquestionable authority, have all
the air and appearance of the most delightful romance.

It was not till an hundred years after, that the same
spot was temporarily settled by the English under
Sayle, who became the first governor, as he was the
first permanent founder of the settlement. The situation
was exposed, however, to the incursions of the
Spaniards, who, in the meanwhile, had possessed themselves
of Florida, and who, for a long time after, continned
to harass and prevent colonization in this quarter.
But perseverance at length triumphed over all these
difficulties, and though Sayle, for farther security in the
infancy of his settlement, had removed to the banks of
the Ashley, other adventurers, by little and little, contrived
to occupy the ground he had left, and in the year
1700, the birth of a white native child is recorded.

From the earliest period of our acquaintance with
the country of which we speak, it was in the possession
of a powerful and gallant race, and their tributary
tribes, known by the general name of the Yemassees.
Not so numerous, perhaps, as many of the neighbouring
nations, they nevertheless commanded the respectful
consideration of all. In valour they made up for
any deficiencies of number, and proved themselves not
only sufficiently strong to hold out defiance to invasion,

but actually in most cases to move first in the assault.
Their readiness for the field was one of their chief
securities against attack; and their forward valour,
elastic temper, and excellent skill in the rude condition
of their warfare, enabled them to subject to their dominion
most of the tribes around them, many of which
were equally numerous with their own. Like the
Romans, in this way they strengthened their own
powers by a wise incorporation of the conquered with
the conquerors; and, under the several names of
Huspahs, Coosaws, Combahees, Stonoees, and Sewees,
the greater strength of the Yemassees contrived to
command so many dependants, prompted by their movements,
and almost entirely under their dictation. Thus
strengthened, the recognition of their power extended
into the remote interior, and they formed one of the
twenty-eight aboriginal nations among which, at its
first settlement by the English, the province of Carolina
was divided.

A feeble colony of adventurers from a distant world
had taken up its abode alongside of them. The weaknesses
of the intruder were, at first, his only but sufficient
protection with the unsophisticated savage. The
white man had his lands assigned him, and he trenched
his furrows to receive the grain on the banks of
Indian waters. The wild man looked on the humiliating
labour, wondering as he did so, but without fear,
and never dreaming for a moment of his own approaching
subjection. Meanwhile the adventurers grew daily
more numerous, for their friends and relatives soon
followed them over the ocean. They too had lands
assigned them, in turn, by the improvident savage; and
increasing intimacies, with uninterrupted security, day
by day, won the former still more deeply into the
bosom of the forests, and more immediately in connexion
with their wild possessors; until, at length,
we behold the log-house of the white man, rising up
amid the thinned clump of woodland foliage, within
hailing distance of the squat, clay hovel of the savage.
Sometimes their smokes even united; and now and

then the two, the “European and his dusky guide,”
might be seen, pursuing, side by side and with the
same dog, upon the cold track of the affrighted deer or
the yet more timorous turkey.

Let us go back an hundred years, and more vividly
recall this picture. In 1715, the Yemassees were in
all their glory. They were politic and brave—their
sway was unquestioned, and even with the Europeans,
then grown equal to their own defence along the coast,
they were ranked as allies rather than auxiliaries.
As such they had taken up arms with the Carolinians
against the Spaniards, who, from St. Augustine, perpetually
harassed the settlements. Until this period they
had never been troubled by that worst tyranny of all,
the consciousness of their inferiority to a power of
which they were now beginning to grow jealous.
Lord Craven, the governor and palatine of Carolina,
had done much in a little time, by the success of his
arms over the neighbouring tribes, and the admirable
policy which distinguished his government, to impress
this feeling of suspicion upon the minds of the Yemassees.
Their aid had ceased to be necessary to
the Carolinians. They were no longer sought or
solicited. The presents became fewer, the borderers
grew bolder and more incursive, and new territory,
daily acquired by the colonists in some way or other,
drove them back for hunting-grounds upon the waters of
the Edistoh and Isundiga.[2] Their chiefs began to show
signs of discontent, if not of disaffection, and the great
mass of their people assumed a sullenness of habit
and demeanour, which had never marked their conduct
heretofore. They looked, with a feeling of aversion
which as yet they vainly laboured to conceal, upon the
approach of the white man on every side. The thick
groves disappeared, the clear skies grew turbid with
the dense smokes rolling up in solid masses from the
burning herbage. Hamlets grew into existence, as it
were by magic, under their very eyes and in sight of

