The Westo Indians: Slave Traders of the Early Colonial South

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The Westo Indians

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T H E W ESTO I N DI A NS Slave Traders of the Early Colonial South

by Eric E. Bowne

The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa


Copyright © 2005 The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Typeface: Sabon ∞ The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bowne, Eric E. (Eric Everett), 1970– The Westo Indians : slave traders of the early colonial South / by Eric E. Bowne. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8173-1454-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8173-5178-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Yuchi Indians—History. 2. Yuchi Indians—Migrations. 3. Yuchi Indians—Social life and customs. I. Title. E99.Y9B69 2005 975.004′979—dc22 2004019342 Maps by Eric James, © 2004. Used by permission.


Contents

List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

1.

The Westos and Their World

1

2.

Westo Ethnology

3.

A Short History of Previous Research

4.

The Northeastern Origins of the Westos

5.

Westo Advantages in the South

6.

The Westos at Their Height

7.

The Demise of the Westos

8.

The Aftermath of the Westo War

21

Index

37

54 72

89 106

Appendix: Chronology of Key Sources Works Cited

28

115

129

141



Figures

1.

Early colonial America

22

2.

Erie Country

3.

Rickahockan Country

4.

Westo Country

5.

The southern colonial theater

38 73

76 109



Acknowledgments

This work could not have been successfully completed without the advice, support, and encouragement of Charles Hudson. Charlie has been a true mentor and friend to me for many years. The staff at The University of Alabama Press has helped immeasurably in bringing my ¤rst manuscript to fruition. Any mistakes in the ¤nal version are my own. Thanks also to my parents, Tom and Jane Bowne, my daughter, Lauren, and the rest of my family, both here and gone. I would not have been in the position to succeed if I had lived among lesser people. Many other people have helped with this project. In tribute to all of them, I will recognize a few: Charlotte Blume, Claudio Saunt, Mark Williams, Stephen Kowalewski, David Hally, John Worth, Robbie Ethridge, Tom Pluckhahn, Maureen Meyers, Steve Hahn, Charles Peters, Carolyn Ehardt, Arnold Brunson, Eric James, Kriste Elia, John Inscoe, Brian Campbell, David Cozzo, Josh Lockyer, Julie Markin, Kelly Orr, Veronica Perez, Christina Snyder, and Jared Wood.



The Westo Indians



1 The Westos and Their World

The Westo Indians, who lived brie®y on the Savannah River during the second half of the seventeenth century, are mentioned in only a small number of primary documents. There are no known Westo archaeological sites; not a single artifact can be linked with the group. No more than a single word of their language is known to us today. In the secondary literature the Westos are discussed infrequently, and then only in academic books and journals. Other southern Indian peoples, such as the Creeks and Cherokees, receive popular media attention and are well known among the general public. Of course, one can talk with a Creek or Cherokee Indian today, while the Westos were already a distant southern memory in the nineteenth century. It is apparent from the extant evidence, however, that the Westos, who migrated to the region from around Lake Erie in 1656, had a profound effect on the development of the colonial South in the seventeenth century. Attempting to elucidate the history of a group using so little primary evidence presents a number of signi¤cant obstacles, and in the case of the Westos only some of these obstacles can be overcome, and then only partially. Perhaps the biggest problem in studying the Westos is determining which documents actually concern the group, since Europeans referred to them by a variety of names. Throughout this work, I will argue as to which documents should be used to reconstruct the history of the Westos. Excerpts from nineteen of these documents have been reproduced in an appendix for readers who wish to consult them directly. In reading through these documents, a number of problems are readily apparent. In most instances, corroborating documents do not exist. The documents that do exist refer almost exclusively to the subjects of con®ict and trade. They were all written by either the Lords Proprietors of the Carolina colony, who never set eyes on a Westo Indian, or by no more than


2 / Chapter 1

two dozen Carolinians (and this is a generous estimate). It should be noted, however, that most of those Carolinians did have direct contact with the Westos, and some of them were among the keenest observers in the colony. Because of the small number and limited scope of the extant documents, the reader will encounter both inference and speculation in this reconstruction of Westo history. Considerable care has gone into that inference and speculation, and I believe I have presented the most plausible story according to the available information. It is my hope that this work will help to frame future research concerning the vitally important period of Indian slavery in the colonial South. Before examining the place of Westo history within the larger context of the colonial South, however, a brief summary of the group’s movements and activities is in order. The group that would come to be known in the South as the Westos ¤rst entered the historical record as the Erie in the 1630s (Thwaites 1896– 1901:8:115). During the 1640s, the Erie, who lived in the vicinity of the lake that now bears their name, pursued a trading partnership with the Susquehannock Indians of northern Chesapeake Bay. The Erie exchanged beaver pelts for European-manufactured items the Susquehannocks were receiving from the Virginians, including ¤rearms (Green 1998:10–11; Hoffman 1964:201–204; Weslager 1961:117). Other Indian groups, most notably the powerful Five Nations Iroquois of New York, were also trading with Europeans at various colonial outposts throughout the Northeast. The insatiable European demand for beaver pelts quickly led to plummeting beaver populations, which in turn greatly increased competition between native groups participating in the trade (Richter 1992:57; Starna 1991:247; Trigger 1978:352–353). The violent con®icts that resulted from this competition are known collectively as the Beaver Wars. The Erie, despite their access to European guns, did not fare well in the Beaver Wars. In 1656, after a protracted struggle with the Five Nations Iroquois, the Erie were forced to abandon their homeland and move south beyond the ire of their enemies (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:155; Thwaites 1896–1901:47:59). Shortly after arriving on the southwest frontier of Virginia, the Erie, known to Virginians as the Richahecrians, forged a trading partnership with the commander of Fort Henry, Abraham Wood (Crane 1929:12). The Virginians desired not only beaver pelts but also Indian slaves to work their tobacco ¤elds (Worth 1995:17). By 1659 the Richahecrians had relocated to present southern Georgia to facilitate slave raids against the Indians of Spanish Florida (Aranguiz y Cotes 1659a; Worth 1995:18). Southern Indian groups provided good targets for slave raids because they did not have access to large numbers of European ¤rearms at this time. In the mid-1660s, after years of raids along the Spanish frontier, the Richahecrians moved to the Savannah River along the present bound-


The Westos and Their World / 3

ary of Georgia and South Carolina, ostensibly to exploit a new source of potential slaves (Worth 1995:18). The term “Westoes” was originally recorded in early 1670 by the ¤rst settlers of Carolina, where local Indians used it to refer to the slave-raiding Richahecrians (Cheves 1897:166). Between 1663 and 1674 the Westos assaulted coastal Indian groups in order to steal corn and capture native people, whom they transported to Virginia and sold into slavery (Cheves 1897:194). Terri¤ed local Indians were forced to seek the protection of the newly established Carolina colony against further assaults (Cheves 1897: 168, 194, 200–201). In 1674, however, the Lords Proprietors of Carolina established a trade with the Westos, stipulating that slaves were only to be taken from interior Indian groups unallied to Carolina (Cheves 1897: 456–462). Between 1674 and 1680 the Lords Proprietors fought bitterly with Carolina planters over control of the Indian trade (Cheves 1897:445–446; Salley 1928:1:100, 104–107). The proprietors’ monopoly on trade with the Westos infuriated Carolinian planters, because exporting deerskins, beaver pelts, and Indian slaves was perhaps the most lucrative economic activity occurring in the colony at the time. The Westos’ military advantage over other native groups had to be overcome, however, before the planters could usurp control of the trade from the Lords Proprietors. Toward this end, in 1680 a group of planters ¤nanced a secret war against the Westos, forcing the group to abandon their forti¤ed town on the Savannah River (Salley 1928:1:104–107, 115–116). By 1682 there were reported to be only 50 Westo warriors remaining in the South (Salley 1911:182–183). Several thousand southern Indians had been enslaved before the end of the Westo War in 1682, however, and up until that war the Westos had been the principal Indian slavers in the region (Gallay 2002:294–296). These slave raids had a signi¤cant effect on native peoples of the lower South, but anthropologists and historians have been slow to recognize their importance because of the scarcity of documentation. Even when scholars have noted that the Westos were quite in®uential during the early years of the Carolina colony, they have failed to ask important questions concerning the nature of Westo in®uence and how the Westos came to possess it. By expanding our view of the situation to include political and economic interactions between Europeans and Indians throughout all of eastern North America during the seventeenth century, a much clearer picture of the history of the Westos can be gleaned. What speci¤c advantages did the Westos possess? What circumstances afforded them these advantages, and how were they eventually compromised? What speci¤c effects did the Westos have on other groups, both Indian and European? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what can the history of the


4 / Chapter 1

Westos tell us about the nature of the early colonial South and the reasons behind the eventual triumph of the English in the region?

The Seventeenth-Century Transformation By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the South had become nearly unrecognizable in comparison to what it had been when the Westos ¤rst began launching slave raids into Florida circa 1659. At that time, despite a century of Spanish colonial occupation and native population losses due to epidemics, there was still a great deal of diversity among the sedentary farmers of the lower South. By 1700, however, much of that diversity had disappeared. Between 1659 and 1680, when the Westos were at the height of their in®uence, several thousand Indians from colonial Spanish Florida and its frontier were captured and sold (Gallay 2002:295–296). In all probability, the Westos captured the majority of those enslaved. Refugees of Westo raids—and later those of their successors in the slave trade—were generally left with only two options: to seek the protection of the Spanish or English settlers or to join with other native groups in order to form polities large enough to lend a measure of protection against slavers. During the seventeenth century, these aggregates of various native peoples developed essentially new social identities, becoming the Indian peoples of the Old South: Creeks, Catawbas, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Cherokees, and so on. Although there were cultural continuities between the native societies of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, no one can reasonably dispute that the sixteenth-century Coosa chiefdom bore little resemblance to the eighteenth-century Upper Creek town of Coosa. John Worth has recently argued that the rise of the Indian slave trade in the lower South forced a fundamental change in local production (Worth 2002a:9). Between a.d. 1000 and 1600, southern chiefdoms traditionally planted, harvested, and stored two crops of corn each year—a practice that seems to have been vital to the continuance of chie®y organization. During the seventeenth century, the agricultural economy of the South’s ancient chiefdoms gave way to a commercial hunting economy in which warfare, hunting, and trading had primacy over farming. Commercial hunting and slaving required a degree of mobility that earlier southerners had not exercised. It seems likely that this level of mobility would have made it dif¤cult to plant, store, and protect two crops of corn each year, a fact that may have contributed to a weakening of the traditional social hierarchy. Most southern Indians even changed their traditional winter house architecture during the seventeenth century, abandoning the use of semi-subterranean ®oors except in the case of the public rotunda (Waselkov 1994:195). In the four decades since the Westos had been forced to abandon their homeland near Lake Erie, the South had taken on many of the character-



istics common in the Northeast during the development of the fur trade. First, the number of native polities decreased dramatically, with only the larger aggregate polities surviving. Second, virtually every male Indian in the region possessed a ¤rearm by the beginning of the eighteenth century, something John Lawson noted on his long journey through the Carolina backcountry in 1701, as did Thomas Nairne on his foray to the Mississippi River in 1708 (Lawson 1967:33, 38, 175; Nairne 1988:37–38). Further, alliances with European traders became of utmost political importance, since it was essential to maintain access to powder and shot. With the arrival of the French on the Gulf Coast in 1699, the South included several competing European groups who could be played off one another. Finally, the commercial hunting and slaving economy had the ability to affect groups located far from European settlements, even groups who had little if any direct contact with Europeans themselves. For example, La Salle encountered Indians in possession of English guns during his exploration of the Mississippi River in 1682—sixteen years before Nairne became the ¤rst Carolinian to see the great river. The decided military advantage of the Westos was an integral part of the engine that propelled this change, creating a powerful stimulus for other Indian groups to attempt to acquire ¤rearms. By the time the Westos were defeated in 1680, the need for European arms and ammunition had become pervasive in the South. When the coalescent polities that developed as a result of Westo aggression obtained signi¤cant numbers of ¤rearms, they began their own slaving campaigns against neighboring groups. Many small native societies were destroyed as a result of such raids, while others were absorbed into one of a handful of larger polities that were increasing their numbers through coalescence. The dramatic lessening of social diversity by 1700 is a testament to the “success” of the second generation of southern Indian slavers. Aggregate groups such as the Creeks and Catawbas survived the ¤nal turbulent quarter of the seventeenth century, but many of their neighbors, including the Guale, the Mocama, the Timucua, and the Calusa, became extinct (Worth 2002a:11). It is clear that signi¤cant changes occurred among southern Indian societies during the seventeenth century, changes fundamental enough to warrant collectively referring to this process as the “seventeenth-century transformation.” With the exception of the work of Verner Crane, however, the importance of the Westos’ slave raiding in the early development of the colonial South has essentially gone unrecognized outside the ¤eld of anthropology. Much like eighteenth-century scholars of South Carolina, twentieth-century historians tend to mention the Westos infrequently, generally using Crane as their source (Edgar 1998; Wallace 1951). It is not just the Westos who are slighted by historians, but Carolina history in general before the turn of the eighteenth century—when documentation becomes


6 / Chapter 1

more abundant. The exception to this rule is the recent work of Alan Gallay, who has recognized the importance of the seventeenth-century Indian slave trade in the development and eventual dominance of the English empire in the American South (Gallay 2002). Gallay clearly demonstrates for the ¤rst time the effects of the Indian slave trade on the lives and livelihoods of the English, French, and Spanish colonists of the seventeenth century. The native actors in the drama, however, have proven more dif¤cult to understand. Archaeologists have fared little better in explaining the reasons for the widespread transformation of southern natives during the seventeenth century. During the 1960s and 1970s, the accepted idea of most southeastern archaeologists concerning the introduction of European trade goods can be best summarized by Carol Mason’s description of the trade goods collection from the Ocmulgee Town site, occupied between approximately 1690 and 1715: The new articles brought to the Creeks through trade did not present them a new technology at all. The new artifacts, manufactured by processes unknown to the Indians and probably unimportant to them, simply substituted for the aboriginal artifacts within the framework of an essentially aboriginal technology and aboriginal economic system. Changes, of course, did occur as a result of the introduction of these new tools but only in so far as the new tools intensi¤ed through increased ef¤ciency an already existing means of exploiting the environment. (Mason 1963:78) These ideas may seem rather shortsighted today, but they were an improvement over previously long-held beliefs—namely, that native peoples simply could not resist the far-superior technology of Europeans, that Indian dependency on European-manufactured products was thus inevitable, and that natives were easily duped by European traders who bought North America from them for glass beads and metal hatchets. The work of Mason and her contemporaries did much to correct these misconceptions, but, as often occurs in scienti¤c research, the correction turned out to be an overcorrection. It is certainly true that native peoples exercised judgment, preference, and discernment when dealing with Europeans and European-manufactured products. They also modi¤ed some of those trade goods so they would conform to an aboriginal function or aesthetic (Bamforth 1993:53; Wilson and Rogers 1993). When considering Worth’s argument above, however, one cannot sustain the interpretation that the economic system at work in the seventeenth century was an “aboriginal economic system” and that the new technology only “increased [the] ef¤ciency” of a system of exploitation already in place. During the



1980s, two southeastern archaeologists in particular, Vernon James Knight and Gregory Waselkov, attempted to improve upon Mason’s model of native cultural change during the seventeenth century. During his work on the historic Creek town of Tukabatchee, Knight recognized that the common practice of concentrating prestige items in the hands of a ruling lineage during the sixteenth century had given way in the seventeenth century to what he called an “economics of ostentation” (Knight 1985:172–177). A chief could not control the pro¤ts of a commercial hunting economy in the same manner as land, agricultural labor, and rare minerals. The presence of European goods in a large percentage of late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Creek burials attests to a marked decrease of social strati¤cation in comparison to the southern Indian societies that had occupied the same region as recently as the sixteenth century (Pluckhahn 1997:275–277; Smith 1987:101–103; Waselkov 1994:194–195). At the same time that chie®y power was on the wane, the in®uence of young warriors rose in relation to the growth of European trade. Part of the reason for this was the fact that many war parties now served as raids to capture plunder to sell to Europeans, allowing younger men many more opportunities than were traditionally available to them to gain in status and wealth (Knight 1985:175–180). William Fenton noted that a similar process occurred during the Beaver Wars in the Northeast (Fenton 1978:315–316). Thus it appears that there is a degree of validity to the idea of an “economics of ostentation,” especially considering the fact that Spanish trade goods had been making their way into the interior through native middlemen for nearly a century before the appearance of the Westos in the lower South. Although, as noted earlier, the Spanish Indian trade never approached the level of that of the English, they did manufacture items speci¤cally for the trade in Florida—including brass prestige items such as disc gorgets, armbands, and tubular beads (Waselkov 1989:121–127). These items all entered the social realm of interior native groups without the intrusion of the Spaniards who manufactured them, and were incorporated into native societies according to traditional values (Waselkov 1994:194). This is only part of the story, however, as the situation changed dramatically with the arrival of the Westos in the region. Implicit in the concept of an “economics of ostentation” is the idea that native peoples exercised choice in selectively adopting particular items of European material culture. However, when ¤rearms were introduced to the lower South and used to capture Indian slaves, choice was largely removed from the equation. It is dif¤cult to pinpoint precisely when the political entity known in the eighteenth century as the Creek Confederacy formed, since it was likely a gradual process and is not directly re®ected in the archaeological record (Knight 1994). The confederacy, however, was also a social entity, and by


8 / Chapter 1

the eighteenth century a widespread similarity in material culture had developed in Creek towns despite the generally independent nature of those towns (Waselkov 1994:194). It is likely that the social foundation for the Creek Confederacy developed during the period in which Spanish goods were reaching the interior but before the Westos entered the region. The Westos then served as a potent mechanism that accelerated the development of the Creek Confederacy as a political entity. This idea is contrary to the currently popular theory that the social and political aspects of the confederacy developed together (Waselkov 1994:194). The archaeological evidence indicates that a social base for the confederacy was in place before the eighteenth century, but, as noted above, it is silent concerning politics. It has only been assumed that social similarity was indicative of political cohesion, and this is a weak assumption. As chiefdoms went into steep decline, there was little reason to form or maintain widespread political relationships based on mutual defense. The advent of the slave trade, however, changed that fact completely. The English did not use the terms “Upper Creeks” and “Lower Creeks” until the eighteenth century (Braund 1993:6–7). During the seventeenth century, groups that were part of the Creek Nation in the eighteenth century were known by names such as the Ocheses, Hitchitis, Okmulgees, Cowetas, as well as dozens of others. The same was true of the Catawba Nation. Before the eighteenth century, Carolinians referred to the peoples who would come to be known as the Catawbas by a variety of names, including Esaws, Waterees, Congarees, and Sugarees (Merrell 1989:92–133). Certainly natives still identi¤ed themselves by a variety of names during the eighteenth century, but Europeans often used the more general terms. Although this sort of evidence is far from conclusive, it does support the idea that the development of the well-known Indian confederacies of the eighteenth century occurred as a reaction to the Indian slave trade. How unbearable it must have been to go about your livelihood if your neighbor two miles away was willing to capture you and sell you as a slave. With that in mind, it is not dif¤cult to imagine that the volatile nature of the commercial slave trade forced neighboring groups into anti-aggression pacts for the purpose of mutual defense. So, it can be said that neither historians nor archaeologists have adequately understood or described the rapid changes undergone by native groups during the second half of the seventeenth century in the lower South. The main reason for this is the fact that this period resists interpretation by traditional methods. Historians are uncomfortable with the seventeenth century because relatively few written documents from the period have survived, and archaeologists sometimes have dif¤culty understanding the latter half of the century because the time scale during which the changes occurred was so short. We know that between about a.d. 1000



and 1600, societies in the lower South were grouped into centrally organized, socially strati¤ed chiefdoms, ruled by powerful, “noble” lineages (Hudson 1997:11–30). We also know that during the eighteenth century, southern Indians were essentially egalitarian and organized into somewhat loose confederacies of independent towns. The dominant political units in these societies were councils of men who governed through the consensus of their fellow villagers (Braund 1993:3–25). To continue an earlier analogy, it is unlikely that an eighteenth-century Creek Indian from the town of Coosa would know how to get along socially in the sixteenth-century chiefdom of Coosa. The question that needs to be answered is, what shaped the Indians of the eighteenth-century South (Hudson 2002:xii)? In order to answer that question, we must illuminate the processes at work during the seventeenth-century transformation, which means that we must ¤nd a way to work in the period utilizing less documentation and archaeological evidence than might be desired. Charles Hudson is of the opinion that the Annales paradigm, developed by French social historian Fernand Braudel, would be the most fruitful approach for understanding the seventeenth century, since this research paradigm “is capable of taking on world-sized systems . . . grappling with exotic social orders with spotty documentation . . . reconstructing communities in the remote past . . . [and] examining the surface of life in remote areas” (Hudson 2002:xv). Braudel, Marc Bloch, and others employed a research method that allowed a rich context to be teased out from a wide variety of evidence (Bloch 1953, 1964; Braudel 1975, 1979, 1980). Employing such a method for the seventeenth-century South is best begun by brie®y examining the three basic European colonizing strategies: the fur trade in the Northeast, the Spanish mission system in Florida, and the plantation system and Indian trade in the South (Hudson 2002:xxiv–xxxv).

The Northeastern Fur Trade As early as 1534, Europeans ¤shing the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence began trading iron tools to the local Indians in exchange for beaver pelts, which the ¤shermen could sell back home to increase the pro¤t of their expeditions (Trigger 1978:346). The demand for such pelts in Europe by the latter half of the sixteenth century prompted shipowners to begin undertaking journeys up the St. Lawrence River for the sole purpose of trading with native peoples (Trigger 1978:346). The pelts of beavers, because of their unique felting qualities and waterproof nature, were the most highly regarded (Outwater 1996:5). Beavers secrete oil known as castoreum, which was sought for use as an ingredient in medicines and perfumes (Outwater 1996:5). Europeans of the time also ate the ®esh of beavers, even considering the tail to be a delicacy (Outwater 1996:5). By the


10 / Chapter 1

mid-1500s beavers had been an important item of commerce in Europe for several centuries, and only Siberia and Scandinavia still contained large beaver populations (Outwater 1996:4–6). The New World, on the other hand, had enormous beaver populations, and the French, Dutch, and English were not long in developing a thriving commerce in peltry throughout the Northeast. The ¤rst important New World trading post was located at the French port of Tadoussac, downriver from present Quebec, but by 1624 the Dutch had established New Netherland and had built a fort on the Hudson River near its juncture with the Mohawk River (Wilcoxen 1981:4–8). At about the same time, to the north and south, the English established trading posts in both the Massachusetts and Chesapeake Bays (Richter 1992:51). Before 1630, three large trading companies had been founded in the area: the Dutch West India Company, the Company of New France, and the Massachusetts Bay Company (Richter 1992:58). European competition for control of the fur trade had dramatic effects on the native populations of the Northeast, stimulating increased hostilities, long-distance migrations, and the coalescence of disparate groups (Trigger 1978:347). The Huron Indians were the main trading partners of the French in the early decades of the seventeenth century, supplying them with about 12,000 beaver pelts a year (Trigger 1978:349). During this same period, Virginians established a trade with the Susquehannocks, whose territory lay just to the north of Chesapeake Bay (Fausz 1984:11–12). In both cases, these trade partnerships remained fairly stable until about midcentury, when the expanding scale of the trade literally forced every native group into participation. Conversely, access to the Dutch at Fort Orange on the Hudson River was contested from the outset. In 1628, after violently displacing the Mahican peoples who lay between them and Fort Orange, the Mohawks of the Five Nations Iroquois became the preeminent trading partners of the Dutch (Richter 1992:55–56; Trigger 1969). Having met with success in their military campaign against the Mahicans, the Mohawks began a decades-long blockade of major trading paths in the region, where they stole already-processed pelts in “piratical raids” against Indians traveling to European trading posts (Hudson 2002:xxviii). The Mohawks were aided in this endeavor by the other members of the Five Nations Iroquois—the Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The aggressive strategy of the Five Nations, which was adopted successfully by a handful of other polities, often forced populations less strategically placed to undertake long-distance migrations in order to survive the onslaught of Iroquois raids. Once the English and Dutch began illegally dealing signi¤cant numbers of ¤rearms to the Five Nations during the 1640s in a bidding war to win the allegiance of the native confederacy, their depredations grew substantially (Trigger 1978:354). The European demand for peltry was large enough that it led to extremely low beaver



populations in many areas of the Northeast during the seventeenth century, including Huronia by 1630 and Iroquoia by about 1640 (Richter 1992:57; Trigger 1978:352–353). This stimulated wider-ranging raids by the Five Nations, who sought to maintain access to pelts while simultaneously preventing other natives from accessing European traders (Starna 1991:247). Because they possessed more ¤rearms than any other native group in the region, the Five Nations Iroquois were able to systematically displace a number of Indian groups during the mid-seventeenth-century Beaver Wars. Groups displaced included the Wenros (1638), the Hurons (1649), the Petuns (1650), the Neutrals (1651), and the Eries (1656) (Richter 1992: 61–62). Jasper Danckaerts, who traveled extensively in the mid-Atlantic colonies during 1679 and 1680, wrote these telling remarks about the northeastern gun trade in his journal: Because the Indians desired them [guns] so much, they gave everything they had to acquire them; add to this the insatiable and cursed greed of the Europeans who sold them guns and other weapons, and at much higher prices because it was forbidden to do so . . . even those appointed to uphold the law and punish smugglers (which they did) brought [¤rearms] over by the thousands for sale, including governors and directors . . . it was also the case if one nation did not do it, then the others located around it did, such as the English and French, so that now the Indians are all equipped with them [guns] and are as accustomed to carrying them as Europeans. (Snow et al. 1996:209) By 1650, Virginians had long been interested in the Indian trade, but the bulk of their commercial exchange took place at the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay with the Susquehannock peoples. The Chesapeake Bay represented the southern terminus of the northeastern beaver and gun trade, and Virginia-Susquehannock interactions took place in that context. The Virginians only began to look for new Indian trading partners in the South after the Powhatan Confederacy was permanently fragmented in 1645. At the same time, midcentury economic circumstances forced Virginia tobacco farmers to seek cheap labor for their ¤elds. This fact combined with the appearance of the Westos on Virginia’s southwestern border to create a situation in which the seed of the Indian slave trade could take root and grow.

The Spanish Missions of Florida Before the French, English, and Dutch developed the fur trade in the Northeast, the Spanish established themselves in the lower South. Origi-


12 / Chapter 1

nally colonized to support and defend Spanish ships traveling to Europe from Mexico and Peru, Florida was at the far end of Spain’s American empire, and it received attention and funding from the Crown as be¤t its geographic position (Hudson 2002:xxv). Spain’s colonization model, based on the mission system that had worked so successfully in Central and South America, was implemented in Florida, but with less pro¤table results. Whereas in the former areas there were precious metals that could be seized as instant wealth and native empires with populations in the millions that could be exploited, in Florida there was neither. At its height, the mission system in Florida amounted to no more than about 40 Christian towns spread throughout three provinces, including about 26,000 Indians, 300 Spanish soldiers, and even fewer priests (Bushnell 1989:138). These missionaries and their native ®ocks were thinly spread from coastal missions as far north as Carolina and as far west as the Apalachicola River in the panhandle of present Florida. In other words, they were not ideally suited to prevent the depredations of the Westos. Further, because it was illegal to trade arms and ammunition to native peoples along the Spanish frontier, the Indians were at a military disadvantage to the northern invaders. The scale of Spanish-Indian trade in Florida remained small due to the fact that much of the legally sanctioned trade took place within the con¤nes of the mission system, where it served an important role in diplomacy (Bushnell 1989:134–135). In the Americas, Spain administered its colonies by supporting and manipulating the infrastructure of indigenous social systems, a tactic that had worked extremely well in the state-level societies of Central and South America (Hudson 2002:xxv). But the chiefdom-level societies of northern Florida were not as ideally suited for this type of top-down control, so the friars sought to strengthen the power of chiefs through trade. The distribution of prestige items by chiefs was an indigenous trait of these polities. By replacing traditional items of prestige with Spanish-manufactured goods, the friars bound the chiefs to the mission system. That prestige was a central factor in the trade is supported by the fact that most of the Spanish trade goods recovered archaeologically are items of personal adornment. Many of these were made out of copper (long held in the Southeast to be a material associated with prestige), including such items as gorgets, bracelets, collars, and armbands (Waselkov 1989:121–127). Spanish government of¤cials and soldiers, however, also sought commerce with Indians, but with different ends in mind. By the mid-seventeenth century, Spanish goods had penetrated at least as far into the interior as the fall line, by a variety of means. One of the most important of these was direct trade between Apalachee Indians and crewmen of ships arriving from Havana to the port of San Marcos on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Dressed deerskins and native food items were generally exchanged for



luxuries such as those noted above, but also possibly for items such as rum or arms and ammunition (Waselkov 1989:118). Soldiers were also sometimes given trade goods as pay, which they were allowed to exchange with Indians for food or other items (Bushnell 1981:105–106). Throughout the seventeenth century, friars and government of¤cials continually accused each other of pro¤ting from illegal sources of trade (Bushnell 1981:105– 106; Hann 1988:22, 32, 142, 183). The Franciscans claimed that of¤cials sent soldiers on trading expeditions into the interior, while the of¤cials claimed that friars used Apalachees as middlemen and burden-bearers in a trade with non-mission Indians. Although illegal, private trade from ships docked at San Marcos probably constituted the main source from which Spanish guns could have been obtained by native peoples. The 60-odd ¤rearms seen in the possession of the Tomahitans in 1673 may have come from San Marcos, since they had grooved frizzens characteristic of seventeenth-century Spanish guns (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:214; Waselkov 1989:120–121). Wives of deceased soldiers had the right to sell their husbands’ ¤rearms and may have occasionally traded them to Indians (Bushnell 1981:9). The friars may even have distributed some guns to natives in order to increase their hunting ef¤ciency (Waselkov 1989:121). On at least one occasion ¤rearms were given to mission Indians to help repel an attack by natives from the interior, though the implication was that this was only for the duration of the battle (Worth 1995:31). It is dif¤cult to imagine, however, that this clandestine traf¤c in arms ever approached the level or intensity of the legal (and illegal) gun trade in the Northeast. This conclusion is supported by the paucity of archaeological evidence of the presence of Spanish guns in the interior (Waselkov 1989:121). This underscores the most important aspect of the Spanish mission system as it relates to the Westos’ livelihood—the inability of the friars “to shape Indian societies at a distance” (Hudson 2002:xxv). When the Westos, armed with European guns, arrived in the lower South in the 1650s they encountered only bow-and-arrow Indians who had very little experience with the loud and destructive weapons of the Europeans. Such weapons in the hands of determined Indian slave raiders had a destabilizing effect on the region’s population. Despite the fact that Spain had maintained a continual presence in Florida since 1565, neither its mission Indians nor those beyond the missions’ borders were prepared to deal with the onslaught of armed northern groups forced south as a result of the Beaver Wars.

The Plantation System and Indian Trade in the South The founding of the Carolina colony in 1670 introduced to the lower South the plantation system, a system that would quickly come to dominate the region. Named in honor of King Charles II, Carolina has often


14 / Chapter 1

been called “a colony of a colony” because of its close connection with Barbados and other Caribbean islands (Edgar 1998:35; Gallay 2002:42–43; Wood 1974:5). A group of investors known as the Barbadian Adventurers commissioned some of the earliest explorations of the Carolina coast in 1663, and Barbadians established a short-lived colony on the Cape Fear River in 1666 (Edgar 1998:40). When Carolina was permanently established four years later, many of its original number were from England, but more than half of the white immigrants to the colony over the next two decades hailed from Barbados (Edgar 1998:48). In fact, more than 50 Barbadian planters sent family members and associates to Carolina (Edgar 1998:48). Because of this, Barbadian culture had a deep and pervasive in®uence on the economic, social, and political development of the new English colony. Carolina offered much in the way of natural resources that were scarce or unavailable in the Caribbean, and a great deal of the early economic activity of the colony centered around providing raw materials to its Barbadian investors. The experiences of other English settlements along the Atlantic coast had shown Carolina’s Lords Proprietors that it might take several years to begin turning a large pro¤t through agricultural exports. In the meantime, they looked for other ways to gain income for the colony. Timber exports to Barbados, which had long since been deforested through the expansion of sugarcane ¤elds, provided the ¤rst source of income (Cheves 1897:182–183; Salley 1911:158; Wallace 1951:79–81). Besides timber for fuel, staves, and shingles, the colony also exported naval stores such as tar, pitch, and turpentine—an enterprise that would continue to be pro¤table for Carolina until the twentieth century (Edgar 1998:138–139). In addition to the products that could be extracted from it, the forest was also used as pasture for free-roaming cattle and hogs, which were in high demand in the Caribbean. Beyond the initial investment, the enterprise of free-range cattle ranching required very little overhead since the stock’s food was provided by the forest and a few workers or slaves could take care of a large herd (Edgar 1998:133). In general, Carolinians were blessed with large tracts of land but were short on both capital and labor (Edgar 1998:134). Whereas other Atlantic coast colonies were also poor in labor and capital but rich in land, they did not share Carolina’s bene¤t of close proximity to island colonies whose very geography demanded that they import many of the items most essential to their needs. Carolina land was also important to Caribbean colonists for reasons beyond the products that were exported from it. The abundance of land acted as a lure for experienced colonists who could not gain access to more acreage on the relatively small, circumscribed Caribbean islands. Barbados had only 100,000 acres of land suitable for commercial agricultural production, so even the wealthiest plantation owners generally



owned less than 200 acres (Edgar 1998:43–44). In contrast, the Lords Proprietors of Carolina could offer generous land grants to incoming colonists. During the early years of Carolina, the Lords Proprietors offered a headright of “150 acres for each adult male a settler brought into the colony (including himself) and 100 acres for each adult female and any male under sixteen” (Edgar 1998:43). Although this was later “reduced to 50 acres for all adults,” it still represented an opportunity to gain land that did not exist in the crowded West Indies (Edgar 1998:43). The combination of land availability and the loose control of Carolina’s proprietary government created many opportunities for ambitious men to advance their estates. That is, because Carolina was controlled by a group of proprietors and not the Crown, advancement through the royal patronage system, common in many other English colonies, was not possible, and men of means who immigrated to Carolina generally did so with the purpose of enlarging their fortunes (Gallay 2002:63). Because they had no prospect of royal appointments or advancements, Carolina planters were often willing to ignore proprietary instructions and directives when doing so increased their pro¤t margin (Gallay 2002:63). Carolina offered a place for Caribbean planters to expand the system they had developed in the Lesser Antilles on the islands of St. Christopher, Barbados, and Nevis during the early and middle decades of the seventeenth century (Edgar 1998:36). The in®ux of experienced planters to Carolina after its establishment in 1670, especially those from Barbados, resulted in marked differences between Carolina society and that of New England and the Chesapeake (Edgar 1998:36). Because of their small size and distant location from Europe, Barbados and the other Caribbean colonies developed without much interference from the British Crown, which was interested only in the products of the islands. In such an atmosphere, “restraints of any sort, whether governmental or social, seemed to disappear. The pursuit of wealth and the pleasures it could purchase was the order of the day” (Edgar 1998:37). The Barbadian society that emerged from this milieu counted material success, not honor, as the most important social measure of a man’s worth. Besides the Caribbean’s relative isolation, the introduction of sugarcane as the major cash crop was perhaps the single most important factor in the development of Barbadian society (Edgar 1998:37). When sugarcane became the major commercial crop in Barbados, the colony’s prosperity rose dramatically. Previously, Barbados had struggled to develop a pro¤table agricultural export, failing in the commercial cultivation of both cotton and tobacco. Sugarcane, however, was an instant success after it was brought to the island during the 1640s, 15 years after the colony’s inception (Edgar 1998:37). Sugar and its by-products, such as rum and molasses, were in high demand throughout the world. Once an


16 / Chapter 1

ef¤cient means for planting, harvesting, and processing sugarcane was developed, Barbados quickly became known as the wealthiest of England’s colonies in the Americas (Mintz 1985). The labor-intensive Barbadian plantation system came to be based on chattel slavery because the use of Africans and Indians as slaves was more economically viable than the use of white indentured servants (Edgar 1998:37). As a result, the African population of Barbados increased from a few hundred before the introduction of sugarcane, to 20,000 just over a decade later (Edgar 1998:38). With this in mind, it is little wonder that Barbadian immigrants to Carolina made up a signi¤cant percentage of the planters who pro¤ted from the enslavement of Indians, an even cheaper labor force than Africans. Between approximately 1670 and 1715 at least 24,000 and perhaps as many as 50,000 Indians were sold into slavery by the English alone (Gallay 2002:294–299). In 1708 the population of Carolina included about 10,000 whites, Africans, and Indian slaves. Indian slaves accounted for 15 percent of that population, and African slaves accounted for 42.5 percent (Gallay 2002:200). It is not surprising that Indian slaves made up only a fraction of Carolina’s population, since natives were generally sold to Caribbean sugar islands from whence they had little hope of escape (Gallay 2002:300–301, 306). In fact, before 1715 Carolina exported far more slaves than it imported (Gallay 2002:299). Unfortunately, few records were kept concerning the shipping of Indian slaves. The semi-clandestine nature of the Indian slave trade was due in part to an attempt by merchants to avoid the taxation and regulation of the British Crown (Gallay 2002:301). Despite the lack of quanti¤cation, it is apparent that Indian slavery had drastic effects on native social and political organization in the lower South, forcing Indian groups to develop a variety of strategies for coping with the demands of European trade.

Native Political Strategies in the Seventeenth-Century South The most appropriate units of analysis for the early historic South are polities, which are de¤ned as “collections of human communities that were politically organized” (Hudson 2002:xvi). Polities must be understood within their proper context. Mississippian polities can be seen as local variations of a political organization that was shaped by a number of widespread social and economic structures that made up what can justi¤ably be called the Mississippian World (Hudson 2002:xvi). Recent research on the sixteenth-century South has yielded insights into the previously opaque Mississippian period (Hudson 1997; Smith 2000). Much of the success of this research can be attributed to the fact that sixteenthcentury polities can be called “chiefdoms,” and this term has a generally agreed-upon meaning and usefulness to researchers (Hudson 2002:xvi).



On the other hand, eighteenth-century Indian polities must be seen and studied within the context of the modern world (Hudson 2002:xix). This task is made dif¤cult because we do not have an analytical term such as “chiefdom” that adequately describes the character of eighteenth-century polities (Hudson 2002:xx). The seventeenth century is even more dif¤cult to understand, because the Indian polities of the 1600s must be viewed within the context of the collision of two worlds: the Mississippian World and the Atlantic World. The Atlantic World was one in which the European polities of the western Atlantic became linked by travel and commerce in a way that was not possible before the sixteenth century. The modern world system, on the other hand, was essentially created during the colonization of the New World, when European polities began exploiting the resources of the New World and when the market system that had developed in Europe during the sixteenth century became global in nature. It appears as though during the ¤rst half of the seventeenth century, chiefdom organization gave way in most places to a much more egalitarian social system, one in which councils of men “ruled” through in®uence and consensus. Three major mechanisms appear to be responsible for this decrease in social strati¤cation and hierarchy, two of which were minor in comparison to the other: military losses at the hands of invading Spaniards, destabilization following the Spanish entradas, and the introduction of Old World pathogens (Hudson 1997:417–426; Hudson 2002:xxi–xxiii). Of the three, Old World diseases played the dominant role in altering the existing social and political system, which was based on genealogical proximity to ruling elite. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the survivors of the decline of the Mississippian World were politically and economically incorporated into the modern world system as primary producers for the commercial hunting and slaving industry (Hudson 2002: xxiv; Worth 2002a:9–10). The three distinct European colonizing strategies that impinged on southern Indians during the seventeenth century combined to create an environment in which native peoples had available to them a variety of ways of coping with the intruding modern world. In contrast, throughout the sixteenth century and again by the second half of the eighteenth century, social and economic structures were such that they allowed only one truly viable political strategy. In the sixteenth century, virtually every society within the bounds of the Mississippian World was organized into some form of chiefdom. By the latter half of the eighteenth century, virtually all the surviving native people in the South claimed a connection to one of the “Five Civilized Tribes.” In the seventeenth century, however, at least four different types of native political strategies can be identi¤ed in the lower South.


18 / Chapter 1

The ¤rst, until a more apt phrase is coined, can be called the traditional strategy. Polities pursuing this strategy were common among Indians administered by the Spanish, because the Spanish understood and preferred a hierarchical system through which they could rule the native populace (Worth 2002b:39–64). In accordance with this, the Spanish did all they could to perpetuate chie®y lineages, making Florida something of a bastion for old ways—until they encountered slave-raiding Indians such as the Westos. This is not to say that the Indians of Florida were not changed by the presence of the Spanish, for the friars went to great pains to bring natives into the fold of the Catholic Church. Because the Spanish supported the noble lineages, however, polities that more than super¤cially resembled chiefdoms were able to survive in Florida until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Natchez Indians, located near Natchez Bluffs in present Mississippi, however, followed a traditional strategy despite having no sustained interactions with the Spanish. The survival of chiefdom organization among the Natchez into the early eighteenth century was likely due to their distance from Carolina and the early slavers of that colony as well as to the late entrance of the French into the Gulf region. The second type of native political strategy, the predatory strategy, originally developed in the Northeast. The Five Nations Iroquois provide the ¤rst and perhaps best-known example of this strategy. Predatory groups forced a great deal of social dislocation and change, and they seem to have been pervasive along seventeenth-century frontiers—though with varying degrees of success. For example, the Five Nations were able to survive as a viable political entity for the remainder of the colonial period, while the Westos were destroyed before the end of the seventeenth century. Other groups clamored to take the Westos’ place, however. Predatory groups seem to have been most successful when they could gain control of areas that had to be passed through in order to obtain European trade goods, such as existing Indian trading paths that led to colonial settlements. Few of these prime locations existed, however, and much of the success of predatory groups was dependent on military advantages that proved to be short-lived. Once the scale of trade reached a high enough level, the advantages of predatory groups disappeared and the polities themselves quickly followed. The groups who pursued the third type of native political strategy, that of joining European colonies as menial laborers, seem to have done so, at least partially, as a reaction to the depredations of slave-raiding groups. Carolinians referred to the Indian groups who followed this strategy as “settlement Indians,” and the French in Louisiana knew them as les petites nations. These small native groups were intimately associated with the English and French colonial settlements, living among the settlers and performing menial tasks. Many of them learned European trades such as



blacksmithing, and Indian-made pottery was widely used in colonial settlements (Lawson 1967:10, 175, 200; Usner 1992:149–190). As Carolina’s Lords Proprietors noted in 1682, the settlement Indians were “of great use to ye Inhabitants of our province for the fetching in againe of such Negroe Slaves as shall Runn away from their masters and allsoe for ¤shing, fouleing, and hunting” (Salley 1928:1:174). They were also commonly subjected to Old World pathogens, and for that reason, among others, many of these groups did not last much into the eighteenth century. Experience and an increasing population of Europeans and slaves also helped spell the end for settlement Indians, since jobs that only natives were able to do in the seventeenth century could soon be done by colonists or black slaves. Although mission Indians lived closely with the Spanish and performed many of the same tasks, they should be distinguished from settlement Indians because of the nature of the English and French colonizing strategy. The English and the French, unlike the Spanish, were primarily interested in developing a market economy that, as a matter of course, permanently undermined the indigenous chie®y political system. The fourth type of native political strategy, and with the exception of a few les petites nations the only one to survive into the second half of the eighteenth century, is the hardest to characterize adequately and succinctly. This political strategy, that of aggregating into larger polities for mutual defense, was common in the interior at some remove from direct European contact. Unfortunately, this means that little evidence is available concerning these groups during the seventeenth century. The Creeks provide perhaps the best example of the aggregation strategy. As noted earlier, it appears that during the ¤rst half of the seventeenth century a common material culture and egalitarian political system emerged among towns that would later be regarded as part of the Creek Confederacy. It seems unlikely that individual towns began making wider-ranging political alliances, however, until the Indian slave trade began around the middle of the seventeenth century. By aggregating into larger polities, these interior groups were able to survive the ravages of the early slave trade to become the second generation of slave raiders—namely, the Creeks, Catawbas, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees. Understanding the aggregation strategy is made even more dif¤cult because the polities that resulted from pursuing it resist a good descriptive and explanatory label, though two possibilities may eventually prove fruitful. The ¤rst of these is the term “nation,” which at ¤rst seems inappropriate in relation to the European nations with whom native polities were interacting. However, in the eighteenth century, Europeans did use this term to characterize the Indian polities with which they dealt. As Hudson has pointed out, Indian “nations” appear to have been considered by both natives and Europeans as viable political entities with “a chance of surviv-


20 / Chapter 1

ing into the future” (Hudson 2002:xx). In any case, it is obvious that lateseventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century colonists recognized a difference between these groups and the settlement Indians. If we can accept the contemporary term “settlement Indians,” perhaps “Indian nations” may also be appropriate, or perhaps “failed chiefdoms” might be more accurate, based on the analogy of modern failed states (Hudson 2003:personal communication). James Adair used the term “broken tribes” to describe native societies that were fracturing and reforming (Swanton 1922:189). The second possible term was also used occasionally during the eighteenth century: “confederacy.” At least by the middle of the eighteenth century, southern Indians, despite social and regional variations, were politically organized into groups of allied towns. For example, the Lower Creeks, Upper Creeks, Overhill Cherokees, Lower Towns of the Cherokee, and so forth all paid particular allegiance to their own town and those towns near it, while only occasionally participating in larger actions with other groups of related allied towns. It seems that the term “confederacy” may adequately describe the af¤liation between groups of related towns, according to the following de¤nition of confederacy: “a league or compact for mutual support or common action” (Webster’s Tenth Collegiate). Thus, “confederacy” does not seem to imply the cohesiveness commonly associated with “nation.” A Savanna Indian once described the Catawbas as consisting of “many nations under that name” (Merrell 1989:92). So perhaps both “nation” and “confederacy” may be meaningfully employed. In any case, it is apparent that a set of useful terms adequately describing the native polities who pursued these distinct political strategies must be agreed upon so that the ¤ndings of individual researchers may be more easily correlated (Hudson 2002:xx). The most important thing to be kept in mind is that these “nations” and “confederacies” were not simply players in an indigenous world; rather, they were players who existed on the margins of the modern world system. Moreover, the social, economic, and political mechanisms that constituted these “nations” and “confederacies” remain to be elucidated. By tracing the interactions among the three European colonizing strategies and the four native political strategies of the seventeenth century, it should be possible to develop an appropriate analytical vocabulary for the period. In addition, this approach can help us answer such questions as the following: Why did old ways persist among certain native peoples? What factors led to the development of predatory strategies? And what triggered speci¤c group migrations? Much work remains to be done, though, before the seventeenth-century transformation can be understood as fully as we currently understand both the Mississippian World and the modern world system of the eighteenth century. The history of the Westos, however, allows a crucial glimpse into this important period in southern history.


2 Westo Ethnology

In considering the history of the Westo Indians, one is struck by the lack of ethnographic information regarding the group. Only one written account of the Westos that could be described as ethnographic in nature has survived: Henry Woodward’s recounting of his journey to Hickauhaugau in October 1674. Most of the other extant documents that refer to the Westos are mainly concerned with the subject of trade. Because the written records emphasize the deerskin and slave trade, it is dif¤cult to avoid portraying the group as being primarily driven by market forces. This is a shortsighted view. In the brief chapter that follows, what little information we do have concerning Westo ethnology will be summarized for the ¤rst time in print. During the height of their in®uence in the lower South, the Westos were known to have inhabited at least one forti¤ed town, Hickauhaugau on the Savannah River. Woodward’s remarkable description of his 1674 trip there is the only extant document relating to this important seventeenth-century Indian town (Cheves 1897:456–462). Unfortunately, the site of the town has not yet been identi¤ed archaeologically, and consequently its exact location in the late seventeenth century remains unknown. Verner Crane suggested the town might have been located in present Screven County, Georgia, but offered no reasons for his guess (Crane 1918: 332). Since John Swanton believed the Yuchis and Westos were the same group, he argued that Hickauhaugau was probably located on Uchee Island, north of present Augusta, Georgia, where the Yuchi were known to have resided in the eighteenth century (Swanton 1919:213). Langdon Cheves, editor of the Shaftesbury Papers, could not locate the town in the late nineteenth century, but he guessed that it might be located near Briar Creek on “Hago:slago” bluff or Matthews bluff, near the creek’s con®uence with the Savannah River (Cheves 1897:459). David Wallace, following Swanton, suggested that the town was probably located at Silver Bluff,


22 / Chapter 2

Figure 1. Early colonial America

where a group of Yuchis later resided near the major east-west trading path that followed the fall line through Augusta west to the Creek towns (Wallace 1951:8). It is also possible that Hickauhaugau was located considerably downstream of the fall line, in order to facilitate slave raids against native groups of both coastal Carolina and Florida. Such a location is plausible considering that Woodward described the town as being located eight days’ travel from where the Savannah “Divides itselfe into three branches” (Cheves 1897:460). Woodward may have been mistaken about this distance, since he did not journey to the headwaters of the Savannah himself but was told of their location by Westos, whose language he did not yet speak. Most other evidence, including Woodward’s description of what seem to be Piedmont soils and high bluffs along the river near Hickauhaugau, indicates a location in the vicinity of the fall line (Cheves 1897:459). Although recent archaeological investigations have failed to uncover Hickauhaugau, at least two sites near the fall line have not yet been ruled out as the location of the Westo town (Meyers 2001:62–64). According to Woodward’s 1674 account, the town was located “forty miles south of the headwaters of the Edisto River,” which is within half a kilometer of site


Westo Ethnology / 23

38BR369 in South Carolina, if plotted from the South Edisto headwaters (Meyers 2001:64). If the location is plotted from the North Edisto River, then the village may be near Par Pond, which may be the “Pleasant Valley and Lake” located near the Westo village on the Gascoyne map of 1682 (Cumming 1998:174; Meyers 2001:64). It should be noted that while both of these possible locations lay within the present boundary of South Carolina, Woodward’s account makes it clear that Hickauhaugau was located on the western side of the river, in the present state of Georgia. Because the town was perched on a tight bend surrounded on three sides by water, there is a high probability that Hickauhaugau is buried under several feet of sterile alluvium in the river’s ®oodplain. In 1661 the Spanish reported that the Westos were residing in the province of Tama (Worth 1995:15–18, 1993:45). To date, however, no Westo site has been identi¤ed in this area of present Georgia. It is possible, perhaps likely, that the Westos had no permanent village in Tama, instead staying in temporary camps while the area was exploited for both beavers and Indian slaves. The village of the Rickahockans in Virginia also has not yet been positively identi¤ed. It was believed to have been situated near the falls of the James River in a prime defensive location, but no detailed account of its actual whereabouts has survived, if indeed one was ever written (Burk 1805:104). The three early-seventeenth-century villages that William Green associates with the Rickahockans—Rickahake, Righkahauk, and Rickahock—were thought to have been located on the James, Pamunkey, and Chickahominy Rivers, respectively, but again these have not been identi¤ed archaeologically (Feest 1978:255–256; Green 1998:6–8). Whether or not the Westos maintained a town in Virginia after Hickauhaugau was constructed is as yet unknown. Doing so would probably have helped facilitate their trade with Virginians, but it is unclear if the Westos had suf¤cient population to inhabit and protect two towns separated by such a vast distance, regardless of whether they were forti¤ed. In the Northeast, large nucleated villages protected by palisades represented the normal residence pattern among northern Iroquoian-speaking peoples (Fenton 1978:306–309). The palisade at Hickauhaugau may have been constructed to allow a small contingent of warriors to protect the women, children, and elderly when the majority of men took trade goods on the long journey north to Virginia. It is also possible that the Westos built the palisade around Hickauhaugau simply because they had always done as much to protect themselves from their enemies. It is plausible, however, that the enemy the Westos had in mind was the Spanish and not the former’s terri¤ed native victims, who were dispersed across much of the Piedmont of present Georgia (Kowalewski and Hatch 1991:14). The size of the Westo population is dif¤cult to estimate, especially without any archaeological information on Hickauhaugau, likely the polity’s