their own towns, for the shelter of a different people;
and at length, a common sentiment, not yet imbodied
perhaps by its open expression, prompted the Yemassees
in a desire to arrest the progress of a race
with which they could never hope to acquire any real
or lasting affinity. Another and a stronger ground for
jealous dislike, arose necessarily in their minds with
the gradual approach of that consciousness of their inferiority
which, while the colony was dependant and
weak, they had not so readily perceived. But when
they saw with what facility the new comers could convert
even the elements not less than themselves into
slaves and agents, under the guidance of the strong
will and the overseeing judgment, the gloom of their
habit swelled into ferocity, and their minds were busied
with those subtle schemes and stratagems with which,
in his nakedness, the savage usually seeks to neutralize
the superiority of European armour.

The Carolinians were now in possession of the
entire sea-coast, with a trifling exception, which forms
the Atlantic boundary of Beaufort and Charleston
districts. They had but few, and those small and scattered,
interior settlements. A few miles from the seashore,
and the Indian lands generally girdled them in,
still in the possession as in the right of the aborigines.
But few treaties had yet been effected for the purchase
of territory fairly out of sight of the sea; those
tracts only excepted which formed the borders of such
rivers, as, emptying into the ocean and navigable to
small vessels, afforded a ready chance of escape to
the coast in the event of any sudden necessity. In
this way, the whites had settled along the banks of
the Combahee, the Coosaw, the Pocota-ligo, and other
contiguous rivers; dwelling generally in small communities
of five, seven, or ten families; seldom of more,
and these taking care that the distance should be slight
between them. Sometimes, indeed, an individual adventurer
more fearless than the rest, drove his stakes,
and took up his lone abode, or with a single family, in
some boundless contiguity of shade, several miles from

his own people, and over against his roving neighbour;
pursuing in many cases the same errant life, adopting
many of his savage habits, and this too, without risking
much, if any thing, in the general opinion. For a long
season, so pacific had been the temper of the Yemassees
towards the Carolinians, that the latter had finally
become regardless of that necessary caution which
bolts a door and keeps a watch-dog.

On the waters of the Pocota-ligo,[3] or Little Wood
river, this was more particularly the habit of the settlement.
This is a small stream, about twenty-five
miles long, which empties itself into, and forms one of
the tributaries of, that singular estuary called Broad
river; and thus, in common with a dozen other streams of
similar size, contributes to the formation of the beautiful
harbour of Beaufort, which, with a happy propriety,
the French denominated Port Royal. Leaving the yet
small but improving village of the Carolinians at Beaufort,
we ascend the Pocota-ligo, and still, at intervals,
their dwellings present themselves to our eye occasionally
on one side or the other. The banks, generally
edged with swamp and fringed with its low peculiar
growth, possess few attractions, and the occasional
cottage serves greatly to relieve a picture, wanting
certainly, not less in moral association than in the
charm of landscape. At one spot we encounter the
rude, clumsy edifice, usually styled the Block House,
built for temporary defence, and here and there holding
its garrison of five, seven, or ten men, seldom of
more, maintained simply as posts, not so much with
the view to war as of warning. In its neighbourhood
we see a cluster of log dwellings, three or four in
number, the clearings in progress, the piled timber
smoking or in flame, and the stillness only broken by
the dull, heavy echo of the axe, biting into the trunk of
the tough and long-resisting pine. On the banks the

woodman draws up his “dug-out” or canoe—a single
cypress, hollowed out by fire and the hatchet;—around
the fields the negro piles slowly the worming and ungraceful
fence; while the white boy gathers fuel for the
pot over which his mother is bending in the preparation
of their frugal meal. A turn in the river unfolds to our
sight a cottage, standing by itself, half finished, and
probably deserted by its capricious owner. Opposite,
on the other bank of the river, an Indian dries his bearskin
in the sun, while his infant hangs in the tree,
wrapped in another, and lashed down upon a board
(for security, not for symmetry), while his mother
gathers up the earth, with a wooden drag, about the
young roots of the tender corn. As we proceed, the
traces of the Indians thicken. Now a cot, and now a
hamlet, grows up before the sight, until, at the very
head of the river, we come to the great place of council
and most ancient town of the Yemassees—the
town of Pocota-ligo.[4]