24 / Chapter 2

only town in the South from 1663 to 1680. Before their dispersal, the Erie Nation was said to have had a few thousand warriors, but how many remained after their defeat at the hands of the Five Nations Iroquois and how many migrated to Virginia is known with less certainty (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:179). Early accounts of the Rickahockans of Virginia estimate their numbers at between six and seven hundred, but in no case is it clear whether this number represents the entire population or just the warriors (Burk 1805:104; Hening 1809–1823:9:402). Most subsequent historians have accepted this estimate of Rickahockan population, though their interpretations of the number differ. Crane claimed that the Westos never had a large population in the South, presumably based at least in part on the accounts of the Rickahockans. More recently, J. Leitch Wright assumed that the Rickahockans mentioned were warriors, with the implication that a few thousand people, including women and children, migrated to the James (Crane 1918:334; Wright 1981:87). As the Westos moved south, however, estimates of their numbers, correct or incorrect, were recorded more often and were usually clearly referring only to warriors. In 1659, Florida’s governor received word from the province of Apalachee that approximately 1,000 warriors had been attacking pagan Indian villages to the north of the province (Aranguiz y Cotes 1659a). Two years later, when the Westos attacked the Guale mission province, they were said to have numbered 2,000 warriors (Aranguiz y Cotes 1661). A separate account of the invasion claimed a much more conservative number of 500 warriors, a ¤gure that is likely more accurate than the governor’s account to the Crown (Menendez Marquez 1673). Almost 20 years later, in the spring of 1680, members of the Westos and two other native groups participated in another raid against the Spanish missions of the Georgia coast. At one point in the assault a group of 300 invaders surrounded the mission building at Santa Catalina de Guale, but how many of them were Westos is impossible to determine (Hita Salazar 1680). There are even fewer estimates of the Westos’ population recorded by the English, who tended to refer to the power of the group compared to other native societies without reference to their respective sizes (Cheves 1897:446). Even Woodward in his account of his 1674 visit to Hickauhaugau failed to clearly quantify the group. He mentioned that 100 warriors were part of a large dance in his honor, and it is clear that these dancers did not constitute all of the adult males of the town (Cheves 1897:459). Woodward also failed to count the number of longhouses in the village beyond noting there were “many” of them, or to indicate the relative size of any of the structures—information that could be used to infer the population of Hickauhaugau in 1674. Palisaded longhouse villages in the Northeast were often home to a few thousand residents, including several hundred warriors (Richter 1992:17; Tooker 1991:39–40). If the Westos did



inhabit only one town at a time during their stay in the South, then a population estimate of as many as 1,000 or as few as 200 or 300 warriors, along with at least four times as many noncombatants, would seem reasonable. The population of the Westos between 1656 and 1680 would have ®uctuated considering the group’s martial nature. It is likely, however, that the Westos gained new members for their polity through the adoption of prisoners and the acceptance of small remnant bands of populations shattered by the vicissitudes of the seventeenth-century South. Adopted prisoners were generally either women or children, but remnant bands absorbed by the Westos would have also included adult males. The Westos had much to gain from the adoption of local natives into their polity in this manner. They could share with the Westos their intimate knowledge of the southern landscape and its social geography. But perhaps most importantly, once they were taught the language of the Westos they could act as interpreters for a number of local languages. For those who were able to join the Westos, the group must have seemed to promise a much better life than that experienced by many native groups living along European colonial frontiers. No words of the Westo language have survived, with the possible exception of “Hickauhaugau,” which we cannot be sure was actually a Westo word. We do not even know how the group referred to itself, since all the ethnonyms that can be positively associated with them were given by other groups. They were ¤rst labeled “Westos” by native Carolinians, which is the primary name I use for the group since I am concerned here with their effect on the southern frontier. It is widely accepted, however, that the core group of the Westo polity spoke an Iroquoian language ( Juricek 1964:154–155; Mason 1963:1344–1345; Smith 1987:132–135; Worth 1995:17). In 1680, Carolina’s Lords Proprietors suggested that their treaty with the Westos be translated into their native tongue so there would be no future confusion about its terms, but it is doubtful that this ever occurred (Salley 1928:1:107). Henry Woodward, the most experienced man in Carolina when it came to native customs and languages, could not understand the Westos when he visited Hickauhaugau in 1674, and it is not known if he subsequently learned their language (Cheves 1897:457). The word “Westo” could be a Siouan term, possibly related to the Catawba word “westuk,” which has been translated as “gorget shield” (Young and Siebert 2003:272), though this is unlikely in my opinion. The term “Westobau” has also been translated as the “Enemies River,” which suggests that “Westo” may be a somewhat generic term like “Chichimeco,” a more plausible conclusion than the one above (Cheves 1897:378; Swanton 1922:23). In any case, it is likely that the word “enemy” aptly describes the position the Westos held in the hearts and minds of most southern Indians who encountered them. The Westos’ livelihood in the South was largely


26 / Chapter 2

based on commercial slaving, that is, enslaving local native peoples and exchanging them with Englishmen for powder, shot, and other Europeanmanufactured goods. Native groups of coastal Carolina recounted attacks during which the Westos would surprise a village, killing people and capturing as many prisoners as possible. Afterward they would round up all the available corn and other valuables and force the prisoners to carry the booty back to Hickauhaugau while their own village burned (Cheves 1897:166, 194). As tales of these raids spread throughout the region and created an atmosphere of terror among native groups, the Westos developed such a ferocious reputation that they were almost invariably referred to as man-eaters by local Indians (Cheves 1897:166, 194, 200, 238, 334). Although the Westos may have practiced a form of ritual cannibalism common among northern Iroquoian speakers during the seventeenth century, this picture of bloodthirsty slavers is a distortion resulting from the nature of the documentary evidence concerning the Westos. In many ways, the Westos resembled their new neighbors more than they did the brutal image of themselves that was recorded by the English. Like southern Indians, the Westos were sedentary farmers who relied on corn, beans, and squash as their staple vegetable sources (Fenton 1978: 297–300). They supplemented their produce with wild vegetable foods and meat, ¤sh, and fowl. The people of Hickauhaugau arguably followed laws of kinship closely resembling those of the native southerners who were the targets of their slave raids. Northern Iroquoian-speaking peoples, such as the Westos, and nearly all the native groups of the Southeast were matrilineal societies (Fenton 1978:309–314; Hudson 1976:185–193). Descent was traced through females, and blood relatives were restricted to the males and females on the mother’s side, traced only through women. The fact that the Westos shared a matrilineal system with both their prisoners and potential allies must have helped facilitate the development of what at least one scholar has referred to as the “Westo Confederation” ( Juricek 1964:139). In the end, however, despite for a time seeming to have been more successful, the Westos, like their southern neighbors, were only trying to adapt to desperate times. The introduction of the commercial slaving of southern Indians in the second half of the seventeenth century created a terrifying world of social chaos. For the brief span of about two decades, the Westos developed a livelihood that allowed them to occupy a privileged position in the southern Indian trade. While living in the Northeast the Westos had trapped beaver for the Chesapeake Bay trade, and it is likely that they hoped to continue doing so after migrating to the South. Although they apparently began to take native captives soon after arriving on the Virginia frontier, it is clear from the documentary evidence that the Westos also traded pelts and skins to the English (Cheves 1897:460). Besides those taken by trap-



ping and hunting, the Westos probably also stole pelts and skins that other groups had already processed for market, as the Five Nations Iroquois had done during the Beaver Wars. As both trappers and slavers, then, the Westos created a niche for themselves that was at ¤rst quite successful. For a number of reasons, the South was well suited for this economic adaptation, especially during the 1660s when the Westos ¤rst began slaving along the Spanish frontier. When the Westos arrived in the province of Tama in 1659 they found a native population that was dispersed in small farmsteads over a wide geographic region (Kowalewski and Hatch 1991:13–15). They likely also encountered a large resident beaver population, because the fur trade had yet to develop in the area and southern farmers had much to bene¤t from local beaver populations (Williams and Jones 2001:4–7). The abandoned dams of beavers produced good farmland, and their operating dams were a source of ¤sh and turtles (Williams and Jones 2001:6). After local residents ®ed Tama as a result of Westo slave raids, the northern invaders would have been able to trap beavers over a large geographic area with little human interference. The Savannah River Valley to the east of Tama would have provided a similar environment, since it had been largely devoid of human occupation for almost 200 years (Anderson 1996:163). Given these circumstances, it seems likely that part of the reason the Westos chose to build Hickauhaugau on the Savannah River was the lack of human competition, both in general and as concerned the trapping of beaver. Westo trappers would have been continually setting, checking, and resetting beaver traps throughout the Savannah Valley. During the course of this general maintenance, Westo men probably also capitalized on the opportunity to capture hunters from southern native groups who likely used the lightly populated Savannah Valley as a resource procurement zone. A similar strategy was probably pursued in the Oconee Valley, though it appears that larger slave raids were conducted there as well. As the demand for Indian slaves increased after the founding of Carolina, the Westos turned the focus of their economic activity from the exploitation of beaver to the exploitation of humans as a pro¤table commodity. Carolina’s demand for slaves to sell to the sugar islands ensured that the burgeoning trade in Indian slaves would continue to grow. The original formula for the trade, however, was developed in Virginia over a decade before Carolinians arrived on the Atlantic coast and began to hear tales of the man-eating Westos.


3 A Short History of Previous Research

The ¤rst historian to portray the Westos as important actors in the struggle for dominance in the early colonial South was Verner Crane. Crane noted that the coastal Indians of Carolina were accommodating to the early English settlers at Charles Town in part because of their fear of the aggressive Westos (Crane 1918:332). He was also the ¤rst to point out that the Westos, because they possessed arms and ammunition prior to the founding of Carolina, had become “formidable out of all proportion to their numbers” (Crane 1929:12). The ¤rearms, powder, and shot being used by the Westos at this time were procured from Virginia, and this led Crane to link the gun-wielding group with the Rickahockans or Ricahecrians, who had appeared suddenly on the southwestern frontier of Virginia in 1656 (Crane 1918:335–336, 1929:6). Crane’s conclusion was supported by the 1693 testimony of James Moore, an experienced seventeenth-century Carolina trader. Moore equated the Westos with a group he identi¤ed as the “Rickohogo,” a likely cognate of Rickahockan (Salley 1907:13). Crane further noted that Hickauhaugau, the name of the Westo town located on the Savannah River, appeared to be related to the term Rickahockan as well (Crane 1918:336). The conclusion that the Rickahockans and the Westos were the same group was contrary to the thinking of Crane’s contemporary John Swanton, a Smithsonian ethnologist. Their ensuing debate concerning the identity of the group, published in American Anthropologist, constituted the ¤rst scholarly debate on the subject of the Westo Indians (Crane 1918, 1919; Swanton 1919). Swanton held that the Westos were identical to the Yuchi Indians (Swanton 1910:936). This conclusion was accepted by Frank Speck, a leading authority on the Yuchi people and a colleague of Swanton’s (Speck 1910:1003). The evidence that was marshaled to support their conclusion, however, was circumstantial and based primarily on the


Previous Research / 29

geographical location of the two groups (Swanton 1919:213–215). Both the Westos and the Yuchis occupied villages along the Savannah River. The periods of their occupations, however, were distinct. No mention of Yuchis living on the Savannah was made until well after the Westos abandoned Hickauhaugau in the late seventeenth century (Crane 1918:334). Further, the Savanna Indians brie®y lived along the river after the Westos were gone but before the Yuchis settled there, and no argument can be made that the Savannas were related to either the Yuchis or the Westos. Swanton believed that further evidence for the connection between the Westos and the Yuchis could be gleaned from the fact that they occupied adjacent refugee towns among the Lower Creeks in the early eighteenth century (Swanton 1922:288–289). The Creek peoples took in many disparate refugee groups in the tumultuous early decades of the eighteenth century, and to conclude that the members of two different refugee towns were linguistically or culturally related based only on physical proximity is weak speculation. In Swanton’s time anthropologists understood very little concerning change in native societies during the late prehistoric and early historic periods. In his attempt to trace the identity of the Westos, Swanton cited supporting evidence for his arguments from sources ranging from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries (Swanton 1910:936, 1919:213–214, 1922:288–294). It has since become widely understood that there was far less social continuity in the South during the era of contact than Swanton believed, and consequently many of his arguments have become untenable. It should be said in defense of Swanton, however, that he did not have access to subsequent evidence that has shown the Yuchis and Westos to be culturally and linguistically separate peoples. Although he eventually accepted Crane’s equating of the Westos and Rickahockans, Swanton still clung to the idea that the Westos were a Yuchean people. He used the northern location of the Rickahockans to lend credence to his hypothesis that the Chisca Indians, whom he also believed were a Yuchi group, were related to the Westos, since the Chisca homeland in the seventeenth century was likely near that of the Rickahockans (Swanton 1919:213–214, 1922:292). He also noted La Salle’s encounter with some armed Chisca Indians near the Mississippi River in 1682, who had abandoned their former homeland to the east after one of their villages had been burned by a combined force of Indians and Englishmen. Swanton concluded that this was a description of the Westo War of 1680 and that the Chiscas and the Westos were thus related, if not identical (Swanton 1919:214). He strengthened his position on the Chisca-Westo connection by pointing out that a Chisca woman was used as an interpreter when the Spanish interrogated four Westo prisoners they had taken in 1662 (Swanton 1919:215). Crane rejected Swanton’s hypothesis by pointing out that Henry Wood-


30 / Chapter 3

ward, while staying at Hickauhaugau in 1674, was informed that the Chiscas and Westos were enemies, an idea that has since been con¤rmed (Crane 1919:464–465; Hann 1993:61). Although Crane did not comment speci¤cally on the La Salle document or the Chisca interpreter, Swanton’s conclusions in both cases are suspect. As Carol Mason pointed out, it is doubtful that the La Salle document actually describes the Westo War, since nothing distinguishes the account from any of a number of similar contemporary con®icts between Indians and Europeans (Mason 1963:1343). As far as a linguistic af¤liation between the Chiscas and the Westos is concerned, it is clear from the passages referred to by Swanton that the Chisca interpreters were not talking to Chisca prisoners but rather to a separate people with whom they had the ability to communicate (Aranguiz y Cotes 1662a). In addition, John Worth has noted that the Chiscas were identi¤ed in Florida by 1618, a fact that decreases the likelihood that the group can be equated with the Westos (Worth 1998:2:18–21). Swanton also identi¤ed the mysterious Tomahitans as Yuchi and therefore related them to the Westos (Swanton 1922:188–189). In 1673–74, an agent of Abraham Wood traveled extensively with the Tomahitans, whose “liveing [was] to forage robb and spoyle other nations” (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:219). This agent, Gabriel Arthur, accompanied his hosts on raids against both other Indian groups and the Spanish, as well as on diplomatic missions to certain native polities (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:210– 226). At one point, Arthur and a party of Tomahitans stayed brie®y at Wood’s house near Fort Henry. While they were there, Wood noted that “ye Tomahitans have a bout sixty gunnes, not such locks as oures bee, the steeles are long and channelld where ye ®ints strike” (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:214). While it is likely these guns originally came from Spanish Florida (Waselkov 1989:120–121), it has been dif¤cult to determine how the Tomahitans obtained them, considering the Spanish policy against arming native peoples. Leaving the question of arms aside, were the Tomahitans and the Westos related? Arthur reported that the Tomahitans “keepe one hundred and ¤fty cannoes under ye command of theire forte . . . ye leaste of them will carry twenty men” (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:213). This comment brings to mind Woodward’s description of the Westos’ “one hundred faire canoes ready uppon all occasions,” but it is certainly not enough evidence to tie the groups together (Cheves 1897:460). Although I do not have an answer for the Tomahitan question, the fact that Abraham Wood (who likely developed Virginia’s trading relationship with the Rickahockans) found the Tomahitans unfamiliar points to their not being a part of the Westo polity. Further, in the early eighteenth century, although both the Westos and the Tomahitans had refugee villages among the Creeks, the Westos resided among the Lower Creeks, while the Tomahitans lived among the Upper



Creeks (Swanton 1922:188). Although this line of reasoning is admittedly thin, it is suggestive. Few anthropologists, however, took notice of Crane’s objections to Swanton’s conclusions, and consequently the idea that a connection existed between the Westos, Yuchis, and Tomahitans has not been fully abandoned. Despite these probable misidenti¤cations, Swanton did contribute greatly to the question of Westo identity. He noted that Spanish documents described attacks against the mission Indians of Florida in the 1660s by natives armed with guns who came in the company of Englishmen from Jacan, that is, Virginia (Swanton 1919:214, 1922:305). The Spanish called the native invaders Chichimecos (a generic term applied to bellicose Indian peoples), but Swanton surmised them to be none other than the Rickahockans, an interpretation that has never been challenged in the literature. So, this basic equation—Rickahockans = Richahecrians = Chichimecos = Westos—has been generally agreed upon since early in the twentieth century. The major remaining questions concerning the identity of the Westos are thus: Who were the Rickahockans, and where were they located before 1656? On the basis of a note in Alvord and Bidgood’s The First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region by Virginians, Crane suggested that the Rickahockans might have been a remnant group of the Erie Indians or some other northeastern peoples of Iroquoian ancestry (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:155; Crane 1919:336–337). In accordance with the opinion of J. N. B. Hewitt, Swanton took exception to the Erie identi¤cation for linguistic reasons, but he admitted that it was possible that the Westos were an Iroquoian people (Hewitt 1907:430–432; Swanton 1919:215– 216, 1922:291). Many scholars have since noted that documentary evidence sustains the hypothesis that the Rickahockans came from the north when they settled near the fall line of the James River in 1656 and that the group had likely been displaced from their original homeland during the Beaver Wars ( Juricek 1964:154–155; Mason 1963:1344–1345; Smith 1987:132–135; Worth 1995:17). In 1670, John Lederer noted that the Rickahockans described their homeland as being “seated upon a Land, as they term it, of great Waves; by which I suppose they mean the Sea-Shore” (Lederer 1958:26). It seems more likely, however, that the reference was to the Great Lakes, perhaps even to Lake Erie adjacent to the traditional homeland of the Erie Nation. Another piece of evidence linking the Westos to the Northeast, regardless of whether or not they were related to the Rickahockans, is the manner in which they attempted to establish a trading relationship with Woodward. Because of a language barrier, to show their intent the Westos carved “uppon trees (the barke being hewed away) ye ef¤gies of a bever, a man on horseback, and guns” (Cheves 1897:457). Beaver was not yet an estab-


32 / Chapter 3

lished commodity in the South, and the fact that the Westos believed trade with Europeans to be succinctly described by beaver and ¤rearms lends credence to the idea that the Westos came originally from the Northeast. Further, in recounting his trip to Hickauhaugau, Woodward noted that the Westos lived in “many long houses whose sides and tops are both arti¤tially done with barke,” an obvious description of northern Iroquoian longhouses (Cheves 1897:460). These residences are anything but the small, square, semi-subterranean wattle-and-daub houses common throughout much of the lower South (Hally 1994:153–159). With a northeastern origin established for both the Rickahockans and the Westos, it remained to be seen with whom they could be connected in that region. Although he did not address their move to the lower South in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, Bernard Hoffman explored the differing European nomenclatures used to designate the Rickahockans in the Northeast (Hoffman 1964). He equated over half a dozen appellations with Rickahockan, but four seem to be ¤rmly connected to the group: Richahecrian, Arrigahaga, Black Minqua, and the various forms of the term Erie. The fact that the names “Rickahockan” and “Richahecrian” were applied to the same group has been widely accepted for some time (Crane 1918:335, 1928:6; Hoffman 1964:220–221; Swanton 1922:291). The terms “Richahecrian” and “Riguehronnon” are generally seen to have more than a super¤cial resemblance. The roots of both words are similar: Richa and Rigue, while hecrian may be a form of hronnon, the Iroquoian suf¤x meaning “people of” (Hoffman 1964:290). Thus on the basis of linguistics, it appears possible that the Richahecrians can be equated with the Riguehronnons. If the two groups were identical, the Richahecrians could then also be described as Eries since there is no doubt that the term “Riquehronnon” refers to members of the Erie Nation (Thwaites 1896– 1901:8:115, 45:207, 47:59, 50:117). In 1682, Jesuits recorded the surrender of “six hundred men, women, and children of the nation of the chats” to members of the Five Nations Iroquois (Thwaites 1896–1901:62:71). The Erie were known to the French Jesuits as la Nation du Chat (Thwaites 1896–1901:21:191, 42:75, 97, 113, 179, 195). The surrender of this group occurred near Virginia, with the implication that the Eries had resided in that area at an earlier time (Hoffman 1964:220; Thwaites 1896–1901:62:71). Together with the linguistic evidence, this information solidi¤es the connection between the Erie (Riguehronnon, la Nation du Chat) and the Richahecrians. Two other terms that can be applied with some certainty to the Erie come to us from the Dutch: Black Minqua and Arrigahaga. During the 1640s and 1650s, the Swedish colony in present Delaware conducted a beaver trade primarily with the Black and White Minquas, also known, respectively, as the “Arrigahaga” and the “Susquahannoer” ( Johnson 1930:132, 136–137, 140,



188). The latter term is clearly synonymous with Susquehannock, and the former has been identi¤ed as a cognate of Riguehronnon, with “haga” being another form of the ending “people of” (Hoffman 1964:210–211). In 1964, the year that Hoffman’s piece on Richahecrian ethnonyms appeared, John Juricek published the longest article to date on the subject of the Westo Indians ( Juricek 1964). Juricek rejected Swanton’s hypothesis that the Westos were a Yuchean people, and he accepted Crane’s conclusion that the Westos were identical to the Rickahockans or Richahecrians ( Juricek 1964:159). In addition, Juricek contributed two important advances in our understanding of the Westos. The ¤rst was the recognition that, because of their involvement in European trade, the Westos were no longer following a truly aboriginal lifeway and were best described as “a gunpowder-for-beaver trade culture” ( Juricek 1964:159). The implications of this striking observation have become one of the central topics of current studies of Westo history (Bowne 2001; Worth 1995). Juricek’s second contribution was his conclusion that the Westo polity was composed of a number of different ethnic groups ( Juricek 1964:139). It is possible that Juricek was in®uenced in this thinking by William Wallace Tooker’s research on the Richahecrians, whom Tooker believed were composed of the refugees of multiple groups (Tooker 1898). Identifying exactly which native populations were members of the Westo polity, however, has proven to be dif¤cult. Some previous conclusions are no longer accepted, but others still present intriguing possibilities. For example, Tooker’s unsubstantiated belief that the Richahecrians were composed mainly of refugee Powhatans has garnered no critical acceptance (Tooker 1898:268–269). Conversely, John Wesley Powell’s idea that the Cherokees were identical to the Rickahockans may yet prove helpful in answering one of the mysteries of the early colonial South: Who were the Tomahitans (Powell 1889:79)? That is to say, although it is unlikely that the Rickahockans and the Cherokees were the same group, it is possible that the latter were involved in European trade at this time. If that is true, then the Tomahitans may have been a Cherokee group, perhaps in some way related to the historic Cherokee town of Tomatley. Juricek compiled a list of the refugee groups he believed were part of the Westos. Among those included as members of the Westo polity were the Oustacks, a group encountered by John Lederer in 1670 ( Juricek 1964: 137, 145–146). Swanton, following James Mooney, associated the Oustacks with the Westos based on the similarity of their names and their geographical proximity to the Rickahockans (Mooney 1894:70, 85; Swanton 1922:292). I concede it is possible that the Oustacks encountered by Lederer were a group of Westos, but I hesitate to include them because Lederer’s is the only contemporary account of the group (Lederer 1958:30). In addition, Lederer’s account of the Oustacks was obtained secondhand


34 / Chapter 3

from local natives and included fanciful references to such things as precious metals and peacock feathers (Lederer 1958:30–31, 124). It is likely, however, that the Westo polity gained some members from other native populations. Juricek, improving on Tooker’s original conclusion, hypothesized that several groups from the defunct Powhatan Confederacy— possibly the Chickahominy, Nansemunds, Pamunkeys, and Appomattox— added some Algonquian-speaking members to the Westos after the ¤nal Powhatan War in 1644 ( Juricek 1964:148–150, 156–158). Yet it seems clear from the primary documents that even if the Westos included a few Algonquian, Yuchi, or other speakers, the polity was primarily composed of northern Iroquoian speakers. Juricek himself acknowledged what he referred to as the “cultural dominance” of the Iroquoian faction within the Westo polity ( Juricek 1964:159). Juricek, however, rejected Crane’s hypothesis that the Rickahockans were originally part of the Erie Nation ( Juricek 1964:159). He asserted that the Rickahockans could not be Erie because he believed the Rickahockans were present in the Virginia area at least as early as 1608, while the Erie were not displaced from their traditional homeland around the lake that bears their name until about 1656 ( Juricek 1964:152–153, 159). Confusion over the relationship between the terms “Rickahockan” and “Richahecrian,” ¤rst used about the mid-seventeenth century, and terms used in Virginia before that time, such as “Ricahokene” in 1585, “Righkahauk” in 1608, and “Rickahake” in 1621, still has not been satisfactorily resolved (Green 1998:6–7). There is some evidence that versions of the term “Rickahakians” were used and understood by early Virginians as a generic term for aggressive native groups beyond the borders of the colony about whom the colonists had very little information (Tooker 1898:266). Remember that the Westos were known as Chichimecos to the Spanish—a pejorative term they applied to hostile groups along the frontier of their empire ( Juricek 1964:135). The Dutch, too, used similar words to designate broad categories of native peoples. For instance, the Dutch often used the word “Minqua” to designate any group that exhibited northern Iroquoian culture traits ( Jennings 1978:363). Generic terms such as those above were applied somewhat loosely to groups of aggressive Indians living on the edges of European colonial frontiers throughout North America. Because this obviously presents obstacles that vex the process of identifying and tracing the history of any particular polity, great care must be taken to ensure that the deeds of several unrelated native populations are not grouped together. Nevertheless, I reject Juricek’s conclusion that the Rickahockans could not have been Erie peoples on the grounds that the Erie were not displaced until at least 1655, after the Rickahockans had been noted as residing in Virginia ( Juricek 1964:159). This assertion is based on the fact that the terms “Ricaho-



kene,” “Righkahauck,” and “Rickahake” were all used in Virginia prior to the displacement of the Erie from the Great Lakes area of present New York State. Not enough evidence, however, currently exists to con¤dently tie these early groups with the better-documented mid-seventeenth-century polity designated as the Rickahockans or Richahecrians. The idea that early forms of the word “Rickahakians” refer to the Rickahockans and thus to the Westos has been entertained in the literature since Juricek’s work (Green 1998:6–7; Hoffman 1964:206–221; Smith 1987:132; White 1971:22). I remain unconvinced, however, that all references to variations of the word “Rickahakian” that occur before the 1640s point to members of the Westo polity. The history and movement of the Erie can be traced with some con¤dence from 1644, when con®icts over European trade began to be felt keenly in their homeland, through the early eighteenth century, when the remaining Erie joined larger, aggregate Indian groups. Before 1644 it is dif¤cult to con¤dently equate variations of the generic term “Rickahakian” with the group later known as the Westos. William Green, however, has put forth an idea worth entertaining in future research: it is possible that the Erie/Riquehronnon maintained a village site in the vicinity of the colony of Virginia to facilitate their beaver trade with the Susquehannocks (Green 1998:12). Although this seems like a plausible idea, the references we have to the villages of Ricahokene, Righkahauck, and Rickahake all occur earlier than 1622, two decades before a beaver trade among the Eries, Susquehannocks, and Swedes was recorded by the governor of New Sweden ( Johnson 1930:117). Of course, it is possible that the trade relationship between the Susquehannocks and the Eries predated the beaver trade with Europeans, since Atlantic coast shell had been traded inland for centuries (Green 1998:10–12). I concede the possibility that the Erie Nation maintained a village in the Virginia area during the ¤rst decades of the seventeenth century. From there they could have acted as middlemen, transporting shell and other commodities between the Susquehannocks and the Neutral and Huron (Green 1998:11). If archaeological data can be collected to con¤rm this hypothesis, the relationship between the Erie and the Rickahockans would be cemented. Evidence for their connection, however, is already strong: the Erie/Riquehronnons were expelled from their homeland the same year the mysterious Richahecrians/Rickahockans appeared at the falls of the James River (Burk 1805:104–107; Thwaites 1896–1901:42:53, 181, 195). Let us summarize our current understanding of the myriad of ethnonyms that can be con¤dently associated with the Westo Indians. In the ¤rst two decades of the twentieth century, due primarily to the research of Verner Crane and John Swanton, two groups in the South were widely accepted as being identical to the Westos: the Rickahockans/Richahecrians and the Chichimecos. Since then a handful of scholars have expanded


36 / Chapter 3

and improved on William Tooker’s original work on the history of the Richahecrians prior to 1656. As a result, the Riquehronnons, Arrigahagas, and Black Minquas can now also be con¤dently linked with the Westos. Further, these three new ethnonyms describe members of the group more frequently known to history as the Erie Nation. About four decades and many hundreds of miles separate the ¤rst recorded versions of the term “Erie” in the Jesuit Relations and the use of the term “Westo” by early Carolinians, but it appears that the Westos were members of the Erie polity. We may well ask, why were the Erie known by so many names, and what forces drove their long-distance migrations? Marvin Smith was the ¤rst archaeologist to begin to answer these questions. Other scholars, such as Tooker and Juricek, recognized that native groups were splintering, moving, and recombining to form new groups, but the causes and processes of these actions were not identi¤ed. Smith surmised that the beaver trade in the Northeast served as a means for certain native populations to acquire European ¤rearms (Smith 1987:134). As armed native groups sought access to more and more beaver-hunting grounds, they forced the displacement of unarmed native groups, which resulted in a “chain of serial movements” (Smith 1987:134). Several groups moved south, where a commercial fur trade had not yet developed, ostensibly to escape their armed native neighbors, but groups with ¤rearms soon penetrated the lower South as well (Smith 1987:134). Smith rejected Crane’s idea that the Rickahockans ¤rst obtained guns from Virginia, instead concluding, rightly I believe, that the source of their ¤rearms was the trade in the Northeast (Smith 1987:132). The fact that on arrival in Virginia they routed Colonel Edward Hill’s militia, who were armed with muskets, certainly supports this conclusion (Bowne 2000a:60– 61; Hening 1809–1823:1:322, 373; McIlwaine and Kennedy 1905–1915: 1:101). Even more importantly, Smith was the ¤rst to note that the arrival of ¤rearms in the region had a dramatic impact on the social geography of the lower South. That is to say, it had already been recognized that the armed Westos forced coastal Indians into an alliance with the Carolina colonists, but Smith believed a similar process was occurring unrecorded along Carolina’s western frontier. He hypothesized that ¤rearms represented an important factor behind the formation of the Creek Confederacy (Smith 1987:135). John Worth discovered a similar phenomenon in Spanish Florida. By examining census records, he was able to document the signi¤cant demographic effect of the gun-wielding Westos, who forced hundreds of non-mission Indians into the arms of the Spanish for fear of being taken into slavery (Worth 1995:15–30).


4 The Northeastern Origins of the Westos

Before the Westo Indians were recorded in the South in the mid-seventeenth century, I contend, they were known throughout the Northeast by various forms of the term “Erie.” The idea that the Westos and the Eries were somehow related has been debated by several generations of scholars. Most of these studies, however, concerned primarily with positively identifying the forebears of the Westos and making sense of the multitude of ethnonyms used to designate them, were inconclusive (Crane 1918; Juricek 1964; Mason 1963; Smith 1987; Swanton 1919). Only recently has the argument been more convincingly made that the Westos were indeed the same group referred to by French Jesuits as the Erie (Green 1998). In any case, as noted in the preceding chapter, it is widely accepted that the Westos originated in the Northeast. No previous study, however, has fully explored the implications of the Westos’ northeastern origins, or adequately explained how they ¤rst developed their ¤rearms advantage, or shown why they chose the South as the region in which to exercise it. Therefore, the following discussion of the interactions among the Eries, Susquehannocks, and Five Nations Iroquois remains instructive concerning the context in which the Westo polity developed regardless of whether or not the Westos can be equated with the Eries. “Erie” was the name applied to an alliance of native groups who lived to the west of the Five Nations Iroquois in the vicinity of the lake that bears their name today (Figure 2). Numerous versions of “Erie” or “Eriehronnon” began to be recorded by the French as early as the 1630s and continued to be used regularly in documents collected in the Jesuit Relations throughout the 1640s and 1650s (Thwaites 1896–1901:8:115, 18:235, 21:191, 233, 33:62, 41:74). The Jesuits also mentioned “Rigue” as the name of a particular Erie village (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:186). The Five Nations Iroquois referred to the people of this village, and perhaps the Erie


38 / Chapter 4

Figure 2. Erie Country

as a whole, as Riquehronnons, while the Huron used the word “Rhieerhonnons” (Thwaites 1896–1901:8:115, 45:207, 47:59, 50:117). The Erie were also regularly referred to by the French as la Nation du Chat, a phrase that has most often been translated as “Cat Nation” or “Panther Nation” (Thwaites 1896–1901:21:191, 42:75, 97, 113, 179, 195). It is likely, however, that chat actually refers to chat sauvauge, a term used in Quebec for raccoon (Engelbrecht 1991:2). Therefore, la Nation du Chat is probably best translated as “Raccoon Nation” (White 1978:416). Any words of the Erie language that might have been recorded by the Jesuits have not survived. They were noted, however, as having been speakers of an Iroquoian language (White 1978:412). Further, all of the groups known to have had members join the Erie as refugees during the Beaver Wars were also thought to have spoken Iroquoian languages (Trigger 1978: 355). Because the Erie were one of the last groups of northern Iroquoians to hold out against the aggression of the Five Nations, it appears that they had a large population at least as late as 1654, though they were dispersed and displaced shortly after that date. Much of this population, however, was composed of remnants of such groups as the Huron and Neutral, who had been previously defeated and dispersed by the Five Nations (Richter 1992:62–65). The high percentage of refugees among the Erie had much to


Northeastern Origins of the Westos / 39

do with geography. That is, the Erie were situated farther west from the Mohawks and other Five Nations groups than most other northern Iroquoian speakers. In the 1640s and 1650s, when the Five Nations generally bent their aggression toward their several Iroquoian cousins, the western location of the Erie meant they often received refugee groups sent ®eeing from the guns of the Five Nations. During the Beaver Wars, the Five Nations Iroquois were directly responsible for the displacement and dispersal of several native groups in the Northeast. When northern Iroquoian-speaking peoples such as the Huron and Neutral met this fate, those who survived the initial assaults of the Five Nations often migrated to the territory of other northern Iroquoianspeaking groups, where they were adopted into their hosts’ polities (Richter 1992:61–62). Such wholesale adoption of many people at once may have been an unfamiliar form of coalescence in the Northeast before the realities of the Beaver Wars and Old World diseases required such measures for survival, but it became a common practice during the seventeenth century. Other, more traditional methods also existed, however, to facilitate the adoption of strangers, the most common being the northern Iroquoian cultural institution known as “the mourning war.” At its most basic level, the mourning war served as a means for dealing with the death of community members, especially those who died violently by the hands of enemy warriors. When a man was killed in battle, his female relatives had the right to call for a mourning war—“the ultimate socially sanctioned release for their violent impulses” (Richter 1992:33). Mourning wars were generally undertaken by small parties of warriors with the intent of bringing back prisoners for torture and/or adoption. Even when prisoners were adopted, they were often tortured brutally as a means of destroying mental and physical resistance to living among one’s captors, though captive women and children were often spared the worst of it (Knowles 1940:185–189; Trigger 1969:47–51). The responsibility for conducting such expeditions fell to young men related by marriage to the women who requested raids (Richter 1992:33). Before leaving on these punitive raids, members of the war party ceremonially ate a meal of dog meat (Knowles 1940:214). Slaves were equated symbolically with dogs, and the word for both is identical or similar in all northern Iroquoian languages (La¤tau 1974:2:189). John Lawson encountered a similar phenomenon in Carolina in 1701, noting that “as for servant, they have no such [word] except Slave, and their Dogs . . . are called by the same name” (Lawson 1967:210). Upon successful completion of a mourning war raid, the returning warriors and others from the village would roast and eat one of the prisoners, an act that apparently carried great signi¤cance (Richter 1992:36). Ritual cannibalism such as this was regularly seen ¤rsthand by French Jesuits during the seventeenth century


40 / Chapter 4

(Thwaites 1896–1901:4:201, 10:227–229, 13:79, 283, 22:253, 255, 259, 39:57, 81). During the seventeenth century it appears as though the mourning war grew in importance. The introduction of Old World epidemic diseases resulted in a high number of deaths among most native populations. In addition, the growing emphasis on warfare as a means of securing European trading partners resulted in a high mortality rate in young men irrespective of disease. These two factors resulted in large numbers of captives being naturalized into their enemies’ societies during the seventeenth century. Abundant evidence exists supporting the conclusion that by the end of the seventeenth century nearly half of the members of the Five Nations Iroquois had been adopted into the confederacy (Fenton 1978:315; Richter 1992:73; Thwaites 1896–1901:44:21, 41, 45:207, 57:193–195). In addition to its growing importance, the mourning war also became intimately tied to the Indian trade during the seventeenth century. As the demand for European products rose during the century, warriors undertaking mourning war raids on behalf of their female kin generally picked victims who would yield European-manufactured products (Richter 1992:55). Due to the inherent instabilities in such a volatile environment, the population of the Erie Nation is dif¤cult to estimate, but some ¤gures were collected from Five Nations sources and recorded by the Jesuits. In 1654 the single Erie village of Rigue was said to have been defended by 2,000 to 3,000 men (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:179). The priests learned of this from Onondaga informants who were part of the large contingent of Five Nations Iroquois who had attacked the Erie village. Perhaps this number represents an exaggeration made by the victorious Iroquois in order to increase the prowess of their military in the eyes of the French. On the other hand, if this number is correct, some of the warriors defending Rigue that day may have come from other villages to help their relatives and clansmen. Even if 3,000 men represented all of the warriors in the Erie Nation, their total population would have been near 10,000—a ¤gure on par with the Huron Confederacy before its members were ravaged and displaced by the Five Nations during the late 1640s (Trigger 1969:12). Regardless of the makeup of its constituents, the Erie Nation apparently had a large population well into the 1650s. One implication of the coalescent nature of the Eries is that following their displacement by the Iroquois in the mid-1650s, they probably also dispersed. In other words, since the Erie comprised a number of northern Iroquoian-speaking groups who were essentially part of a nonaggression or defensive pact, the polity may have split into its constituent parts once the full brunt of the Five Nations’ aggression was leveled against it. In this way it is possible that some members of the Erie Nation remained in the Northeast while others migrated south in search of better opportunities. It is



likely that the Riquehronnons, later called Rickohockans and Richahecrians by the Virginians, were the group of Eries who took up residence on the frontier of Virginia in 1656. Indirect evidence for this can be found in the Jesuit Relations. In 1656, Jesuits identi¤ed a group known as the “Gentuetehronnons” as being part of the Erie Nation (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:197). Much later, in 1679, “Gentaienton” was identi¤ed as the name of an Erie village inhabited by the aforementioned group, though it is unclear where this village was located (Thwaites 1896–1901:61:195). Given this information, however, it seems likely that the Riquehronnons and the Gentuetehronnons represent two identi¤ably separate parts of the Erie Nation. If the village of Gentaienton was located near the traditional homeland of the Erie in 1679, it would support the conclusion that only part of the Eries, namely the Riquehronnons, moved to the South, where they were ¤rst known as the Rickahockans and later became known as the Westos. In any case, we may be sure that we are missing many of the details of the Eries’ displacement and dispersal, though it seems a broad understanding is becoming clearer.

Erie Archaeology Before the displacement of the Erie, their territory included parts of two physiographic provinces: the Central Lowland lake plains and the Allegheny section of the Appalachian Plateau (White 1978:412–413). As horticulture became prominent among northern Iroquoian speakers during the Late Woodland Period (a.d. 1000–1600), populations tended to move down from the plateau onto the lake plains, where many late-prehistoric sites are found (Engelbrecht 1991:3). Besides the draw of good soils, the lake plains of the Central Lowlands were home to large populations of beaver, the importance of which grew during the seventeenth century as a consequence of the development of an international trade in beaver pelts. Erie territory was well placed to take advantage of European trade because it permitted easy travel in a number of directions. Streams from the upper part of Erie territory ®owed north to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River corridor, while the waterways of the Allegheny Plateau ®owed eventually into the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (White 1978:413). To the east, a series of rivers and short portages connected the Erie with the Chesapeake Bay and the resources of the Atlantic seaboard ( Jennings 1978:364). Several archaeological sites with occupations dating to the ¤rst half of the seventeenth century have been documented in the area believed to be the homeland of the Erie Nation. It is dif¤cult to know with any certainty, however, how long the appellation “Erie” had any real meaning or to which archaeological sites it should be applied (Brose 2001). Because the occupation histories of most sites in the area are less precise than needed


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to answer such questions as which villages were simultaneously occupied, it is dif¤cult to trace the movements of particular ethnic groups. Pottery can sometimes be used to determine from whence refugees may have originated, but the measure is crude and there are many examples of politically separate groups making and using similar pottery types and styles. The question of coalescence is indeed a dif¤cult one for archaeologists, though some particulars of Erie history may be glimpsed through the archaeological record. Some scholars believe that, besides the various northern Iroquoianspeaking refugees who constituted a substantial percentage of the polity in the 1650s, the Eries were essentially composed of three or more main groups. The Riquehronnons/Westos and Gentuetehronnons have been identi¤ed as two of these groups (White 1978:412). Another group, the Ehressaronon, is mentioned in relation to the Erie and may represent another constituent of the polity, but no other reference to them is made in the Jesuit Relations (Thwaites 1896–1901:18:235). It has been surmised that two clusters of sites near Lake Erie, referred to here as the eastern and western clusters, may each represent a series of villages occupied by one of the aforementioned groups (Engelbrecht 1991:4–6; White 1978:414–415). These two clusters of sites in what is known as the Niagara Frontier, along with a series of sites on Cattaraugus Creek and another series in present Pennsylvania, probably represent the early historic villages of the Erie Nation. The eastern cluster in the Niagara Frontier of western New York consists of the Goodyear, Newton-Hopper, and Simmons sites, all of which were located along Buffalo Creek in locations well suited for defense (Engelbrecht 1991:5). Bead Hill, a partially destroyed site south of the other three, is often included with the eastern cluster (Engelbrecht 1991:5; White 1978:414). The western cluster of village sites numbers ¤ve: Buffum, Eaton, Ellis, Green Lake, and Kleis (Engelbrecht 1991:5). The R. Haas II site located in the vicinity of the western cluster also appears to be an Iroquoian village, but the duration of its seventeenth-century occupation is still unknown (Engelbrecht 1991:5). The sites in each of these two clusters are believed to have been occupied sequentially in space and time, each by a particular ethnic group, with each successive village site located to the south of the previous one (Engelbrecht 1991:4). That is to say, one site at a time in each of the two clusters was occupied, and these occupations were contemporaneous, with the villages of each generally spaced about 8 to 10 miles apart. Allied Five Nations villages were also located about this same distance from one another (Engelbrecht 1991:4–5). About 25 miles southwest of these two clusters is another series of prehistoric and early historic villages along Cattaraugus Creek; however, little professional work has been done on these sites since the turn of the



twentieth century (Engelbrecht 1991:5–6; Schock 1976). Two of the sites, Silverheels and Highbanks, contained European trade material from the seventeenth century (Engelbrecht 1991:5). The Ripley site, located in southwestern New York near the Pennsylvania state line, produced only a few European trade items, suggesting that the site was occupied during the early seventeenth century (Engelbrecht 1991:5). There is a strong resemblance between the pottery of the Ripley site and that of the eastern and western clusters, particularly Newton-Hopper, perhaps implying a population movement (Engelbrecht 1991:7–8). It is possible that the same population occupied both the Newton-Hopper and Ripley sites at different times, though it is unclear which site was occupied ¤rst (Engelbrecht 1991:8). Another possibility, suggested by William Engelbrecht, is that Ripley may have been occupied only during the summer months, since the site is located on an exposed bluff above Lake Erie (Engelbrecht 1991:8). Another site strikingly similar to Ripley is the 28th Street site in Erie, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles southwest of the Ripley site (Carpenter et al. 1949:6). The 28th Street site, however, contains a larger variety and denser concentration of European trade material than does Ripley (Carpenter et al. 1949; Parker 1907). It is possible that the Ripley and 28th Street sites were related sequentially, as was proposed for the eastern and western clusters discussed above. Folk knowledge claims that the 28th Street site was the location of the historic village of Rigue, though this has yet to be proven (White 1978:414). This conclusion is plausible, however, considering the fact that when the Five Nations invaded Erie territory in 1654, many Eries were said to have retreated south after the initial attacks against the village of Rigue, which represents the southernmost site in the area attributed to the Erie Nation (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:179). Although the vagaries of migrations and occupational histories remain to be worked out satisfactorily, it is apparent that the sites in the vicinity of Lake Erie containing European trade material represent the historically known Erie Nation. The Eries appear to have consolidated the members of their polity into just a few forti¤ed villages in a manner similar to that described for the Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga tribes of the Five Nations Iroquois (Engelbrecht 1991:6; Niemczycki 1984; Tuck 1971). The Erie polity appears to have included an alliance between four or more contemporaneous villages represented archaeologically by the eastern and western clusters south of Buffalo, the sites along Cattaraugus Creek, and the Ripley–28th Street sites (Engelbrecht 1991:8). Kleis and Bead Hill represent the ¤nal occupations of the western and eastern village clusters, respectively (Engelbrecht 1991:8). The contemporaneous occupation of the Cattaraugus community may include both the Highbanks and Silverheels sites, which Marian White has argued were a village and its associated graveyard, respectively (White 1978:414). The 28th Street site, in this scenario,


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represents the last of the four known allied villages of the Erie Nation, circa mid-seventeenth century. White further noted that the ¤nal occupations in each of the four site clusters seem to correlate with the expulsion of the Eries, by the Five Nations, from their traditional homeland in the region bordering the southeastern shore of present Lake Erie, circa 1656 (Richter 1992:62; White 1978:416). According to information contained within the Jesuit Relations, it appears that the growing con®ict between the Five Nations and the Eries in the mid-1650s was due in part to Iroquois anxiety over the growing numbers of the Erie Nation (Thwaites 1896–1901:41:83). The fact that their population had recently been much swelled by refugees of Five Nations’ depredations likely added to the alarm of the Iroquois. Besides their concern about the population increase of the Erie Nation, the Five Nations were probably hoping to exploit the beaver grounds located near Lake Erie. Excellent areas to trap beaver existed to the north along the Buffalo River and the eastern bank of the Niagara River, as well as in Oak Orchard Swamp between the territory of the Eries and that of the Wenros. The Five Nations also meant to displace the Eries in order to open a geographic corridor through which the Five Nations would have access to the rich beaver grounds of the Ohio Valley (Trigger 1978:355). Previously, many of these Ohio Valley furs were being traded by the Eries to the Susquehannock Indians, inveterate enemies of the Five Nations Iroquois, who lived in the area of the juncture of the present states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland ( Jennings 1968:18, 22).

The Susquehannock Indians and the Chesapeake Bay Trade During the ¤rst half of the seventeenth century, members of the Five Nations Iroquois (especially the Mohawks) and their enemies the Susquehannocks were the preeminent native traders in the Northeast. The Five Nations focused their attention on the Dutch trade passing through the Hudson Valley and the French trade along the St. Lawrence River corridor (Richter 1992:55–57; Trigger 1978:352–354). The Susquehannocks, meanwhile, captured the more southerly trade centered on the Swedish colony in the Delaware Valley and the two English settlements on either end of the Chesapeake Bay ( Jennings 1978:364–365; Kent 1984). The Susquehannocks had a relatively small population compared to the Five Nations: about 1,300 warriors and 6,000 total people according to ¤gures recorded in 1647. They managed to play an in®uential role in the Beaver Wars, however, by exploiting trade opportunities outside the geographic area controlled by the Five Nations ( Jennings 1978:362; Thwaites 1896–1901: 33:129). The Susquehannocks, who spoke a northern Iroquoian language, were



known to the French by their Iroquoian name, either in its Five Nations form “Gandastogue” or in its Huron form “Andaste” (Thwaites 1896– 1901:8:116, 18:233). Swedish and Dutch colonists generally referred to them as “White Minquas” after the manner of the Algonquian groups who resided in the area (Weslager 1961:120). The English of Virginia were the ¤rst Europeans to call them Susquehannocks (Smith 1630:407–409). Although the Susquehannocks claimed to possess the entire Susquehanna Valley, it appears that their population was concentrated in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania ( Jennings 1978:363). Five villages along the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County have been unearthed that date to the ¤rst half of the seventeenth century, with perhaps only a single village occupied at any one time ( Jennings 1978:363). Much of the Susquehannocks’ in®uence in seventeenth-century European trade was due to the fact that their main village, in each of its incarnations, was located less than 50 miles upstream from the mouth of the Susquehanna River. This location allowed the Susquehannocks to travel in several directions to multiple markets ( Jennings 1968:17). By following the river south, they had easy access to the English traders in the Chesapeake Bay. From the Chesapeake, a short portage led northeast to the Delaware River of the Swedes. The Susquehannocks could also reach the Dutch on the Schuylkill River by means of a tributary of the Susquehanna, Conestoga Creek, which was connected by a short portage to French Creek, a tributary of the Schuylkill that entered the main channel upriver from the Dutch trading posts. The western branch of the Susquehanna River led to two other important portages that linked the Susquehannocks with water routes leading to both Lake Erie and the Ohio Valley. Finally, an overland route to the southwest led eventually to the backcountry of Virginia ( Jennings 1978: 364). In other words, the Susquehanna River was a link between excellent sources of peltry and highly coveted European trade goods ( Jennings 1978:364). When Captain John Smith ¤rst encountered Susquehannocks in 1608, they were already in possession of a few European trade goods, probably originating from somewhere in the St. Lawrence corridor (Smith 1969). Smith, however, returned to Jamestown without establishing an exchange relationship with the Susquehannocks, who had only sporadic interaction with Virginians over the next two decades (Fausz 1984:7–8). During much of that time, the Susquehannocks were preoccupied with opening trade relations with the Dutch, ¤rst in Rensselaerswyck and later in Dutch New Amsterdam. In this endeavor, though, the Susquehannocks met with substantial resistance. The Mohawks carried out an aggressive plan to capture the Rensselaerswyck trade that began circa 1610 and effectively cut off any possibility of direct access between the Susquehannocks and the Dutch in New York (Richter 1992:54–56). Once Dutch New Amsterdam was


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founded in 1626, the Lenape and other Algonquian peoples of the region also attempted to keep the Susquehannocks from establishing trade relations with the Dutch toward the north ( Jennings 1978:364–365). By 1627, however, the Susquehannocks had initiated what would soon become a brisk exchange with William Claibourne of the Virginia colony, who opened trading posts on Kent Island in the Chesapeake Bay and on Palmer’s Island at the mouth of the Susquehanna River (Fausz 1984:11– 12). Most of the exchange of trade goods between Claibourne and the Susquehannocks occurred on Palmer’s Island, while Kent Island, as one scholar put it, served as Claibourne’s “capital” (Fausz 1984:12). It was a bustling place where several dozen people lived and worked, and the community included “a fort, storehouses, cabins, two mills, the ¤rst Anglican church north of the James River, and a shipyard” (Fausz 1984:12). Claibourne employed enough men and interpreters to operate four trading vessels that were active between March and June, exchanging their wares for the processed beaver pelts collected by the Susquehannocks the previous winter. In support of these four crews, Kent Island boasted “farmers, shipbuilders, coopers, millwrights and millers, hog-keepers, cooks, washerwomen, and at least one Anglican clergyman” (Fausz 1984:12). By 1629, Claibourne was granted a monopoly on trade with the Susquehannocks (Fausz 1984:11). The partnership thus formed proved to be bene¤cial to both groups for several years. The fur trade allowed Claibourne and his associates to earn “more in one yeare than [was possible] . . . by Piracie in seven” (Smith 1630:60). Meanwhile, the Susquehannocks now had a market for their furs beyond regular interference from both the Five Nations Iroquois and the Lenapes of the Delaware Valley (Fausz 1984:12). The Susquehannocks were able to gather more than a thousand pounds of dressed beaver pelts each year for their Virginia allies. This lucrative trade was interrupted in 1638, however, when the recently founded colony of Maryland captured Kent Island in an attempt to usurp Claibourne’s position in the Indian trade (Fausz 1984:13). Unlike Virginians, who failed to develop a substantial Indian trade during the ¤rst decade of Virginia’s existence, Marylanders expected to pursue such a trade immediately upon the colony’s inception. The fur trade “was the main and chief encouragement of . . . [Maryland’s] Lord Proprietarie to undertake the great charge and hazard of planting this Province and to endu[c]e the Gentlemen and . . . ¤rst adventurers to come therein” (Browne 1883–1972:1:42–43). Because of their desire to develop an Indian trade, the establishment of the Maryland colony was a serious threat to the economic well-being of Virginia (Fausz 1984:14). Violent confrontations between members of the two English colonies began shortly after the arrival of the ¤rst Maryland settlers in 1634 and continued sporadically throughout the remainder of the mid-seventeenth century. Claibourne’s



trading operation was a primary concern of the Marylanders. Claibourne was charged by the Maryland governor with “animating, practising, and conspiring with the [Susquehannocks] to supplant and cutt . . . off” the new English colony (Browne et al. 1883–1972:3:64, 66). In retaliation for these alleged offenses, Maryland seized Claibourne’s island trading posts, which were located on land included in the Maryland charter ( Jennings 1978:364). The success of Maryland’s campaign against Claibourne and his associates put the Susquehannocks in a precarious position. The people of Maryland, who had already allied themselves with the Piscataway and Patuxent Indians, were just as hostile toward the Susquehannocks as they were toward the Virginians (Fausz 1984:15). The Susquehannocks were again being forced out of the fur trade by native neighbors who were better placed either geographically or politically. Their Five Nations and Algonquian foes still restricted access to the Dutch traders at Fort Nassau/Orange and, to a lesser extent, to the trading posts on the Schuylkill River; and now Maryland and her Indian allies threatened to shut the Susquehannocks out of the Chesapeake Bay trade (Weslager 1961:129–130). As the con®ict between the Virginians and the Marylanders reached its height, however, a new option became available to the Susquehannocks. This option came in the form of Swedish traders under the employ of Peter Minuit, who arrived on the Christina River just east of Susquehannock territory in 1638 (Weslager 1961:135). Minuit ordered the construction of a forti¤ed trading post known as Fort Christina on the western side of the river, and Swedish traders promptly developed an exchange relationship with the Susquehannocks (Weslager 1961:136). Minuit, formerly employed by the Dutch West India Company as director-general of New Netherland between 1626 and 1632, had been quite successful at developing the Indian trade at Fort Nassau/Orange (Weslager 1961:160). As a result, he had gained valuable experience in all aspects of the North American fur trade, including travel and exploration. It has been argued that at the time of the founding of New Sweden in 1638, Minuit was the most knowledgeable man alive concerning New Netherland and its inhabitants (Weslager 1961:166). In any case, Minuit established New Sweden in the Delaware Valley speci¤cally because it afforded an excellent geographic position in which to compete with the Dutch on the Schuylkill for dominance in the fur trade. At the same time, it was far enough away from Fort Nassau/ Orange to make it impractical for Delaware Valley Dutch to rely on New Netherland for help against Minuit’s intrusions (Weslager 1961:166–167). Considering the fact that Minuit’s instructions included the directive to establish a trade that undermined the position of the Dutch traders, it is possible that New Sweden provided ¤rearms to natives in order to draw the pelts of the Susquehannocks away from the Dutch on the Schuylkill River


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(Weslager 1961:135–137). By 1640, the Dutch at Fort Nassau/Orange were complaining that they were forced to trade guns with the Mohawks because the English on the Connecticut had begun doing so in order to divert the Mohawks’ furs away from the Dutch (Trigger 1978:354). Once a trade in arms and ammunition was begun, the strong native desire for European ¤rearms required that all successful merchants had to become gun traders. French, English, Dutch, and Swedish documents provide abundant evidence of the development of a widespread northeastern trade in arms and ammunition during the 1640s. The introduction of large quantities of ¤rearms affected the Susquehannocks and other native groups in a variety of ways (Snow et al. 1996:209–210). Despite the fact that their new trading arrangement with the Swedes alleviated some of the pressure the Susquehannocks were feeling from the newly arrived Marylanders, it did not provide them the stability they had experienced during their years of trade with Claibourne and his men. Maryland was unwilling to allow an armed group such as the Susquehannocks to live unmolested at so short a distance from the ®edgling colony. In an attempt to expel the Susquehannocks from the Chesapeake area, Maryland launched two expeditions against them in the early 1640s ( Jennings 1978:364). Although the ¤rst foray met with a modicum of success, the second was severely defeated by the Susquehannocks, who had recently obtained additional ¤rearms from Swedish traders ( Jennings 1978:364). Periodic threats of further confrontation kept both the Marylanders and the Susquehannocks wary of each other for the remainder of the 1640s. In 1652, however, the Susquehannocks approached the colony with an offer to establish a trade agreement, to which the Marylanders happily agreed. It is likely that both groups were willing to put aside their differences for the sake of increased pro¤ts in the fur trade. Toward that end, the Susquehannocks “ceded” Maryland much of the land surrounding the northern Chesapeake Bay in exchange for access to Maryland traders ( Jennings 1978:365). After the treaty with Maryland in 1652, which gave the Susquehannocks a second source of arms and ammunition, they were much better able to deal with the Five Nations Iroquois, their traditional enemies. In fact, the Susquehannocks were able to make several successful attacks against the Iroquois and to repel several others in the late 1650s and early 1660s ( Jennings 1978:365). These successes were probably due in part to the steady supply of arms and ammunition Maryland exchanged with the Susquehannocks at posts essentially beyond the reach of the Five Nations’ military. In order to retain their advantage, however, the Susquehannocks had to secure a continual supply of beaver pelts with which to purchase ¤rearms and other European goods from their Swedish and English trading partners. It appears that many of the beaver pelts traded to Europeans by the



Susquehannocks during the 1640s came from both the Lake Erie area and the Ohio Valley ( Jennings 1968:22; Trigger 1978:355). Several sources con¤rm that the Eries, known to the Swedes as “Black Minquas,” were involved in this trade, supplying the Susquehannocks, or “White Minquas,” with beaver pelts in exchange for European-manufactured items and also marine shell from the Atlantic coast (Green 1998:10–11; Hoffman 1964:201–204; Weslager 1961:117). It would seem that the arrangement between the Eries and the Susquehannocks developed out of geographical convenience. North of the Delaware Valley the competition for furs was too stiff, so the Susquehannocks were forced to develop a source of furs outside the territory controlled by the Five Nations. The Ohio Valley afforded the best opportunity, since abundant high-quality pelts could be obtained there and transported by water to the territory of the Susquehannock without having to pass through lands controlled by the Five Nations.

Erie Con®icts with the Five Nations Iroquois Throughout the 1640s, the Eries and all of their northern Iroquoianspeaking cousins were under steady military pressure from the Five Nations Iroquois, who were, by this time, in possession of large numbers of European ¤rearms (Richter 1992:60–64). Arms and ammunition were needed if the Erie were to withstand the onslaught of the aggressive Iroquois, but where could they be obtained? The Five Nations jealously guarded the approaches to French, English, and Dutch trading posts in the St. Lawrence and Hudson Valleys. The Susquehannocks, who were also longtime enemies of the Five Nations, would have provided one of the only available opportunities for the Eries to acquire the ¤rearms the Jesuits recorded them as possessing (Thwaites 1896–1901:45:209). The Jesuits also noted the presence of Erie “at the north of Virginia” in 1640 (Thwaites 1896– 1901:18:235). The governor of New Dutch Amsterdam referred to an ErieSusquehannock trade partnership as early as 1644, and again in 1647 and 1653 ( Johnson 1930:117, 132, 136–137, 140, 188). By the mid-seventeenth century, the Five Nations Iroquois were seeking new sources of peltry, and they made a concerted effort to wrest control of the Ohio Valley from the Eries and the Susquehannocks. After more than two decades of constant pressure on beaver populations, the Five Nations were forced to seek beaver from outside their own territory by the 1640s (Richter 1992:57). In response to this problem, the Five Nations began to systematically assault their Iroquoian-speaking cousins in order to steal the furs they had already processed for market. The efforts of the Five Nations were helped immeasurably in 1643, when they obtained 400 muskets along with powder and shot from the Dutch (O’Callaghan and Fernow 1853– 1887:1:150). By 1650, the Five Nations had essentially defeated and dis-


50 / Chapter 4

persed the Huron (Richter 1992:60–62). Since the Five Nations’ involvement in the fur trade was at least partially based on stealing pelts that other groups had already processed for market, once the Huron were displaced the Iroquois needed a new group from whom they could obtain highquality furs (Richter 1992:57). In 1651 and 1652 the Five Nations launched a series of attacks against the Susquehannocks. They hoped to disperse them in order to gain access to the furs of the Ohio Valley, which the Susquehannocks had been trading with the English and the Swedes (Trigger 1978:355). As noted earlier, the Susquehannocks’ recent agreement with the Marylanders gave them a second source of Europeans arms, which appears to have been enough to frustrate the efforts of the aggressive Five Nations. In any case, the Susquehannocks were able to resist the 1651 and 1652 assaults of the Iroquois ( Jennings 1968:23–26). After meeting with little success in their campaign against the Susquehannocks, the Five Nations turned their aggression toward their enemy’s trading partner, the Eries, in an effort to cut off the Susquehannocks from their source of Ohio Valley furs. Before they could send a large force to Lake Erie and the Ohio area, however, the Five Nations had to secure the safety of their villages in the absence of so many warriors. Toward this end, the Five Nations established their ¤rst peace with the French, who soon founded a Jesuit mission among the Onondaga (Trigger 1978:355). The French had already founded several missions and trading posts among the Huron and Algonquian enemies of the Iroquois, and their presence among the Five Nations probably discouraged open aggression toward the Iroquois from other native trading partners of the French. Without the establishment of peaceful relations with the French at this time, the Five Nations would have laid themselves open to attacks from the native allies of both the French in the St. Lawrence area and the Swedes in the Delaware Bay. Using the Jesuits as a buffer against the retaliations of recently displaced Huron and their allies allowed the Five Nations to launch a furious assault against the Erie Nation. According to the Jesuit fathers, open hostilities between the Iroquois and the Erie Nation began in earnest in 1653 when the Iroquois killed 25 of the 30 Erie ambassadors who had come to treat with the Seneca, perhaps in an attempt to avoid con®ict over the Ohio country (Thwaites 1896– 1901:42:177). The Jesuits were told by the Seneca that the Erie murders were in retaliation for trouble caused by one of the ambassadors during their stay at a Seneca village (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:177). It seems more likely, however, that the Seneca never intended peace with their cousins the Eries. In any case, the death of the Erie ambassadors caused a “war [to be] kindled between these two Nations, and each strove to capture and burn more prisoners than its opponents” (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:177).



In retaliation for the murder of their ambassadors, the Eries captured and burned a Seneca town, and “completely cut to pieces . . . an entire [Seneca] company of eighty picked men . . . returning victorious from the direction of the great lake of the Hurons” (Thwaites 1896–1901:41:81). In addition, the Eries captured a prestigious Onondaga war captain, who “was given to the sister of one of the . . . ambassadors who had been put to death” (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:177). The Erie elders wished to ransom the Onondaga man back to the Five Nations in an attempt to forestall more con®ict. The sister of the dead warrior, however, demanded that the Onondaga war captain be tortured to death, as was her right according to the principles of the mourning war (Thwaites 1896–1901: 42:179). Despite the pleading of the elders that such an act would “involve them in a new war . . . she would not yield,” and her decision quickly brought the Onondaga into the escalating fray between the Senecas and the Eries (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:179). Five Nations informants told the Jesuits that because of this act, “all the . . . Nations of the . . . Iroquois were on ¤re; that they were leaguing together, and arming to repulse this enemy; and that all this compelled them earnestly to seek peace with [the French Jesuits] even though they might not have had such thoughts before” (Thwaites 1896–1901:41:81). Due to the success of the Eries’ campaign against the Five Nations, it seems likely that they had by now obtained a signi¤cant number of ¤rearms from their Susquehannock allies on the Chesapeake. It would have been in the Susquehannocks’ best interests for the Eries to have guns with which to defend the beaver grounds of the Ohio. Recall that the Susquehannocks had also recently acquired another source of European arms and ammunition, namely, the Marylanders. Perhaps this would have given the Susquehannocks access to enough ¤rearms to trade some of them to their allies, the Eries, in order to protect both of their interests against the Iroquois. If the Eries had recently obtained guns from the Susquehannocks, this would have increased the need for the Five Nations to disperse the group, lest they be caught between two well-armed foes and cut off from an important source of peltry. In 1654, the Five Nations informed their new French allies that they intended to “wage a war against the Ehriehronnons” in retaliation for Erie attacks against the Iroquois the previous year (Thwaites 1896–1901: 41:75). The Jesuits were also under the impression that the aggression of the Five Nations was due in part to the increasing population of the Eries, which had recently ballooned, “having been reinforced by some Hurons . . . [who] stirred up this war which is ¤lling the Iroquois with alarm” (Thwaites 1896–1901:41:83). Thus, for a number of reasons, during the summer of 1654 a combined force of between 1,200 and 1,800


52 / Chapter 4

Senecas and Onondagas left for Erie country, where “their arrival spread such a panic, that Villages and dwellings were abandoned to the mercy of the Conquerer,—who, after burning everything, started in pursuit of the fugitives” (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:179). The pursuit led to another Erie village, probably Rigue, where between 2,000 and 3,000 warriors had gathered in defense against the Iroquois invasion (Thwaites 1896–1901: 42:187). The Jesuits were under the impression that the palisade behind which the Eries gathered was “built for the occasion” (White 1978:416). This is unlikely, however, considering that the warriors were “closely followed” by the invading Iroquois, and a substantial wooden forti¤cation would have taken many days of labor to construct (Thwaites 1896–1901: 42:179). Regardless of whether the Erie retreated to Rigue or another of their villages, they were forced to attempt to repel a combined force of Senecas and Onondagas, perhaps reinforced in this particular battle by 700 Mohawks (Thwaites 1896–1901:45:209). Before the ¤ghting, one of the war captains of the invading force “urged the beseiged to capitulate, telling them that they would be destroyed if they allowed an assault” (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:181). When the defending Eries refused to surrender, The assault was made and the palisade attacked on all sides; but the defense was as spirited as the attack, and the combat was a long one, great courage being displayed on both sides. The Beseiging party made every effort to carry the place by storm, but in vain; they were killed as fast as they advanced. They hit on the plan of using their canoes as shields; and, bearing these before them as protection, they reached the foot of the entrenchment. But it remained to scale the large stakes, or tree-trunks, of which it was built. Again they resorted to their canoes, using them as ladders for surmounting the staunch palisade. Their boldness so astonished the Beseiged that, being already at the end of their munitions of war,—with which, especially with powder, they had been but poorly provided,—they resolved to ®ee. (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:181) Although exact numbers are unavailable, it appears the battle proved costly to both sides, as “even the Victors did not escape heavy losses,—so great, indeed, that they were forced to remain two months in the enemy’s country, burying their dead and caring for their wounded” (Thwaites 1896– 1901:42:183). Although skirmishes continued off and on for more than a year, the Five Nations’ victory at Rigue seems to have effectively splintered and dispersed the Eries, opening a route to the Ohio country for the Iroquois (Thwaites 1896–1901:42:53, 195, 44:153; White 1978:416).



The Riquehronnon/Westo Migration to the South At least part of the Erie Nation, probably those known as the Riquehronnons, migrated to the Virginia frontier and took up residence in the area near the falls of the James River by 1656 (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:155; Hunter 1978:588). Part of the motivation for this relocation was to settle in a spot “out of the Iroquois’ reach,” but other factors were important as well (Thwaites 1896–1901:47:59). William Green has argued that members of the Riquehronnons had previously established a village in Virginia to facilitate their trade with the Susquehannocks and that the survivors of the attack on Rigue simply retreated to the protection of their kindred in Virginia (Green 1998:6–10, 12). Whatever the circumstances, the Riquehronnons/Westos needed to secure a reliable supply of European arms and ammunition. This consideration was especially important because it is likely that their trade relationship with the Susquehannocks was souring at this time. Once the Eries were dispersed and the Riquehronnons/ Westos left their traditional homeland along the southeastern ®ank of Lake Erie, they were no longer in the position to exploit the rich beaver grounds of the Ohio Valley—the main source of peltry they had supplied to the Susquehannocks. That is to say, the usefulness of the Eries as trading partners to the Susquehannocks was completely undermined by their defeat at the hands of the Five Nations. Eventually, however, the Riquehronnons/Westos were able to develop a trade relationship with the Virginians, who were interested not only in peltry but also in slaves to work on the tobacco plantations. The trade agreement that was forged between the two groups would send shock waves through much of the lower South. In effect, the con®icts they faced in the northeastern Beaver Wars taught the Riquehronnons/Westos both the mechanics and the bene¤ts of a raiding lifestyle and then forced them to migrate out of the region. In the South, the plantation system required slave labor, so the Riquehronnons/Westos began to exploit humans as a pro¤table commodity. The fact that Spanish policy in Florida forbade the arming of native peoples with European ¤rearms gave the Riquehronnons/ Westos an inviting target for their slave raids. The lethal mix that proceeded from the interplay of the English, Dutch, and Spanish colonizing strategies had a dramatic effect on the development of the South in the latter half of the seventeenth century. The Riquehronnons, known in the South as the Westos, acted as the fulcrum for these changes.


5 Westo Advantages in the South

The Westos’ role in the development of the colonial South can be traced to the interplay among a number of factors, of which four were crucial. The ¤rst important advantage of the Westos was their experience in the Beaver Wars. As discussed in chapter 4, the Westos were displaced by the Five Nations Iroquois from the Lake Erie area between 1654 and 1656. Following this, it must have been quite clear to the Westos how important it was to acquire direct access to a European trading partner, since they were said to have been defeated because they ran out of ammunition. The second important factor the Westos used to their advantage, one that has been heretofore ignored, was the inexperience of early European colonists. Colonists knew very little about Indian languages and the geography of the South. Until at least the turn of the eighteenth century, almost all English and Dutch peoples in the region were essentially helpless in the interior without Indian guides and interpreters—a fact which allowed the Westos to dominate interactions that took place in the southern interior. Third, the Westos’ immigration to the South was concurrent with the development of a European trade economy in the region. That is, when the Westos arrived on the southwestern frontier of the Virginia colony, this area was newly opened to English trade and no dominant native middlemen groups had yet emerged. The plantation economies of Virginia and Carolina required slaves, and this set the Westos on a collision course with a wide range of southern Indian groups. This underscores the fourth and ¤nal advantage of the Westos: differential access to European arms and ammunition. Although this factor has often been cited as the major source of the Westos’ power and in®uence, their possession of guns represented only half of their advantage. The other half was based on the fact that the Westos, because of their familiarity with woodland guerrilla combat, were deadlier with ¤rearms than their European counterparts.


Westo Advantages in the South / 55

Experience in the Beaver Wars Beginning early in the seventeenth century, many northeastern native groups became caught up in a pattern of increased aggression contesting access to European-manufactured goods. This geo-economic warfare, which had no clear aboriginal precedent, was ¤rst recorded during the Mohawk-Mahican War, fought between 1624 and 1628 (Trigger 1971). In the early 1600s, the territory occupied by the Mahican peoples included an ideal transportation route for goods traveling to and from the Dutch colony of New York (Brasser 1978:202–203). Their location allowed the Mahicans to assume a middleman role in the trade between the Dutch and native groups situated farther west. One of these groups, the Mohawks of the Five Nations Iroquois, deliberately set out to displace them and usurp the position the Mahicans had created for themselves in the developing Dutch trade (Richter 1992:55–57; Trigger 1971). After succeeding in this endeavor, the Mohawks and their Five Nations allies began raiding other native groups, seeking not only to displace them but also to steal the furs they had already trapped and processed for the market (Brasser 1978:203; Richter 1992:57). Acquiring a relatively steady, stable access to European ¤rearms was one of the key factors in the continued success of the Five Nations. The Five Nations possessed some guns by about 1640 and then received over 400 more in 1643 according to the terms of a treaty signed that year with the Dutch (Richter 1992:62). Another important stipulation of the treaty of 1643 denied other native groups (i.e., the enemies of the Five Nations) the right to trade for European arms and ammunition at Fort Nassau/Orange (Jennings 1984:55–56). Emboldened by both their recent successes and their newly gained monopoly on legally traded Dutch guns from the Hudson Valley, the Mohawks and their Five Nations allies turned their attention for the next decade toward the displacement of their Iroquoian-speaking cousins to the west and northwest. As we have seen, between 1649 and 1657 the Five Nations systematically ravaged many of the native groups occupying the area around the eastern Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River Valley (Richter 1992:60–62). Many of the initial survivors of the Five Nations’ attacks were captured according to the traditions of the mourning war (Fenton 1978:315–316). Those who escaped death or enslavement essentially became refugees, forced either to abandon their homeland and settle with some other group still strong enough to defend themselves or to move completely outside the Five Nations’ sphere of in®uence. The Erie, including the group who would come to be known as the Westos, were the last major Iroquoian-speaking people to be displaced by the Five Nations, abandoning their traditional homeland southeast of Lake Erie circa 1656 (White 1978:416).


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The Beaver Wars taught the Westos the political and military tactics they needed to master if they were to be successful in the tumultuous new world in which they found themselves. During the early decades of the seventeenth century, the Five Nations developed a strategy that proved to be successful. In fact, it was so successful that other native groups imitated it, the Susquehannock example in the previous chapter being a case in point. The strategy ¤rst required that a group control a good geographic location, that is, one that allowed the native group access to their European trading partner without having to pass through another native group’s territory. Often, as was the case with the Five Nations, that meant that one had to physically displace one or more groups. The Five Nations were aided greatly in their endeavors at displacement by the use of European ¤rearms, often against Indians armed only with bows and arrows. This was the second key element of the strategy developed by the Five Nations: obtaining (and maintaining) a steady supply of arms and ammunition, while endeavoring to keep European weapons out of the hands of their enemies. And ¤nally, it was also best to cultivate multiple European trading partners so they might be played off each other to one’s own advantage. It can be argued that both the Mohawks and the Susquehannocks ¤rst received signi¤cant numbers of ¤rearms only after they had established trading relationships with competing European colonies. In the case of the Mohawks, English traders located on the Connecticut River began exchanging guns with them in order to draw peltry away from the Mohawks’ regular trading partner, the Dutch at Fort Nassau/Orange. The Dutch, in turn, were forced to traf¤c in arms and ammunition in order to maintain their partnership with the Mohawks (Trigger 1978:354). The Susquehannocks ¤rst obtained a signi¤cant number of ¤rearms in the early 1650s, as the result of an attempt by both the English in Maryland and the Swedes in Delaware to use the lure of ¤rearms as a way of assuring themselves trade with the Susquehannocks ( Jennings 1978:365; Trigger 1978:355). Since the Mohawks and their Five Nations allies were the traditional enemies of the Westos, and the Susquehannocks were their current trading partners, the bene¤ts of having one or preferably two European trading partners would not have been lost on the Westos. Thus, it seems safe to assume that when the Westos migrated south, part of their intention was to establish a more direct link to European-manufactured goods. Just as they helped to displace native groups, guns could aid in stealing valuable furs. A large percentage of the pelts traded at market by the Five Nations were stolen from groups who had to pass through Iroquois territory in order to conduct a trade with Europeans. Those who possessed ¤rearms created a great demand for them among the native groups they attacked; therefore most of these groups necessarily accumulated beaver pelts to trade. Thus the Five Nations, and those who imitated their strategy, cre-



ated a positive feedback loop in which their aggression stimulated other groups to collect furs, which they then stole and traded themselves. Yet, because of their constant pressure it remained a relatively stable livelihood in the Northeast for several decades. Plundering furs for a living was also much more ef¤cient than trapping and processing the pelts oneself. Returning to the particular case of the Westos, it appears that their move south was more of a calculated emigration than the haphazard retreat of a militarily defeated people, though previously their retreat from their traditional homeland around Lake Erie has been portrayed as such (Smith 1987:132; White 1978:412). When they appeared on the Virginia frontier in 1656, the Westos came in a considerable body—600 people according to the earliest secondary accounts (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:155; Crane 1929:16–17; Swanton 1922:294–295). The Westos were then able to deliver a severe military defeat to the Virginians and their Indian allies, implying a degree of cohesiveness not generally associated with ®eeing bands of refugees. It is also clear that the attack on Rigue in 1654 was not enough of a blow to completely displace the Westos, since the Five Nations continued to be preoccupied with them well into 1655 (White 1978:416). Yet they left their homeland around this time in order to relocate on the southwestern frontier of Virginia. If the Westos’ migration to Virginia was a calculated move to escape the in®uence and depredations of the Five Nations, as it appears to have been, then the reasons behind their choice of places to settle must be examined in detail. Experience had clearly taught the Westos that they needed direct access to European traders if they were to stand any chance of maintaining a stable existence in the face of encroaching European technology and the new incentives for war that came with it. The Westos also knew, however, that the Susquehannocks would jealously and violently defend their position in the Chesapeake area. In conjunction with this, it should be noted that when the Westos moved to Virginia their trading partnership with the Susquehannocks was greatly undermined. Consider that the Westos were collecting peltry from around the eastern Great Lakes and the tributaries of the Ohio River in order to trade them to the Susquehannocks for arms, ammunition, and other manufactured items. Once the Westos had moved south, they were no longer in the position to exploit the beaver populations from which they had previously furnished the Susquehannocks. Without beaver pelts to trade, the Westos would have quickly been transformed from a valued trading partner of the Susquehannocks to a potential enemy. It is therefore likely that the Susquehannocks would have posed more than a considerable threat had the Westos chosen to attempt to settle and trade in the Chesapeake Bay area (Fausz 1984:11–13; Jennings 1978:354–365). Although their relationship with the Susquehannocks may have been souring at this time, the Westos were likely considered attractive trading


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partners to the commanders of Virginia’s fall-line frontier garrisons. Previously, Indian trade in Virginia for exportable forest products (such as peltry) had been concentrated in the Chesapeake Bay area and was legally controlled by William Claibourne and his licensed associates (Fausz 1984: 11). After the Powhatan Revolt of 1644 was quelled, however, and the strength of that once powerful confederation was broken, the attention of a handful of Virginians, led by Abraham Wood, turned toward the exploration of the territory beyond the frontier garrisons (Rountree 2002:70– 76). Part of the motivation for these exploratory forays was to establish a trade with Indians that was beyond Claibourne’s jurisdiction. When the Westos arrived in Virginia in 1656, the southwestern frontier had been opened by exploration less than six years earlier, and a regular trade had yet to be established (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:114–130). This meant that no native middlemen stood in the way of the newly arrived Westos. Wood, who commanded Fort Henry and owned it and the contents of its magazine, stood to pro¤t by simply providing the Westos with what they desperately needed—ammunition and a new source of ¤rearms (Morton 1960:1:157–158). Wood was quite aware of the fact that Claibourne had been providing arms and ammunition to the Susquehannocks for a number of years without any serious consequences for the safety of the colony. In addition to the question of safety was that of pro¤t, and again Claibourne’s example showed Wood that by arming only one native group he could expect not only a steady supply of peltry but a steadfast trading partner. Yet it was still a dangerous game that Claibourne and Wood played. Despite the fact that they both eventually made fortunes in the trade, in the mid-seventeenth century, native middlemen, not European traders, had the upper hand in the peltry business—though they did not always understand this or take full advantage of these circumstances.

European Inexperience in the Southern Interior Part of the native advantage resulted from the ignorance and inexperience of their European trading partners. One of the important consequences of this inexperience was the fact that it severely limited European options. Early colonists in the South had a very small knowledge base from which to draw. They were often hard pressed to deal with problems that beset the colonies themselves; and at this time, they had very little direct in®uence beyond the borders of their own settlements. During the seventeenth century, the interior of the lower South was a vast, unfamiliar, and unexplored place to most European colonists, who hugged the coast or perhaps ventured inland a few miles along the rivers. Through the early decades of colonization in any particular locale, European immigrants lacked important and necessary information and skills. They did not know the geogra-



phy of the continent. The inhabitants of that continent, the Indians, were essentially an alien people, one whose languages, social customs, and political and military organization were poorly understood by the newly arrived Europeans. Much of the early success of native groups such as the Mohawks, Susquehannocks, and Westos rested on the ignorance and inexperience of the colonists, a fact that has been overlooked or underrated in previous scholarship. It was nearly impossible for inexperienced Europeans to travel any lengthy distance outside their colonies without native guides and interpreters. The Westos, although they too were unfamiliar with the South when they ¤rst arrived, would have been able to learn about the region much more quickly than the Europeans, especially if they used local captives as a source of information. Europeans, on the other hand, did not know the trail systems, the best methods of travel, or even what food to take on their journeys. John Lederer was one of the ¤rst explorers to venture beyond the southwestern border of Virginia. After much experience traveling with local natives, he noted that “the air in these parts was so moist, that all our biscuit became mouldy, and un¤t to be eaten, so that some of the nicer stomachs, who at our setting out laughed at my provision of Indian-meal parched, would gladly now have shared with me: but I being determined to go upon further discoveries, refused to part with any of that which was to be my most necessary sustenance” (Lederer 1958:21). Without Indian guides, and with the exception of a handful of experienced Spanish soldiers and French traders, Europeans in the eastern woodlands during the seventeenth century could generally expect to be lost and hungry. Even inside the colonies, especially within the ¤rst decade or so of their inceptions, Europeans often had to rely on Indian stores of corn and other provisions, which they traded for or were given in expectation of future repayment (Taylor 2001). Local Indians were often employed to provide the overwhelming majority of a colony’s supply of meat, and this was not due to laziness on the part of colonists but rather to inexperience with North American game animals and their habitats (Malone 1991:80–81). Local natives performed other tasks that required leaving the settlements, such as wood collecting, often for a few glass beads or other tri®es (Malone 1991:89). These settlement Indians, discussed in chapter 1, acted as a corrective to the ignorance of early colonists by providing their European guests with the necessities of life they could not easily procure for themselves. Everything was made more dif¤cult by a dearth of individuals who could speak both European and Indian languages. Henry Woodward, perhaps the most notable of Carolina’s early colonists, was especially important to their ®edgling colony because of his extensive experience with the indigenous peoples of the coast, among whom he had lived for many months (Crane


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1929:6–7; Salley 1911:104–106). When he was away on business in the interior late in 1671, the colonists could gain no intelligence from local Indians because he was the only one who could understand them (Cheves 1897:338). In addition, in an atmosphere such as this, misinformation was likely as much of a problem as was lack of information. Even when colonists and natives sought each other for the purpose of trade, Europeans often found themselves on precarious grounds by knowingly or unknowingly ignoring established Indian trade protocol. For instance, reciprocal gift giving was a custom in establishing trade ties, and natives were likely to be offended when Europeans refused their gifts or gave none in return. William Hilton related an incident that occurred on the South Carolina coast in 1664, in which after refusing the hospitality offered them by the town, he and his companions “made a sudden retreat to our boat, which caused the Indian King to be in a great rage, speaking loud and angry to his men; the drift of which discourse we understood not” (Salley 1911:41). John Lawson encountered a similar situation when he refused the offer of an Indian bedfellow and his host “®ew into a violent passion, to be thus slighted, telling the Englishmen they were good for nothing” (Lawson 1967:50). When trade goods did change hands without incident, native measuring systems were generally the only accounting methods used. Roanoke beads came by the arm’s length and rum by the mouthful (Merrell 1989:61–62). Natives also tended to be the group to initiate exchanges by transporting goods to Europeans, and this often occurred only during particular times of the year (Merrell 1989:29–30). Traditionally, the development of exchange relationships between different native groups often included marriages between the parties, in order to tie the agreement to the privileges and responsibilities of kinship. Marriages that resulted from trading negotiations were an important means of ensuring amicable relations in the future. By offering them native wives, Indians attempted to bring Europeans within this sphere of in®uence where roles and responsibilities were (to the natives) clearly de¤ned and understood. Europeans often accepted these Indian wives, ¤nding them “very serviceable to them on account of dressing their victuals and instructing ’em in the affairs and customs of the country. Moreover, such a man gets a great trade with the savages” (Lawson 1967:192). It is doubtful, however, that Europeans acted in accordance with these new responsibilities. Europeans generally did what they needed to do in order to procure a good trade with the Indians, taking full advantage of the privileges marriage afforded but often shirking their reciprocal responsibilities. Native groups involved with European trade were jealous of their advantageous position and would generally ¤ght to protect it from both colonial traders and other Indian groups. Europeans traveling in the interior who did not respect this fact often met with dire consequences. Lederer gave the



following advice to fellow explorers in 1670: “I would not advise above half a dozen, or ten at most, to travel together; and of these, the major part Indians: for the nations in your way are prone to jealousie and mischief towards Christians in a considerable body, and as courteous and hearty to a few, from whom they apprehend no danger” (Lederer 1958:39). Native groups protecting middlemen positions often ambushed and killed colonists they found traveling away from European settlements. James Needham, one of Abraham Wood’s associates, was murdered by the Occaneechees on his journey back to Virginia in 1673 from lands further west, perhaps because they thought he would undercut their trading advantage (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:215–218). In 1684, William Byrd, a Virginia trader, reported that several of his employees “were killed by the Indians in their returne from the westward, about 30 miles beyond Ochanechee, what great predujice [sic] it is to me you may guesse, they having made a very advantagious [trading] journey” (Tinling 1977:1:16). Stories such as these were common and reminded those few bold enough to travel inland in the seventeenth century that Indians indeed had the upper hand in the backcountry. Yet despite the dangers and uncertainties, both Indians and Europeans greatly desired the continuation of the trade, and the midseventeenth century saw a rapid expansion of the market system.

Economic Opportunity in the South Nowhere was that expansion felt more keenly than in the American South. Until at least the 1640s, a number of factors combined to essentially cut this region off from developing European markets, even those as close as Chesapeake Bay. The Spanish, who had occupied parts of present Florida and Georgia since 1565, did not place the same emphasis on American exports as did their adversaries, the English, French, and Dutch (Hudson 2002:xxiv–xxv). Although they manufactured items speci¤cally for Indian commerce, the Spanish did not depend on trade economically, and thus it remained at a steady but low level throughout the early colonial era (Bushnell 1989:138–145). At no time during the seventeenth century was it legal to sell ¤rearms to the native peoples of Florida, though a few guns may have passed into the hands of Indians by illegal means (Waselkov 1989:120–121). Recall that the Spanish were the lone colonizers in the region for the ¤rst hundred years of the colonial period. As a result, the type of market competition that stimulated exchange and resulted in the introduction of ¤rearms as a common item of Indian trade did not develop in the South until the mid-seventeenth century. Although the English at Virginia had had more than a small interest in Indian trade since the colony’s inception in 1607, most of that interest was focused on the Susquehannock peoples in the Chesapeake Bay area.


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Part of the reason for this, as previously discussed, was that William Claibourne enjoyed a legal monopoly on trade with the powerful Susquehannocks (Fausz 1984:11–12). Further, the development of commerce to the southwest of Virginia, in the southern interior, was blocked during the early years of the colony by the powerful Powhatan confederacy (Rountree 2002:68–69). Periodic violent con®icts with a number of the confederacy’s groups before 1650, including major uprisings in 1622 and 1644, kept the land to the south and west of the fall line unexplored and rarely visited by Virginians. Once the Powhatans and their allies were removed as a threat, however, entrepreneurs led by Abraham Wood quickly ¤nanced the development of a southern trade, breaking the Claibourne monopoly in the process (Rountree 2002:70–76). The year after the second major Powhatan uprising began in 1644, the last serious resistance offered by the confederacy, four forts were constructed where the James, Appomattox, York, and Chickahominy Rivers intersected the fall line. After peace was established the next year, the “forts and all the property belonging to them . . . were granted to their several commanders” (Morton 1960:1:157–158). It was at this time that Abraham Wood was “granted sixe hundred acres of land for him and his heires for ever; with all houses and edi¤ces belonging to the said Forte [Henry], with all boats and ammunition att present belonging to the said Forte” (Hening 1809–1823:1:326). A trading post was soon established there by Wood, who hoped to pro¤t from a law enacted in 1646 that allowed any free citizen of Virginia to trade with the Indians (Morton 1960: 1:177). A regular trade with the native peoples of the area was not long in developing (Manarin and Dowdey 1984:41). The commanders of the other fall-line forts, noting Wood’s success, built their own trading posts and began to develop a commercial market on the southwestern frontier of Virginia that would soon rival the volume and scope of the Chesapeake Bay trade (Wright 1981:96). By the time Charles Town was founded in 1670, the trading post at Fort Henry and the other fall-line forts were stocking “Guns, Powder, Shot, Hatchets (which the Indians call Tomahawks), Kettles, red and blue Plains, Duf¤elds, Stroudwater blankets, and some Cutlery Wares, Brass Rings, and other Trinkets. These Wares are made up into Packs and Carryed upon Horses, each Load being from one hundred ¤fty to two hundred Pounds, with which they are able to travel about twenty miles a day, if Forage happen to be plentiful” (Byrd 1901:234–235). In other words, in about two decades what had been Virginia’s backcountry became the focal point of an extensive southern trade network. The trade was still in its ®edgling stage when the Westos arrived on the Virginia frontier in 1656. Subsequent events, to be discussed in the following chapter, make it evident, however, that a trade agreement was soon de-



veloped in which the Westos were to receive arms, ammunition, and other European-manufactured items in exchange for American products coveted by the Virginians. This relationship with Virginia gave the Westos the opportunity to set themselves up as middlemen in the expanding southern trade, making them the most dominant native military force on the western and southern sides of the colony. In the South, however, in addition to peltry there existed a demand for cheap labor to work the tobacco plantations of Virginia, the sugarcane islands of the Caribbean, and later the rice ¤elds of Carolina. This demand for human labor was the result of something that set the southern colonies apart from more northerly colonies: the climate of the South allowed the development of a plantation economy (Hudson 2002: xxxi). Most areas in what is called the American South experience at least 200 frost-free days per year as well as about 48 or more inches of rainfall (Hilliard 1984). These climatic conditions encouraged seventeenth-century colonists to attempt a number of agricultural ventures, of which only some were successful. Included among the commercial crops that would eventually succeed in the South were rice, indigo, cotton, and tobacco. Although northern colonies in areas with as few as 120 frost-free days per year could still produce food crops such as corn and beans for their own sustenance, agricultural exports were never a signi¤cant part of their market economy in the seventeenth century. The French territory around the upper Great Lakes, as well as the Dutch and English holdings along the Atlantic coast, were commercially exploited mainly for fur-bearing creatures and other forest products, such as timber (Taylor 2001:94–106). Virginia, located on the northern edge of the South as we have here de¤ned it, was slow to develop a successful plantation economy. Within a couple of decades of its founding, however, Virginia farmers began exporting large quantities of tobacco to sell on the European market (Taylor 2001:133–137). Yet the plantations of Virginia could not rival those that would develop in Carolina, where the plantation economy was perfected in North America during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Carolina planters had at least two important advantages over their Virginia cousins. Unlike Virginia, South Carolina was located well within the 200 frost-free days and 48 inches of rain per year climatic boundary of the South. In addition, a signi¤cant percentage of the early colonists of Carolina were experienced planters from the West Indian island of Barbados (Taylor 2001:223–226). These Barbadians had already discovered that slave labor was needed for a plantation economy to be pro¤table, something Virginia tobacco farmers had only recently discovered through trial and error. Much of the early agricultural labor in Virginia was performed by white indentured servants originating mainly from Western Europe (Taylor 2001:


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142–144). The cost of such servants, however, did not change in tandem with changes in the price of tobacco—a fact that regularly played havoc with tobacco pro¤ts (Briceland 1987:21–22). Vast ®uctuations in the tobacco market before 1670 forced Virginia farmers to come up with the cheapest and most ef¤cient means of tobacco production. One solution was to forego the use of expensive indentured servants from Europe in favor of Indian slaves, who were plentiful and less expensive to obtain (Billings 1975:228–233; Briceland 1987:21–22). At ¤rst Indian slaves made up a small percentage of Virginia laborers, but as commerce on the southwestern frontier of the colony expanded these slaves grew in importance. After the founding of the Carolina colony in 1670, Carolinians helped support their ®edgling colony with the sale of Indian slaves to Barbados and other Caribbean islands (Edgar 1998:131–132, 136–137). A number of factors combined to make Indian slaves an attractive solution to the high labor demands on Virginia plantations. Although Indians were more susceptible to Old World infectious diseases than either European indentured servants or African slaves, there was a large pool of potential native captives from which to draw, and transportation costs were minimal when compared to the transatlantic passage. Further, an Indian slave could be bought for the price of a musket and a little powder and shot paid to his or her captor (Gallay 2002:125, 311–312). On the other hand, during the mid-seventeenth century, white servants indentured for seven years cost up to the equivalent of nearly a thousand pounds of tobacco (Briceland 1987:21–22). African slaves usually fell between these two extremes in cost but tended to be irregularly available along the southern Atlantic coast at this time (Taylor 2001:142, 153). This resulted both from the high labor demand of the established sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean and from the nascent level of development along the southern Atlantic coast. Indians, however, unlike indentured servants and Africans, often escaped from their captors and returned to their people. This drawback, however, did not outweigh the fact that Indians could be obtained at almost any time for minimal cost from areas close to English colonies, often being captured by other Indians who were quite willing to sell them to Virginians, and later to Carolinians. A large disparity existed in the Atlantic market between the value of peltry and the value of slaves (Gallay 2002:311–312). Records concerning the sale of Indian slaves during the seventeenth century are rare, but earlyeighteenth-century documents give some clue as to previous exchange rates. In 1716 a ®intlock musket could be purchased for 35 deerskins, while in 1718 the same weapon could be obtained for 16 deerskins (McDowell 1955:89, 269). The former number is likely due to in®ation following the Yamassee War of 1715, so the latter number is perhaps closer to the lateseventeenth-century rate of exchange. In comparison, in 1712 a Mr. Hil-



den of Carolina paid the equivalent of 160 deerskins for a single Indian slave, while in 1714 one Captain Hastings paid the equivalent of 200 deerskins each for ¤ve adult Indian slaves and 60 deerskins each for two children (McDowell 1955:23, 53). The value of individual slaves varied greatly, however, and the slaves in these examples were probably skilled laborers. Between 1710 and 1718, individual Indian slaves were generally valued at 20 to 45 pounds sterling (McDowell 1955:38, 167, 175, 182, 199, 204, 235, 274). During the same period, a ®intlock could be purchased for six or seven pounds, and a bushel of corn or a gallon of rum cost a half pound each (McDowell 1955:153, 162, 185, 235). Thus there was a great economic incentive to enslave other Indian groups as opposed to hunting deer or trapping beavers. It seems likely, given the economic troubles of Virginia tobacco farmers and their own experiences with the Westos, that entrepreneurs such as Abraham Wood saw a way to exploit the northeastern group’s willingness to capture other native peoples. From the Westos’ point of view, a deal in which they sold prisoners to the Virginians as slaves may have reduced the number of captives available for torture, but it would have served as a means for quickly acquiring necessary European-manufactured items such as powder and shot. In such circumstances, captives became more valuable to the Westos as commodities than as potential replacements for fallen warriors. In this manner, traditional reasons for undertaking a mourning war became secondary to economic motivations. Regardless of the precise mechanisms by which it occurred, by at least 1659 an arrangement was struck between Virginia traders and the Westos. Consequently, Westo warriors traveled south into the present states of Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida to trap beaver and also to capture slaves for the tobacco ¤elds (Worth 1995:17).

The Military Advantage of European Firearms The Westos were aided in their campaign to dominate the southern market by the acquisition of European arms and ammunition. From our current perspective, it appears self-evident that someone armed with a gun would have a tremendous advantage over an opponent who lacked one. Seventeenth-century ¤rearms, however, were quite different from their modern counterparts. The ¤rearms possessed by the Westos were undoubtedly single-shot weapons, but further details concerning the group’s armament are dif¤cult to discern. If the Westos received guns from the Susquehannocks circa 1652, as I suspect, then those ¤rearms would have come originally from Swedes of the Delaware Valley or from English Virginians. Swedish traders apparently exchanged both matchlocks and ®intlocks with Indian trappers, and similar weapons would have been available in Vir-


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ginia (Brown 1980:96–97, 153). Flintlock carbines replaced matchlock muskets as the primary ¤rearms available to Indians through the fur trade approximately 50 years before matchlocks became obsolete among English military units in the ¤rst decade of the eighteenth century (Brown 1980:83, 132–135, 141). By the time the Westos began trading with the Carolinians in 1674, the majority of the guns received by the former would have been ®intlock fusils, also known as long carbines or snaphaunce ¤relocks (Brown 1980:135, 153–158). Both matchlocks and ®intlocks would have been regularly equipped with lock covers, which protected the ¤ring mechanism in inclement weather, and with scabbards, which were often elaborately decorated by Indians (Brown 1980:138). The fusil, in particular, was especially suited for use in the American wilderness due to its relatively light weight and small caliber. Weight was an important consideration when traveling long distances, and the smaller caliber increased the number of shots available from an amount of powder and lead in comparison to heavier, larger-bore muskets (Brown 1980:141). Some long carbines were ri®ed before the end of the seventeenth century (Brown 1980:135), but it is doubtful whether any of these ri®es reached the hands of the Westos. Pistols, which were more frequently ri®ed than carbines in the late seventeenth century, were also occasionally traded to the Indians, and some of these were accurate up to 100 feet (Brown 1980:100–102, 137). Again, however, it is unlikely that the Westos received any pistols in trade from their various European partners. The argument has been made that the advantage associated with early colonial guns is simply a historical mirage, or perhaps merely an ethnocentric one (Trigger 1978:354). This idea is based on the fact that native archers could ¤re arrows much more rapidly from their bows than Europeans could ¤re bullets from their muskets (Malone 1991:22). A bow could also be more easily used during inclement weather, whereas a ¤rearm became useless if its powder was damp. On the other hand, despite their slow rate of ¤re, guns delivered much more grievous wounds than arrows. William Strachey, one of the ¤rst colonists of Jamestown, had this to say regarding gunshot wounds and Indians: “a compound wound . . . where . . . any rupture is, or bone broken, such as our small shott make amongst them, they know not easely how to cure, and therefore languish in the misery of the payne therof” (Strachey 1953: 105, 110). Despite evidence against the ef¤ciency of guns in combat, the documentary record shows that natives everywhere desired ¤rearms. As John Lederer noted in 1670, “Guns, Powder and Shot are Commodities [Indians] will greedily barter for” (Lederer 1958:41). Indians living during the seventeenth century were willing to go to great lengths to obtain European arms and ammunition. This fact alone does more than suggest that ¤rearms offered some advantage. While it is likely that the advantage was in



part psychological, fear of these loud and unfamiliar weapons cannot logically be thought to fully explain the native desire for ¤rearms. Throughout eastern North America during the seventeenth century, native groups with privileged access to European arms and ammunition were almost invariably successful in campaigns against their bow-and-arrow adversaries. This suggests that the native desire for guns was at least partially due to the fact that they seem to have conferred an advantage to their bearers in military encounters with other groups. It also helps explain why the native struggle to obtain ¤rearms during the northeastern Beaver Wars was only one example of the Indian pursuit of arms. Powhatan and his allies were involved in what one scholar has described as an “arms race” during the early years of the Virginia colony (Fausz 1979). Between 1615 and 1622, Opechancanough, leader of the Powhatan Confederacy, was able to obtain several ¤rearms for his warriors, who by 1620 were described as having “a great many in their custodie and possession” (McIlwaine 1915:28). Indians obtained these guns by a number of means, including illegal trade, theft, and as a condition for allowing Christian preachers in Powhatan towns (Fausz 1979:40–43). Similar arms races have been described for New England, New York, Maryland, and South Carolina (Bowne 2000b; Fausz 1984; Malone 1991; Trigger 1971). In fact, the primary documentary sources of every colony, no matter its mother country, contain evidence supporting the widespread native demand for European arms and ammunition. It is likely that the Westos, already veterans of the Beaver Wars, possessed some ¤rearms when they settled near the falls of the James River in 1656. Although records from Virginia explicitly stating that the Westos possessed guns before they began their trading partnership with the colony have yet to be discovered, at least two pieces of indirect evidence seem to support this conclusion. The ¤rst is represented by the Westos’ military success against a force of Virginians and some of their Indian allies, who sought to prevent the Westos from settling near Virginia. The Virginians were certainly armed with guns, though their native allies may not have been. One might assume that the Westos must have wielded some guns in order to defeat such a force. Second, it is known that the Susquehannock Indians traded some ¤rearms to Iroquoian-speaking peoples around the Great Lakes area ( Jennings 1984:74–80; Trigger 1978:345–348). If the Westos were the Susquehannocks’ primary native trading partners before 1656, then they would have been the most likely recipients of the ¤rearms the Susquehannocks were noted as having traded. Despite the ambiguity surrounding whether or not they possessed ¤rearms when they ¤rst arrived on the Virginia frontier, the Westos had acquired guns by at least 1659, when they ¤rst began to raid for slaves in the area north of the Florida missions (Worth 1995:17).


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With the exception of the Westos themselves, there was a decided lack of European-armed natives in the South at the time of the Westos’ migration. The focus of the international fur trade was in the Northeast. Even Virginia traders and their Susquehannock partners focused their attention to the north and northwest of the colony. Until Wood and his associates developed a market along the southwestern Virginia frontier during the mid-seventeenth century, the native peoples of the southern interior were essentially shut out of the North American fur and ¤rearms trade. This was due to the fact that no other English, French, or Dutch colonies were located south of Chesapeake Bay, and Spanish policy forbade even the arming of their mission Indians (Waselkov 1989:120). Although there is some evidence of an illegal trade in ¤rearms in Florida during the seventeenth century, the scale of the trade must have been quite small owing both to a lack of excess guns and an unreliable source of powder and shot (Waselkov 1989:120–121). Even when Carolina entered the fray after 1670, the Lords Proprietors of the colony favored a trade policy in which only one native group would be furnished with ¤rearms (Salley 1928:1:117–118). The Westos, already armed with European weapons and feared by most other Indian groups with which the Carolinians had contact, seemed like a good candidate to favor with their monopoly plan (Cheves 1897:446). The Lords Proprietors believed that, because of their armaments, the Westos might be used as a barrier against the incursions of Carolina’s possible enemies—both Indian and European (Salley 1928:1:116–117). It is likely that the Westos sought out the Carolinians as trading partners not only to secure a source of powder and shot closer than Virginia but also to protect and enhance the differential access to European arms and ammunition they enjoyed in the South (Bowne 2000a:68–69, 2000b:5). The Lords Proprietors’ trade monopoly forced unlicensed traders to operate at a small clandestine scale— something that gave the Westos a short-lived military advantage similar to that of the Five Nations at the start of the Beaver Wars. It is clear from the documents of early Carolina that the Lords Proprietors believed the perpetuation of the colony was dependent on having a strong native ally. They also believed that European ¤rearms were perhaps the single most important ingredient in creating a strong Indian ally (Salley 1928:1:116–118). Why, if guns were the critical factor, did Carolinians not simply keep all of their ¤rearms for themselves and rout their bow-andarrow adversaries at will? Recall that the ignorance of early colonists made them dependent on native guides and interpreters. In addition, however, there existed an even more important reason why the Lords Proprietors were forced to depend on their native allies: the Westos (and other native groups pro¤cient in the use of guns) were more effective with ¤rearms than



their European counterparts. This situation, which at ¤rst seems counterintuitive, was created by the interplay of a number of factors. In the seventeenth century, professional European soldiers as well as militiamen were accustomed to ¤ring mass volleys at formations of men on open ground, which meant that accuracy was less important than the ability to ¤re and reload rapidly (Malone 1991:74). Accordingly, militia training centered on the movements involved in reloading. The remainder of militia training was generally given over to learning basic infantry formations and maneuvers (Malone 1991:71). In addition, commoners in European society during the seventeenth century, of which the majority of a colony’s population was composed, were not allowed to hunt in Europe (Malone 1991:67). Therefore, the only experience most colonists had with ¤rearms was that which they received during militia training. On the other hand, Westo men spent their whole lives hunting—a pastime that developed such skills as marksmanship, stealth in approaching targets, and the ability to aim and shoot quickly at moving quarry (Malone 1991:86–87). Although it appears that pitched battles sometimes occurred between native groups, guerrilla military tactics were generally favored and warriors were well versed with such tactics, having been trained in them since childhood. Militiamen were often issued poorer-quality arms than those to which European traders had access, and this may have resulted in the Westos’ being better armed than most colonists. Such a situation was not unique among early American colonies, however, as evidenced by one Virginian’s 1628 statement that the Powhatan Indians were “ordinarily better ¤tted and furnished [with arms] than the English themselves” (Bradford 1970: 208). The same sentiment was echoed by New Englanders during King Philip’s War in 1675 (Malone 1991:63–64). In fact, by 1618 Indians’ use of ¤rearms against colonists led to the issuing of a proclamation by the governor of Virginia forbidding, on pain of death, the teaching of the use of European arms to native peoples (Kingsbury 1933:3:93). Although the number of Virginia colonists hurt by Indians wielding ¤rearms was relatively low, it was believed that the Powhatans’ “beinge armed with our Weapons . . . can brave our countrymen at their verie doors,” something that proved all too true during Opechancanough’s uprising in 1622 (Kingsbury 1933:4:147). In sum, both early European colonists and Native Americans were right to respect and fear the military strength of Indian groups armed with guns, powder, and shot. The Westos’ military prowess seems to have been enhanced by their widespread reputation as man-eaters. There are several primary references to the Westos practicing cannibalism. These references come from both English and Spanish accounts obtained from native peoples from several geo-


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graphic locations and thus cannot be easily dismissed (Aranguiz y Cotes 1662a; Cheves 1897:166–167, 194, 200–201, 238–239, 334; Lederer 1958:20–21; Wenhold 1936:1–14). As discussed in chapter 4, there was a connection between the ritual cannibalism often noted by French Jesuits and the widespread northeastern tradition of the mourning war (Abler 1980:310–314; Fenton 1978:316; Hoffman 1964:200; Knowles 1940: 189–190; Richter 1992:31, 36, 56, 303–304; Trigger 1969:51–52). One of the mourning war rituals centered around cooking and eating the ®esh of a captured enemy and was represented iconographically by the image of a boiling war kettle (Richter 1983:534). Daniel Richter has pointed out that all northern Iroquoian speakers, and most other groups from the Northeast, shared most aspects of the mourning war tradition (Richter 1992:70). It therefore seems possible that there was some truth to the persistent rumors of Westo cannibalism. The issue of cannibalism has proven to be one of the most contestable in all of anthropology. Although widely documented throughout the world during the colonial era, until recently it has generally been considered a frontier myth (Arens 1979; Knowles 1940:189–190). Newer studies assume that the documentary evidence cannot have been imagined in all instances and attempt to develop ways of distinguishing fact from ¤ction in primary documents that mention cannibalism (Goldman 1999:3). At least in the case of northern Iroquoian peoples, the numerous detailed and often eyewitness accounts by French Jesuits of ritual cannibalism in the Northeast have been accepted as historical fact by some current scholars of Iroquoia (La¤tau 1974:1:126, 132, 205–206; Richter 1983:534, 1992:31, 36, 56, 303–304; Snow et al. 1996:xvii–xviii; Thwaites 1896–1901:39:207– 209, 53:224, 57:96). In any case, it is obvious from primary accounts that the Westos’ contemporaries believed that they ate human ®esh. Since ritual cannibalism does not appear to have been a regular occurrence at this time in the South, fear of the Westos and their alien practices likely added to the group’s reputation as formidable warriors. Native fear of the slave-raiding Westos was thus well founded: they were a foreign group unfamiliar to southern Indians, armed with loud and deadly European weapons that in®icted wounds beyond the ken of native healers. In addition, they had come into the region with the purpose of raiding and slaving for the better part of their livelihood. The Westos possessed several advantages that worked in concert, allowing them to play a notable role in the struggle for dominance in the lower South. First, they had learned both the mechanics and the bene¤ts of a raiding economy during the Beaver Wars. Second, European inexperience in North America meant the Westos were unlikely to meet with European interference in the southern interior. In addition, the development of an Indian slave trade in the South allowed the Westos to occupy a fruitful position in the trade



as slave catchers. Finally, because they had ready access to ¤rearms, the Westos enjoyed a military superiority over bow-and-arrow Indians. As noted in chapter 1, the advantages of the Westo were created in part by the interplay between the three European colonizing strategies: the fur trade in the Northeast, the Spanish mission system, and the plantation economy of the South (Hudson 2002:xxv–xxxi). It has already been shown how the Westos were shaped by the tumultuous Beaver Wars. The question must now be asked: How did they bene¤t from the development of the market for human labor in the South?


6 The Westos at Their Height

The Westos in Virginia At some time in 1656, a group of Indians known to the Virginians as Rickahockans/Richahecrians, estimated at 600 or 700 people, settled near the falls of the James River (Figure 3) (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:155; Crane 1929: 16–17; Hunter 1978:588; Swanton 1922:294–295). This was in all probability the group who would later be known as the Westos. Virginia assembly records note that this “body of inland or mountain Indians” had apparently come with the “intention of forming a regular settlement” (Burk 1805:104). Records further indicate that the Westos’ residence near the falls of the James was an area “dif¤cult of access, alike calculated for offensive and defensive operations; and [the Virginians] recollected the immense trouble and expense that had been incurred in extirpating the tribes which formerly dwelt in that place” (Burk 1805:104). At the conclusion of the second Powhatan uprising in 1645, this area “was considered so important, that its cession was insisted on, as the main pledge and security of peace; and it had hitherto continued unoccupied as a sort of barrier to the frontiers in that direction” (Burk 1805:105). The arrival of the Westos in the area appears to have caused a notable stir among neighboring Indian groups (Burk 1805:104). This would be easy to understand if the Westos already possessed European ¤rearms. Regardless of whether or not the Westos possessed guns at this time, native agitation at their appearance in the region engendered a similar response among the Virginians. Colonists feared that this new “powerful band of hardy warriors” was “perhaps only the advance guard of a more formidable and extensive emigration” (Burk 1805:106). In response to the perceived threat of the newcomers, the assembly ordered the mobilization of 100 militia men under the command of Colonel


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Figure 3. Rickahockan Country

Edward Hill and of 200 friendly Pamunkey Indians under Chief Totopotomoi (Burk 1805:106–107). Hill and his force were instructed to “dislodge the intruders” using “peaceable means only, unless compelled by necessity” (Burk 1805:106). Little direct evidence of the ensuing meeting between Hill and the Westos has been discovered. A violent confrontation did occur, however, in which Hill’s force was defeated and suffered severe casualties, including Chief Totopotomoi, who “fell with the greater part of his followers, gallantly ¤ghting in this obstinate and bloody encounter” (Burk 1805:107; Neill 1886:245–246). Following the battle, “Colonel Edward Hill was cashiered, and declared incapable of holding any of¤ce, civil or military, within the colony, for improper conduct in his expedition against the Rechahecrians [Westos]” (Burk 1805:107). Further, the assembly ordered that a “peace be made with this people” and that “the monies which were expended for this purpose should be levied on the proper estate of Hill” (Burk 1805:107). The details of this peace agreement may never be known, but it seems reasonable to assume that it paved the way for future economic exchange. The Westos sought access to ¤rearms and ammunition as well as other European trade goods. For their part, the Virginians were likely interested not


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only in trade but also in preventing another hostile native group from inhabiting the fall-line area from where the colony had recently expelled another aggressive group (Burk 1805:104). Establishing a trade with the militarily powerful and intrusive Westos would have been one logical means to that end. As noted in the previous chapter, the individual responsible for making this peace, though not named in the assembly records, was probably Abraham Wood, Edward Hill’s successor as commander of the Henrico– Charles City militia regiment (Hening 1809–1823:1:322, 373; McIlwaine and Kennedy 1905–1915:1:101). Wood was aware of the Westos’ abode near the falls of the James River, and Wood’s location at Fort Henry on the Appomattox River put him in an ideal place to carry on a trade with Indians (Henning 1809–1823:1:323–326, 2:274–275). Due to these factors, it has been proposed that Wood forged an arrangement with the northern group in which the trading partners exchanged European goods for dressed skins, pelts, and a new commodity in Virginia—Indian slaves (Crane 1929:12; Worth 1995:17; Wright 1981:110). Indians had been used as slaves in Virginia for a number of years prior to the arrival of the Westos, as evidenced by mention in records from the 1640s of the problem of runaway Indian slaves and “servants” as well as a law forbidding the enslavement of Indian children under the age of 12 (Hening 1809–1823:1:326, 396). Although most of the laws of¤cially sanctioning Indian slavery in Virginia were written in the 1670s, “it appears . . . that the practice of making slaves of Indian prisoners was [unof¤cially] sanctioned by the government at an earlier period” (Hening 1809–1823:2:404). Evidence for this conclusion can be found in the wording of a law enacted in 1676, which stated that any persons “who either already have taken or hereafter shall take prisoners any of our Indian enemies . . . shall hereafter be under a lawfull comand from due and full authority, that they reteyne and keepe all such Indian slaves or other Indian goods as they either have taken or hereafter shall take to their owne proper use” (Hening 1809–1823:2:404). It was also legal to buy Indian slaves from other Indians, and though this sort of exchange was ¤rst mentioned in Virginia records in 1682, it is likely that this law also of¤cially sanctioned an activity that had been going on for quite some time (Hening 1809–1823:2:491–492). Unfortunately, the Charles City records that might have documented the details of the peace agreement and subsequent trade with the Westos were destroyed during the Civil War. Some information concerning Fort Henry and its use as an Indian trading post, however, can be gleaned from other early sources. Fort Henry, located at the forks where the Appomattox River empties into the James, was a small garrison of 45 men (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:29–30, 114). Across the Appomattox River from the garrison was the principal town of the Appomattox Indians, who often served



the fort as “messengers, hunters, porters, and courageous and faithful guides” (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:32–33). As trade with the Indians prospered, a bustling frontier town grew up around Fort Henry. For nearly 100 years the town was known simply as “Wood,” but when it was ¤nally incorporated in 1748, long after Abraham Wood’s death, it was of¤cially designated “Petersburg” (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:31). The fort and its surrounding settlement were located at a crossroads of the two most important early Virginia trading paths: the Occaneechee Path heading south, and the westward trail across the mountains to the New River (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:32).

Westo Slave Raids in Georgia and Florida As early as 1659, the Westos, known to the Spanish as Chichimecos, had taken the Occaneechee Path south hundreds of miles and were reported to be in the vicinity of Florida (Figure 4). The question begs answering: what possible reason or reasons could have induced the Westos to travel so far south to obtain goods to trade to the Virginians? Certainly there were Indians, beavers, and deer closer to the Westos’ current residence on the James than those located in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. The English in Virginia and the Spaniards in Florida had concocted, if not carried out, machinations against each other in the past. Perhaps the Westos traveled to Spanish Florida on the advice and encouragement of the English in order to harass the missions and/or gather intelligence concerning their military strength. It seems equally plausible, however, that either the Virginians or the Westos would have realized that in order to effectively use Indian slaves in Virginia tobacco ¤elds, the captives would have to be brought from a great distance to circumvent the risk of ®ight. Whatever the reasons behind their choice of targets, in the fall of 1659 a Spanish lieutenant informed the governor that a combined force of Indians and Europeans had been seen 80 leagues north of Apalachee. He went on to say that the invaders “brought some ¤rearms and among them two campaign pieces, and they came doing much damage, and the quantity is up to a thousand men and whites suspected to be some of those Englishmen who reside toward Jacan [Virginia]” (Aranguiz y Cotes 1659a). This news was probably originally gathered from refugees of the province of Tama, located somewhere north of the con®uence of the Ocmulgee and Oconee Rivers in present Georgia (Worth 1993:45, 1995:18). These dislocated peoples, refugees of the military foray described above, represent the ¤rst evidence of the demographic effects the so-called Chichimecos had on the Spanish frontier. Throughout the 1660s, refugees from the southern interior were forced to ®ee from Westo depredations toward the relative safety of the Spanish missions, each of which was generally protected by a


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Figure 4. Westo Country

small number of soldiers. These slave raids, in effect, resulted in an emptying of much of the area of present Georgia and Florida that lay just outside the reach of the Spanish mission system. Much of this information was garnered from census counts taken by friars, who made a distinction between mission Indians and pagan natives from the interior (Worth 1995:18–20). It seems likely, given the preceding information, that sometime shortly before the fall of 1659 the Westos traveled south to the province of Tama in order to raid area settlements for slaves to trade to the Virginians. This would also answer John Swanton’s question concerning why the Westos seem to have disappeared from the Virginia frontier so shortly after defeating Hill’s forces and forcing the Virginians to treat for peace (Swanton 1922:295). In any case, Governor Aranguiz y Cotes reported in 1659 that natives from pagan provinces bordering Apalachee were being terrorized by “white and blond people, [who] bring in their company many warrior Indians, their faces striped, and who use ¤rearms and come laying waste to the land” (Aranguiz y Cotes 1659b). Disease almost certainly played a role in the rapid depopulation of Georgia and northern Florida during the 1660s, yet it is apparent from Spanish documents that much of the reason behind the demographic upheavals was the fact that Indians in this area were being drawn into a global market system as both producers and commodities (Worth 1995:15).



By 1661 the Westos had grown bold enough to attack the missions themselves. A force of between 500 and 2,000 Indians “armed with ¤rearms” came down the Altamaha River, known at the time as the Santa Ysabel, in up to 200 dugout canoes and rafts, with some Englishmen among them (Worth 1995:15–16). They attacked Talaje, the ¤rst town of the Guale province located near present Darien, Georgia, on June 20, 1661. The town was immediately abandoned and the survivors ®ed to mission San Joseph de Sapala, ¤ve leagues away on Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia (Worth 1995:16). In the meantime, the Westos regrouped with the intention of making San Joseph the target of a second attack. Having constructed a raft from the boards of the church at Talaje, 70 Westo warriors attempted to cross from the mainland to Sapelo Island (Worth 1995:16). Much to the delight of the defenders of Sapelo, however, “the current of the Bar of Ospoque drew [the Westos] out to sea, and they drowned in view of everyone, with no little sentiment of the enemy, through the said people being among those of most valor” (Barreda 1663). The rest of the invaders quickly broke off their attack and “went away to the [province] of Tama and to that of Catufa [Patofa],” retreating up the Altamaha and Oconee Rivers to the vicinity of the fall line (Aranguiz y Cotes 1662a). Spanish soldiers under the command of Captain Juan Sanchez de Uriza pursued the Westos and were able to wound some while they were in retreat (Worth 1995:16). Therefore, though their attack caused a panic in the missions, in the light of their own losses the Westos probably regarded their assault as a failure. The mission system offered natives a place of retreat and the promise of military protection, something that seems to have lessened the Westos’ fragile advantages. No record has yet been found of the number of slaves captured during the raid on Guale, but the fact that the Westos did not directly assault the missions again for another 19 years supports the conclusion that they had not found it worth the effort. Indians in the interior—directly adjacent to the missions but farther from potential Spanish help—presented a much more appealing target for the slave raids of the northern invaders. Sometime in 1662, Spanish soldiers captured four Westo warriors near the province of Apalachicola, about 200 miles west of Guale (Worth 1995: 16). Their interrogation con¤rmed earlier Spanish intelligence that the Westos had recently come from the Virginia area, where they were involved with English traders (Worth 1995:17). The Spanish also learned that at least some of the northern group was currently residing in the area of Tama and Catufa (Patofa), where they had ¤rst drawn notice in 1659 and whence they had retreated following their attack on the Guale mission in 1661 (Worth 1995:16–17). This evidence links the assaults of 1659 and 1661 to a single group and supports the hypothesis that the Westos used the province of Tama as a base from which they continued to attack native groups in the interior in the months following the mission raid. Census records


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suggest that the Tama province was abandoned shortly after the arrival of the Westos (Worth 1995:15–18). Thus it is possible that the Guale mission raid was the result of there being a declining number of potential targets for slave raids in the Georgia interior. If this was the case, then another source of slaves was needed by the Westos, since the Spanish missions had proved to be an undesirable target. In the fall of 1662 the Westos attacked Huyache, a native town associated with the Satuache mission, which lay to the north of Guale (Worth 1995:18–19). Huyache was most likely located at the mouth of the Savannah River, and its destruction may have marked the movement of the Westos’ base of operations to the Savannah. In the spring of 1663, friars from the province of Guale reported to the governor that the Westos (Chichimecos) had left Tama and settled on the Savannah River (Worth 1995:18). Since slave raids in the hinterlands of the Spanish missions had been going on for at least four years, and possibly longer, it is possible that the Westos had migrated to the Savannah in search of new victims. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that reports of Westo depredations along the coast of present South Carolina began in earnest soon after their arrival on the Savannah. It is also possible that the Westos built the town of Hickauhaugau on the Savannah River when they ¤rst arrived in the South and had only been in Tama temporarily in order to capture slaves and trap beaver. Regardless of where they resided, the Westos’ aggression had a signi¤cant effect on the social geography of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina during the 1660s. As noted above, pagan Indians from beyond the boundaries of the mission system regularly retreated to the protection of the Spanish during this time. The Westos were directly responsible for the abandonment of the mission town of Talaje, and probably also for the relocation of the Satuache mission closer to Santa Catalina, the principal town of Guale (Worth 1995:19). In response to the threat of the slave raiders, the governor sent “infantry of [his] presidio with the preparations of their arms, munitions, and equipment of war . . . so that they might remain as escort in those villages, in defense and guard of the missionaries and natives who live in it” (Aranguiz y Cotes 1662b). The Westos perhaps also supplied the major impetus behind the Yamassees’ decision to ally themselves with the Spanish polity, an idea that will be discussed in detail later in this chapter (Worth 1995:18–20).

The Westos in the Carolinas By at least 1667, the Westos were creating similar upheavals in other parts of South Carolina as well. In early summer of that year they launched a raid on Indians at the Spanish town of Santa Elena, located at Port Royal



on the South Carolina coast. During the assault, the invaders, “a rangeing sort of people reputed to be . . . man-eaters, had ruinated [that] place, killed sev’all of those Indians [and] destroyed and burnt their habitations” (Cheves 1897:166). The caciques of Santa Elena and the nearby village of Abaya, along with the survivors of the attack, retreated to the Spanish mission of Santa Catalina. Upon arrival, they petitioned for and were granted permission to settle within the boundaries of the province of Guale (Worth 1995:21–22). Other native groups along the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina met with similar fates in the years both preceding and following the raid on Santa Elena in 1667. The repartimiento labor drafts of the 1660s report that an increasing percentage of Indians drafted throughout the decade to work for the Spanish friars and soldiers were pagans, originally from interior provinces (Worth 1995:20). This trend of native groups emigrating toward the Spanish missions, which would continue into the next decade, is arguably quantitative evidence of the Westos’ notable impact on reshaping the social geography of the seventeenth-century South. By the time the Carolina colony was founded in 1670, the Westos had so harried local Indians that the latter were forced to seek protection from the English newcomers. Early-twentieth-century historian Verner Crane ¤rst noted that fear of the Westos ensured that the coastal Indians were friendly and helpful toward the newly arrived Carolinians (Crane 1918: 332). Early reports from the colony often mention the willingness of natives living along the South Carolina coast to trade food to the English in exchange for protection against the slave raids of the Westos (Cheves 1897:166–168, 194, 200–201). The ravaged coastal Indian groups were “affraid of ye very footstep of a Westoe,” who “doe strike a great feare in these Indians havinge gunns and powder and shot and doe come upon these Indians heere in the tyme of their crop and destroye all by killing Caryinge awaye their Corne and Children and eat them” (Cheves 1897:334, 194). That local Indians believed the Carolinians might offer some respite from the devastating slave raids is apparent in the greeting the Englishmen received upon arrival at Port Royal: “Ye distressed Indians . . . were glad and crying . . . English are good friends Westoes are nought, they hoped by our Arrivall to be protected from ye Westoes, often making signes . . . wee should [engage them] with our guns” (Cheves 1897: 167–168). The Carolina colony was established at a time when the ties that bound the Westos to Virginia were beginning to become strained and their military advantage was being compromised. In 1656, when the trade agreement with the Westos was forged, ¤rearms and other English trade goods were not readily available south of Virginia. By 1670, less than two decades later, several packhorse trains left Virginia each year for the southern Piedmont (Briceland 1987:9–10). Any native group located between the


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Westos and the Virginians who could acquire a signi¤cant amount of ¤rearms and munitions might be able to usurp the Westos’ preeminent position in the southern Indian trade. Remember that the Westos had to move slaves, furs, and skins to Fort Henry in Virginia from as far away as the Spanish missions, after which they had to carry all of their trade goods back to the middle Savannah River (Cheves 1897:460). The presence of a native group of similar military strength waiting in ambush along the trading paths into Virginia would have increased the dif¤culty the Westos faced in transporting slaves and other goods there for trade. The Westos would have been acutely aware of the danger of such a situation, since their former enemies, the Five Nations Iroquois, often lay in ambush for Indians taking goods to market. One group that probably hindered the Westos’ trading operations in the late 1660s and early 1670s was the Occaneechee Indians. The Occaneechees became deeply involved with Virginia’s southern trade after the Westos moved to the lower South. Settling Occaneechee Town on an island in the Roanoke River along a major trading path out of southwest Virginia, the Occaneechees, “¤x’d here in great security,” established themselves in a middleman position in the trade and jealously defended their newly gained advantages (Dickens et al. 1987:1–3; Lederer 1958:24). In 1670, John Lederer reported a telling incident that occurred at Occaneechee Town between some visiting Westos and their hosts: “A Rickohockan [Westo] ambassadour, attended by ¤ve Indians whose faces were coloured with auripigmentum, was received and that night invited to a ball of their fashion; but in the height of their mirth and dancing, by a smoke contrived for that purpose, the room was suddenly darkened and, for what cause I know not, the Rickohockan and his retinue barbarously murthered” (Lederer 1958:26). Although Lederer was uncertain of the cause of the incident, it seems reasonable to assume that these Westos were part of a contingent going to or returning from Virginia on a trading expedition, or perhaps visiting the Occaneechees for diplomatic reasons related to trade. Thus it appears that the Occaneechees killed them as part of a policy to usurp the Westos’ position in the Virginia trade.

Early Interactions with Carolinians The founding of the Carolina colony in 1670, however, was an even bigger potential threat to the Westos. As a potential source of guns for the enemies of the Westos, Carolina had the ability to compromise the advantages of the slave-raiding group. Although it is likely, given their experience in the Northeast, that the Westos understood the bene¤ts of acquiring a second European trading partner, at this time they could not be sure if they would be able to develop such a relationship with the newcomers. In the



meantime, the Westos could not risk having the Carolinians develop such a relationship with any other native group. Add to this the fact that their experiences in Virginia had taught them that military success over Europeans might result in the development of a trading relationship, and it seems little wonder that the Westos attempted to confront the Carolina problem with force. An incident in August 1670 illustrates both the boldness and the savvy of the Carolinians’ early antagonists. An English ship approaching the mouth of an undisclosed river along the coast of Carolina, but not able to enter the river because of the tide, sent a skiff carrying four Englishmen and an Indian interpreter to the mainland in order to get feed for the cattle on board. As the small craft neared land, the crew “perceived some Indians on the strand with a ®agge of truce which as we neared proved to be a white hankerchif which made us question among ourselves how the Indian might come by it” (Cheves 1897:238). Their Indian guide told the crew that the group onshore were Westos, noting, “if they ketch us they would eat us” (Cheves 1897:238). A short time later they “espied a great number of them which lay in Ambush behinde the bank which caused us to row of[f] againe” (Cheves 1897:238). After rowing a little further down the coast, however, the Englishmen made landfall, raised their own ®ag of truce, and “made signes for one to come towards us” (Cheves 1897:238). A Westo man did come forward, but the English retreated to their ship after he produced a hidden weapon and tried to take their Indian guide by force (Cheves 1897:238–239). As soon as the Carolinians began their retreat, several Westo warriors came forward and “¤red ¤ve musketts at us before we went into our boate and two after” (Cheves 1897:239). The Westos were noted as being “very good marksmen for theire bullots gras’d just opposit against us and had they given theire Peeces their full charge they had undoubtedly shott some of us” (Cheves 1897:239). In the early years of the colony, rumors of imminent Westo attacks often kept the English uneasy. On June 18, 1672, the Grand Council at Charles Town selected a party of 30 men to go “to Sowee against the Westoes who are said to lurke there with an intent to march secretly toward this place” (Salley 1907:38). No attack materialized, however, and the watch was reduced in size on July 6 (Milling 1940:77). On September 3, 1673, because of the Westos’ “continuall Alarums & publick declaration of an intended invasion in & upon this settlement,” the council ordered “that a party of men be raised under the command of Lt. Col. Jno Godfrey and capt. Mau Mathews jointly and be expedited to marche against said Indians to kill them or otherwise subject them in peace” (Cheves 1897:427–428). Although this order was prompted by murders committed in the colony, allegedly by the Westos, the resolution proved dif¤cult to carry out. A month later, on October 4, the council questioned whether or not to go forward


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with their war against the Westos but ¤nally decided to do so with the help of the Essaw Indians (Cheves 1897:428). No record of the events that followed has been discovered, yet it is dif¤cult to imagine that the campaign met with much success, if in fact it occurred at all. Despite the terror the Westos instilled in local Indians and the uneasiness they caused the Carolinians, their livelihood became increasingly precarious during the ¤rst few years of the 1670s. Virginia traders and their goods were reaching the southern Piedmont in greater numbers. As this trade expanded, the Occaneechees became even more of a threat to the Westos. Although the exact date when the Occaneechees ¤rst acquired a signi¤cant number of ¤rearms is still unknown, it is certain that they were well equipped with European technology at least by 1673, when the group was visited by Needham and Arthur (Alvord and Bidgood 1912:209–226). The animosity of the Occaneechees, coupled with their newly acquired guns, would have made it even more dif¤cult for the Westos to transport furs, skins, and slaves north to trade. It is also likely that the Westos’ trading relationship with the Virginians was becoming increasingly strained. Virginia traders had no particular loyalty to the Westos. As long as the Occaneechees provided the same service as the Westos, Virginians were willing to trade with them instead. Perhaps the most important consequence of the developing Virginia trade was the fact that it jeopardized the ¤rearms advantage the Westos had previously enjoyed in the South. It is likely that economic competition between the commanders of Virginia’s fall-line forts would have meant that other Indian groups, besides the Occaneechees, were receiving ¤rearms in trade. Thus, despite the best efforts of the Westos (and Occaneechees for that matter), some guns were beginning to ¤lter southward into the Carolina Piedmont. Adding to this problem for the Westos was the early development of the Carolina trade. The Carolina colony, unlike that of Virginia, planned from its inception to develop a market for forest products (i.e., timber, skins, furs) and slaves in order to fund the slow development of a plantation economy (Cheves 1897:182–183; Salley 1911:158; Wallace 1951:79–81). Although much smaller in scale at this time than that of Virginia, Carolinians’ early efforts at trade increased the strain the Westos were feeling by adding to the number of ¤rearms potentially available to the Westos’ native enemies. The dif¤culty of keeping Carolinians from trading ¤rearms to Indians bold enough to slip past the Westos to the low country plantations would continue to increase during the 1670s.

The Westo-Carolina Trade Alliance By 1674 a number of factors combined to force the Westos to alter their political and economic policies concerning the Virginia and Carolina colo-



nies. For reasons stated above, the Westos could no longer count on easy access to European goods from Virginia. Most importantly, this jeopardized their ability to acquire enough powder and shot to execute their aggressive campaign to protect their failing trade advantages. In addition to the increased risk of traveling to Virginia, the Indians of coastal South Carolina were also probably beginning to play out as a source of slaves. The Westos had already had a signi¤cant effect on shaping the social landscape of present Georgia and Florida, having driven many of the survivors of their depredations into the arms of the Spanish mission system, where they enjoyed a measure of safety from further slave raids (Worth 1995:15– 20, 26–30). Since at least 1667, the Westos had continually harried native groups of the Carolina coast, yet it has been seen that the founding of Carolina imparted a certain measure of safety on them, as well. In other words, by 1674 the Westos needed both a new source of potential slaves and a more stable source of European arms, ammunition, and other manufactured goods. Toward this end, in the fall of 1674 a group of 10 Westo ambassadors arrived at St. Giles, Lord Shaftesbury’s 12,000-acre plantation south of the head of the Ashley River. There they encountered Shaftesbury’s principal agent in the colony, Henry Woodward, with whom the Westos traded (Cheves 1897:457). After this initial exchange of unspeci¤ed items, despite “not understanding ought of their speech,” Woodward deduced the fact that the Westos wished for him to return with them to their town (Cheves 1897:457). Woodward then resolved “to venture up into ye maine with them” the next day (Cheves 1897:457). The Westos, however, were “very unwilling to stay ye night” at St. Giles, so Woodward and his 10 Westo companions set out that very afternoon, Saturday, October 10, 1674 (Cheves 1897:457). The weather was “raw and drizzling” for much of their journey to the Westos’ town, which took over six full days of travel (Cheves 1897:457–458). Later, Woodward would record how during the trip “these Indians had drawne uppon trees (the barke being hewed away) ye ef¤gies of a bever, a man on horseback, and guns, Intimating thereby as I suppose, their desire for friendship & comerse with us” (Cheves 1897:457). On the afternoon of October 20, the group “mett two Indians with their fowling peeces, sent by their cheife to congratulate [Woodward’s] arrivale into their parts” (Cheves 1897:459). The two messengers led Woodward to a “sandy poynt” on the banks of the Savannah River, where he discovered “two or three hutts under whose shelter was their cheife with divers others in his company” (Cheves 1897:459). After Woodward was ferried across the river to the impromptu meeting ground, he was “carried to ye Cap[tain’s] hutt, who courteously entertained [Woodward] with a good repast of those things they counte rarietys amonge them” (Cheves 1897:459). Following this initial round of introductions and feasting, the


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group traveled about a league up the river, where they “came in sight of ye Westoe towne, alias ye Hickauhaugau, which stands uppon a poynt of ye river uppon ye Westerne side soe that ye river encompasseth two-thirds thereof” (Cheves 1897:459). As noted above, the site of Hickauhaugau has yet to be discovered, although a number of possible locations need to be more fully investigated (Meyers 2001:62–79). Once in sight of the town, Woodward “¤red [his] fowling peece & pistol which was answered with a hollow & immediately thereuppon . . . a volley of ¤fty or sixty small arms” (Cheves 1897:459). Following this customary greeting, Woodward was led through “a concourse of some hundred of Indians drest up in their anticke ¤ghting garbe” to the residence of the “cheife” of the Westos (Cheves 1897:459). Woodward described the event as follows: their cheiftaines house ye which not being capable to containe ye crowd that came to see me, ye smaller fry got up & uncovered the top of ye house to satisfy their curiosity. Ye cheife of ye Indians made long speeches intimateing their own strength (& as I judged their desire of freindship with us) this night haveing ¤rst oyled my eyes and joynts with beares oyl, they presented mee divers deare skins setting before me suf¤cient of their food to satisfy at least half a dozen of their owne appetites. (Cheves 1897:459–460) Woodward also noted that the Westos were “well provided with arms, ammunition, tradeing cloth & other trade from ye northward for which at set times of ye year they truck drest deare skins furrs & young Indian Slaves” (Cheves 1897:460). In fact, Woodward himself was given a slave by his hosts, “a young Indian boy taken from ye falls of the River” (Cheves 1897:461). The following morning, Woodward was able to take a good look around Hickauhaugau, which he described as being “built in a confused maner, consisting of many long houses whose sides and tops are both arti¤tially done with barke uppon ye tops of most whereof fastened to ye ends of long poles hang ye locks of haire of Indians that they have slaine. Ye inland side of ye towne being duble Pallisadoed, & that part which fronts ye river haveing only a single one, under whose steep banks seldom ly less then one hundred faire canoes ready uppon all occasions” (Cheves 1897:460). For the next 10 days Woodward remained at Hickauhaugau, exploring “ye adjacent part of ye Country” and discovering what he could from the Westos considering the language barrier that existed between them (Cheves 1897:460). Not surprisingly, however, the resourceful Woodward was able to gather a good deal of information concerning the geography, soil conditions, and potential forest products of the area.



Shortly before Woodward departed the Westos’ town, “two Savana Indians” arrived at Hickauhaugau, and although “there was none . . . that understood them but by signes they intreated freindship of ye Westoes showeing that ye Cussetaws, Checsaws & Chiokees were intended to come downe and ¤ght ye Westoes, at which news they expeditiously repaired their pallisadoes, keeping watch all night” (Cheves 1897:461). Perhaps because they brought important news, Woodward noted, the Savanna warriors were “civilly treated” by their hosts (Cheves 1897:461). The Savannas, however, seem to have had an ulterior motive for visiting the Westos’ town, and thus their information may have been a ruse designed to ensure them good standing. In any case, it is apparent that the Savannas were interested in establishing a trading relationship with their hosts, having “brought Spanish beads & other trade as presents”—a normal and necessary part of establishing native exchange relationships (Cheves 1897:461). The Savannas also complained to Woodward that the “white people” with whom they had commerce to the south “were not good,” possibly a reference to the fact that the Spanish did not legally permit the sale of ¤rearms to native peoples (Cheves 1897:461). Regardless of what sort of relationship developed between the Westos and the Savannas, Woodward’s trip marked the beginning of a six-year trading partnership between Carolina and the Westos that would have rami¤cations for virtually every group, both Indian and European, that inhabited the American South. The trade partnership formed by the two groups protected the Westos’ ¤rearms advantage, though this protection would prove to be short-lived. Essentially, the agreement with Woodward gave the Westos a monopoly on legally exchanged arms originating from the Carolina colony. In exchange for “deare skins, furrs & younge slaves,” the Westos received the guns, powder, shot, and other English goods they needed (Cheves 1897:462). By 1675, the Spanish had learned from a Chisca women who had escaped from the Westos that Carolinians had been to Hickauhaugau to repair ¤rearms and plan further attacks on the missions (Hoffman 2002:145–146). The Westos had bypassed the dif¤culties in transporting slaves to Virginia by acquiring both a market for captives and a source of arms and ammunition closer to Hickauhaugau, thus effectively removing the threat of the Occaneechees.

The Effects of Westo Slave Raids in the Lower South It seems reasonable to assume that another reason the Westos sought a trade agreement with Carolina in 1674 was to assure that, at least on one ®ank, they would have “friends” from whom they did not fear attack. It is also possible that the Westos sought a partnership with the Carolinians before they began to slave the province of Co¤tachequi in earnest.


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Co¤tachequi had been on good terms with the English since the founding of the colony and on ill terms with the Westos for at least as long (Cheves 1897:201). In 1670, Henry Woodward made a journey to Co¤tachequi, “14 days trauell after ye Indian manner of marchinge,” and met with the “Emperor” (Cheves 1897:186–187). When Hernando de Soto’s expedition visited Co¤tachequi in 1540, it was the seat of a large paramount chiefdom ruled by a woman known as the “Lady of Co¤tachequi” (Hudson 1997:172–184). In the interim between de Soto’s and Woodward’s visits, Co¤tachequi must have undergone some fundamental changes, as was the case with all southern native societies. On the other hand, during his trip to Co¤tachequi, Woodward “contracted a league with ye Emperor & all those Petty Casiques betwixt us & them, soe that some few weeks after my returne, our Provision failed us . . . [and] had not [we] releved ye General wants by what Provisions wee procured of the Natives it had gone very hard with us” (Cheves 1897:187). Thus it appears that the cacique of Co¤tachequi exerted a certain in®uence over several villages as late as 1670. The emperor of Co¤tachequi and his petty caciques, however, disappeared from the written record during the middle years of the 1670s, and the old province of Co¤tachequi soon became known as the country of the Catawbas. No one has previously explained the disappearance of Co¤tachequi or the timing or processes behind its demise. It is sometimes assumed that disease crippled the chiefdom of Co¤tachequi before the English arrived on the coast of Carolina, but it is apparent from Woodward’s account that that was not entirely true. Instead, I believe it likely that shortly before or after Woodward and the Westos met, the province of Co¤tachequi became one of the principal targets of Westo slave raids. Archaeological evidence supports the idea that signi¤cant depopulation did not occur in the Carolina Piedmont until after 1650 (Davis 2002:143). Given this information, the idea that Westo slave raids were at least partially responsible for the downfall of Co¤tachequi must be entertained. If this is true, then Westo depredations probably also provided some impetus for the formation of the Catawba Confederacy. The Westos’ campaign to protect their trade advantages had already had a polarizing effect on the geopolitics of the lower Atlantic coastal plain. Their presence on the Savannah River seems to have determined the European political af¤liations of other native groups in this region. The Yamassees, who appear to have originally lived west of Hickauhaugau, were forced by the pressures of Westo slave raids to move south along the coast and become allies of the Spanish (Worth 1995:24). The population of the Yamassees was perhaps composed in large part of refugees from Westo slave raids on the Spanish frontier province of Tama, but it likely included members of other provinces in the area, including Utinahica and Escamacu. On the other hand, because of the presence of Westo slavers to



the south and west, native groups living north of the Savannah River were forced to ally with the English at Charles Town (Worth 1995:24). This point is illustrated by the comments of one Carolinian concerning the fact that “to ye southward [local Indians] will not goe, fearing the Yamases Spanish comeraro as ye Indian termes it. Ye Westoes are behind them a mortall enemie of theires whom they say are ye man eaters, of them they are more afraid then ye little children are of ye Bull beggers in England” (Cheves 1897:200–201). Of the Indian groups west of Hickauhaugau, the native societies located in west-central Georgia around present Columbus probably posed the greatest threat to the position of the Westos. These groups, known ¤rst to the Spanish as “Apalachicolas” and later to the English as “Lower Creeks,” likely included a number of refugees from Westo slave raids along the Spanish frontier during the 1660s. During the ¤rst decade of Westo slaving in the lower South, two viable places of retreat seem to have been available to refugees: the Spanish missions and the province of Apalachicola. The defense bene¤ts of the mission system were discussed above. The province of Apalachicola was located along the Chattahoochee River where it forms the boundary between the present states of Georgia and Alabama. Unlike the residents of Tama, who were scattered throughout the Oconee Valley in small farmsteads (Kowalewski and Hatch 1991:13– 15), the population of Apalachicola tended to be concentrated around a number of larger village sites within the Chattahoochee Valley (Knight 1994:383–384). If these groups, which would later be collectively known as the Lower Creeks, were to acquire a signi¤cant amount of ¤rearms and ammunition, then the slave-raiding livelihood of the Westos would become at least partially compromised. Perhaps in order to prevent this, the Westos began a series of assaults on these people, violently discouraging contact with the English in Carolina. Exactly when these attacks began is dif¤cult to determine, but by 1674 an enmity had developed between the Westos and the groups in the Columbus area that was recorded by the Carolinians (Cheves 1897:460–461). It is possible, in fact, that the Westos’ aggression was one of the important factors that led to the development of the Creek Confederacy. Although there is scant evidence for this in the documentary record as concerns the Creeks, the Westos had a similar effect on other groups in the region. Both European colonists and native peoples throughout the South feared and respected the military power of the Westos. From the perspective of the Europeans, however, the Westos offered the possibility of pro¤ts for colonial traders. Virginia and Carolina, after each had seen ¤rsthand the military strength of the invaders, made peace with the Westos and soon bene¤ted from their new economic relationship with the group. Local native


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peoples, unlike Europeans, had little to offer the Westos in trade. Instead, they themselves served as the Westos’ trade goods. That is, the Westos enslaved other Indians to trade to the English in exchange for arms, ammunition, and other manufactured goods. Whereas Europeans had dif¤culty traveling beyond the borders of their colonies, the Westos freely roamed the interior, trapping beaver and capturing unsuspecting victims to trade to colonial merchants. Yet the advantages, and thus the power, of the Westos were already beginning to fade when they forged their trading partnership with Henry Woodward in 1674.


7 The Demise of the Westos

In the years following their agreement with Carolina, the Westos continued to be the most successful native traders, but other Indians were clamoring for inclusion in the growing Atlantic trade. As the demand for furs, skins, and slaves rose in the South after the establishment of the Carolina colony, it must have become increasingly dif¤cult for the Westos to meet those demands while simultaneously keeping other natives from participating in the trade. When other Indians were able to procure their own slaves to trade illegally to English planters, they received the regular payment— arms and ammunition. Thus, as other groups began to meet the rising European demand for slaves, the Westos’ military advantage eroded. By the close of the 1670s, the Westos were only one of several Indian groups in the South who possessed a signi¤cant quantity of European ¤rearms. The native balance of power shifted as large numbers of guns became available to other Indians besides the Westos. This point is illustrated well by the ¤nal Westo attack on the Spanish missions in 1680. In the spring of that year, a combined force of Westos, Uchises (Ocheses or Yuchis), and Chiluques (a group from north of the Guale mission), “all with long [guns],” marched against the missions, presumably on a slave raid (Hita Salazar 1680; Swanton 1946:46; Worth 1995:31). It was reported that “among them came some Englishmen who instructed them,” and it is likely that the attack was originally encouraged by the Carolinians (Hita Salazar 1680). In the past the Westos had had very little success against the mission towns themselves, and they had not directly assaulted the missions since 1667. The English, however, had other reasons to attack the Spanish besides acquiring slaves. If they sponsored the 1680 assault, as it seems they did, then we have indirect evidence that the English were beginning to develop some ability to coerce the mighty Westos. That is, because of the presence of the Uchises and Chiluques, it is obvious that other native groups were willing and able to participate in the attack. Under such


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circumstances, the Westos could not afford to refuse to participate for fear that their relationship with Carolina might be compromised. If another native group was able to develop military strength that rivaled that of the Westos, then they might be able to usurp the Westos’ position as Carolina’s principal Indian trading partner. Regardless of the circumstances of their joint assault, in late April 1680 a combined force of more than 300 warriors attacked the pagan town of San Simon, located on present St. Simons Island off the Georgia coast (Worth 1995:31). Once Spanish infantry reinforcements arrived, however, the invaders broke off their attack on San Simon but quickly turned their attention to Santa Catalina de Guale, the main mission town along the Georgia coast (Worth 1995:31). The Westos and their compatriots attacked the mission of Santa Catalina, forcing the town’s inhabitants to seek shelter inside the church, where they put up a valiant defense. On this occasion the Spanish found it prudent to arm their allied natives with guns, and the decision seems to have had a major effect on the outcome of the battle (Worth 1995:31). The Westos and their allies could not penetrate the defenses of the Spanish, and with the loss of several dead and wounded they decided to burn the town and retreat (Worth 1995:31). The mission town of Santa Catalina de Guale was subsequently abandoned as a direct result of this attack, and it was never reoccupied by Spanish missionaries (Worth 1995:32). Yet the Westos probably considered the raid to have been a failure, since apparently they were unable to capture a signi¤cant number of slaves. The raid must have also served as a reminder that the Westos no longer held such a stark military advantage over other southern Indians. Not only did other Indians in the Carolina region now have access to guns, but it appeared that the Spanish were now willing to arm their mission Indians as a defense against the incursions of the English and their native allies. So, despite the best efforts of the Westos to control commerce ®owing into and out of Carolina, the balance of power was tipping out of their favor. The high demand for the forest products of America, as well as Indian slaves, fostered the development of a large illegal trade in these goods. Despite the proprietary monopoly on trade with interior Indian groups, a handful of plantation owners were making fortunes through illegal trading and were becoming extremely powerful in the Charles Town council because of it. The con®ict that subsequently arose between the proprietary government and the plantation owners over control of the Indian trade had a tremendous impact on the Westos as the 1670s drew to a close.

The Lords Proprietors’ Plan for Carolina The economy of Carolina was linked to slavery from the time the colony was founded. The Lords Proprietors hoped to develop a plantation system


The Demise of the Westos / 91

that incorporated the use of enslaved African labor (Gallay 2002:45). During the seventeenth century there was little moral objection in Europe to the use of Africans as slaves, and the English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch were all involved in the African slave trade to a greater or lesser extent (Gallay 2002:46). Along the southern Atlantic coast, the development of a North American plantation system quickly led to a demand for slaves that was rivaled only in the sugar islands of the tropics. Carolina, however, lacked the capital to invest in a large labor force of Africans during the early years of its existence. Further, until Carolina began exporting products on a regular basis, Charles Town remained something of a backwater port for ships plying the Atlantic. In order to solve this dilemma, the colony began to ship Indian slaves along with forest products to the Caribbean sugar islands (Edgar 1998:137). Pro¤ts from the lucrative trade in Indian slaves were then invested in the development of rice and indigo plantations. Although the practice of enslaving Indians occurred in other regions of the Americas, at its height the scale of Carolina’s Indian slave trade was unrivaled in the English empire (Gallay 2002:65). The Lords Proprietors, like many other Europeans of the day, however, distinguished between the enslavement of Africans and that of Indians (Gallay 2002:47). In their view, the enslavement of Indians was likely to lead to con®icts with native peoples that would be detrimental to the ®edgling Carolina colony. In addition to their practical concerns, the proprietors questioned the morality of enslaving Indians who were indigenous to Carolina (Gallay 2002:47). Carolina colonists, on the other hand, found it easy to extend the rationalization for enslaving Africans to include Native Americans as well. They argued that “captives taken in a just war” could be sold instead of killed (Gallay 2002:46). The de¤nition of a “just war” was, of course, quite vague. For example, many of the Africans purchased by Europeans had been captured with the intent of being sold, not for any reason resembling a “just war” (Gallay 2002:47). Such vague de¤nitions of what constituted legitimate slavery led to many bitter disputes between Carolinians and their absentee Lords Proprietors in the early decades of the colony. Spain, England’s chief rival in the American South, did not permit the enslavement of indigenous peoples, whom they instead hoped to convert and incorporate into the Spanish empire. Although Spanish friars were able to coerce labor from their mission Indians, nothing akin to the chattel slavery of the Caribbean existed in the Atlantic-coast colony of Florida (Gallay 2002:47). English colonies, on the other hand, possessed local jurisdiction over matters pertaining to enslavement; thus no imperial policies existed to legally limit their exploitation of Indian peoples (Gallay 2002:47). Therefore the Lords Proprietors of Carolina found it dif¤cult to implement their restrictive policies concerning the enslavement of native peoples (Gallay 2002:48). The exasperation of Carolinians over the policy against the enslavement of Indians was further intensi¤ed by the fact that


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the Lords Proprietors themselves were turning a pro¤t from the sale of native peoples. Carolina’s proprietors had invested a considerable sum of money in the establishment of the colony, and they had initially hoped to be recompensed in the form of quitrents (Gallay 2002:48). Colonists arriving in Carolina were given headrights to land (as described in chapter 1), but they were expected to pay a tax for the use of that land. As with other English colonies, both royal and proprietary, the collection of these taxes proved to be nearly impossible. The Lords Proprietors were forced to seek other means for acquiring a return on their initial investments and for obtaining the capital needed to develop the large-scale plantation system they had envisioned for Carolina (Gallay 2002:50). Participation in the Indian trade required little capital or labor but still resulted in quick and substantial pro¤ts. By restricting this enterprise to their own agents in the colony, the Lords Proprietors set in motion a series of con®icts between themselves and the colonists as well as among the colonists themselves. As Alan Gallay has noted, during the early decades of the colony, con®ict over control of the Indian trade “de¤ned the colony’s history and shaped the fortunes of all involved” (Gallay 2002:43). Slavery was central to both the Indian trade and the developing plantation system (Gallay 2002:49). Because of this emphasis on slavery, the Lords Proprietors were concerned that competition between the colonists for dominance in the Indian trade would result in abuses against native peoples that might lead to violent con®icts or force their neighboring Indians to ally with the Spanish (Gallay 2002:50). In order to avoid such an end, the proprietors proposed that Henry Woodward, their principal agent in Carolina, develop a trade with one of the powerful native groups of the interior, over which he would then exercise a monopoly in the name of the proprietors (Rivers 1856:122–123). The less lucrative trade with Carolina’s settlement Indians was all that was available for the other colonists, whom the proprietors hoped would develop their landholdings instead of concentrating on the Indian trade (Gallay 2002:48). In 1674 the proprietors ordered Woodward to “setle a Trade with the Indians for Furs and other Comodities . . . [and] to consider whether it be best to make a peace with the Westoes or Cussitaws . . . but noe peace is to be made with either of them without Including our Neighbor Indians who are at amity with us” (Cheves 1897:445–446). The Westos, armed as they were with European weapons and greatly feared by local Carolina natives, seemed an especially formidable group with whom to establish a partnership. As described in chapter 6, in 1674 Woodward seized an opportunity to accompany several Westo warriors to their town of Hickauhaugau, where he was able to secure their friendship (Cheves 1897:456–462). Because of the increasing dif¤culty in safely transporting slaves through the territory



of the Occaneechees to the fall-line forts of their Virginia trading partners, the Westos were eager to ¤nd a source of arms and ammunition closer to their base of operations (Cheves 1897:460–462; Salley 1911:133–134). The Lords Proprietors prohibited anyone except Woodward and his associates from conducting trade or other forms of intercourse with the Westos or any other interior group. The proprietors believed they had devised a way to protect the colony from outside assault while still being able to pro¤t from the Indian trade (Rivers 1856:122–123). In a letter to the Charles Town Council written in 1680, the proprietors explained the plan they had instituted six years earlier: The trade that we have hitherto had with ye Westoes hath not been merely out of a designe of gaine: But with this further consideration, that by furnishing a bold and warlike people with arms and ammunition and other things usefull to them, which they could not fetch from Virginia New England New Yorke or Canider without great labour and hazard; We tyed them to soe strict a dependence upon us, that we thereby kept all the other Indians in awe: and by protecting our neighbors from their injuryes would make them think our being seated neare them a bene¤t to them. (Salley 1928:1:116) Carolina planters, however, objected to the trade laws set down by the proprietors and often broke them. Planters needed capital to develop their plantations, and the products of the Indian trade, both pelts and slaves, were valued throughout the English empire (Gallay 2002:49). Legally, however, colonists only had the right to trade with the so-called settlement Indians in the areas immediately adjacent to the colony (Salley 1928:1:117). In addition, law prohibited the sale of ¤rearms to settlement Indians and the capture and sale of natives within 200 miles of Carolina (Cheves 1897:367; Salley 1928:1:99). For the colonial planters, this meant that they were completely shut out of traf¤cking in the most lucrative item of exchange on the frontier, Indian slaves. Further, without proper arms, settlement Indians could not even range into the interior in search of the higher-quality deer of the uplands without fear of falling prey to the slaveraiding Westos. In response to this perceived injustice, a group of immigrant Barbadian planters soon became the Lords Proprietors’ chief opponents in the struggle over questions concerning the legality of the Indian trade.

The Goose Creek Men The Fundamental Constitution of Carolina called for a Grand Council that was to include eight members appointed by the Lords Proprietors and ¤ve


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elected members (Edgar 1998:83). It so happened that several of the deputies of the proprietors were Barbadians, including Sir John Yeamens, who was appointed governor in 1672 (Edgar 1998:84). Men who were appointed or elected to the council, the highest attainable position in the proprietary government, typically had little respect for either proprietary or imperial law (Gallay 2002:50). Members of the council and their individual supporters split into factions and fought to place themselves in the best position to generate income (Gallay 2002:50). The focus of these con®icts, as noted above, was control of the Indian trade. In this con®ict, the Lords Proprietors in England were at a disadvantage because they were too far removed from the colony to understand the true nature of the situation or to react quickly enough to new developments. As a result, by the time the proprietors decided to remove Yeamens from the position of governor, his nascent political faction, known as the Goose Creek Men, already exerted a signi¤cant in®uence over the council (Edgar 1998:85; Wright 1981:102–125). The Goose Creek Men, so called because a number of their important leaders resided on Goose Creek near the head of the Cooper River, were staunch Anglicans and anti-proprietary in their political thinking (Edgar 1998:84). The Goose Creek Men felt it was unfair for the proprietors to reserve the pro¤ts from Indian slavery for themselves, and so they set about usurping the pro¤ts of that trade for their own (Gallay 2002:63). Their efforts generally went unhindered, since all of the political factions besides the direct supporters of the proprietors also stood to gain from unrestricted commerce with the Indians. Even Joseph West, the governor appointed by the Lords Proprietors to replace Yeamens, did nothing to curtail the activity of the Goose Creek Men and their associates (Edgar 1998:85). In their bid to sidestep the proprietary monopoly on trade with interior Indian groups, the Goose Creek Men took liberal advantage of the accepted practice of enslaving prisoners taken in a “just war.” Several planters and councilmen, including a number of Goose Creek Men, were instrumental in maintaining the defense of the colony during its early years, “and their remuneration for services . . . was the ancient soldier’s pay, namely, the sale or ransom of their prisoners” (Rivers 1856:106). The Goose Creek Men used the prisoner-of-war loophole in the anti-slaving laws to fund their ®edgling plantations, while gaining more power in the Charles Town Grand Council. In 1671, in the face of potential trouble with the Cusoe Indians, the proprietors commissioned several planters as captains, giving them the authority to gather ¤ghting forces, and splitting the colony’s powder stores between them for “safe keeping” on their own plantations. At this time, Yeamens was made captain and given a third of the colony’s powder stores (Rivers 1856:372–373). A number of Goose Creek Men, in fact, were part of Carolina’s defend-



ing force, including one of the group’s leaders, Maurice Mathews. In 1673 the men under Mathews’s command received munitions from the Lords Proprietors’ store in preparation for an armed con®ict with the Westos, but it is unlikely that such a con®ict actually took place (Cheves 1897:427– 428). It is also unlikely that the men returned the powder and shot allotted to them. Later that same year, Mathews and some of his men were led on a surveillance of the country around Hickauhaugau by a group of Essaw Indians who were “well acquainted with the Westoes habitacons” (Cheves 1897:428–429). Carolinians recognized that “the improvement as well as the safety of this settlement consists in the knowledge of the lands and inhabitants contigious to [Carolina]” (Cheves 1897:428). The Goose Creek Men were busy gaining that knowledge and using it to help solidify their political strength on the Grand Council (Cheves 1897:395–396, 412, 420, 451). The implications of these political maneuverings are startling, if not obvious. Once Goose Creek Men such as Yeamens and Mathews were appointed to lead military operations, they had the means to initiate war against native groups. Because the Goose Creek Men possessed the most knowledge of the colony’s interior, their judgment about Indian intentions was generally used to shape the council’s course of action (Milling 1940:77). Further, the leaders of the Goose Creek Men and their associates were the ones who stood to gain from these con®icts, since proceeds from the sale of prisoners of war went directly to the men who captured them (Rivers 1856:106). Neither should it be forgotten that these men also controlled the powder stores in the colony and were thus quite capable of pursuing con®ict regardless of the wishes of the proprietors or the other councilmen. Carolinians attempting to ¤nance the development of plantations were discovering that fomenting war among Indians was good business. As John Lawson later noted, the dealers in Indian slaves “soonest rais’d themselves of any People I have known in Carolina” (Lawson 1967:93). The warmongering of the ambitious Goose Creek Men forced the Lords Proprietors to continually restate their policies to the Grand Council concerning the regulation of Indian trade and the sale of Indian prisoners of war (Salley 1928:1:99, 141–142, 253, 255–256, 2:20–21, 59–60). In 1677, Henry Woodward, acting on behalf of the proprietors, reestablished the trade agreement originally forged with the Westos three years earlier (Rivers 1856:388–389). The new treaty set a seven-year limit on the proprietary trade monopoly, during which time “noe person of what quallity soever, being under our government, there doe presume to have any commerce, trade and traf¤ck, or correspondency with any of ye Westoes, Cussatoes, Spaniards, or other Indians that live beyond Port Royal [without] liscense under ye hand and seale of ye Earle of Shaftsbury” (Rivers 1856: 389). In their letter to the council, the proprietors reiterated that the re-


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striction on trade was designed to ensure the safety of the colony, fearing that unrestricted exchange would lead to abuses against the Indians and thus to war. They felt the colonists had no reason to complain, since they were given “open and free liberty to trade with those nations that lye neere, or within convenient distance of you, and with whome, without hazard or danger to the publicke safty, you may intermix and maintaine a commerce” (Rivers 1856:389). The Westos, if they were aware of the political maneuvering between their friend Henry Woodward and the Goose Creek Men, were likely confused by it. According to the terms of their original trade agreement with Woodward, every spring the Westos were to travel to Lord Shaftesbury’s plantation at the head of the Ashley River, bringing with them “deare skins, furrs and younge slaves” (Cheves 1897:462). Woodward’s only stipulation concerning the capturing of Indians was that the Westos not molest Carolina’s settlement Indians, a favorite target of the slave raiders before the colony was established. Apparently, however, the terms of the agreement were only loosely observed. The Westos continued to periodically enslave settlement Indians, and they could always ¤nd a plantation owner willing to trade arms, ammunition, and other goods for illegally obtained slaves (Milling 1940:82; Salley 1907:84–85). The willingness of Carolina planters to traf¤c with them in guns and slaves not only brought the Westos into the colony more frequently than Woodward probably liked but also jeopardized the proprietors’ trade monopoly. The relationship between the Westos and the planters, however, was far from being simply mutually bene¤cial. The Westos sought to demoralize the settlement Indians through slave raids, keeping them close to the colony and unable to obtain suf¤cient skins or slaves to threaten the Westos’ own position in the trade. The Westos also wanted to keep Carolina traders and their products from entering the interior, where they could be made more easily available to other Indian groups. The planters, especially the Goose Creek Men, wanted just the opposite. By opening the trade in ¤rearms, skins, and slaves to any and all who dared the venture, the potential pro¤t in slave trading would increase signi¤cantly. It also seems the Goose Creek Men understood that Indian dependency on English sources of ammunition would offer a measure of safety to colonists no matter how many native groups obtained arms. Ammunition could be withheld from any group that threatened the colony. Further, since the slave trade created great animosity between native groups, Carolinians could always count on Indian allies no matter what native group threatened them. The Lords Proprietors saw this situation as chaos itself and did all they could to regulate Indian trade. The Westos would probably have agreed with the proprietors’ assessment, and so the Westos and the Lords Proprietors became sometime allies, though probably unknowingly. Both wanted



to keep the planters out of the interior, but only the proprietors wanted them kept from trading. The Westos were quite willing to barter with the Goose Creek Men if the latter could be kept from doing so with other native groups. Both the Lords Proprietors and the Westos desired to keep ¤rearms out of the hands of all other Indian groups, but this end proved to be impossible since the planters were willing to trade with any native peoples offering skins, peltry, or slaves. The proprietors too wanted the Westos to discourage interior Indian groups as well as the Spanish from molesting Carolina and its inhabitants. Again, however, the efforts of the Westos fell short, since slave raiding created a demand for European arms and ammunition among the Indians whom the Westos preyed upon, drawing such groups inexorably toward Charles Town. Thus the partnership between the Lords Proprietors and the Westos, if it can be called such, was only partially successful at best, and at worst helped sow the seeds of both groups’ eventual downfall. Between 1674 and 1680 the Westos likely provided a signi¤cant percentage of the skins and slaves illegally traded for by the Goose Creek Men, as well as providing Woodward with a regular source of slaves who were legally sold for the bene¤t of himself and the Lords Proprietors. Unfortunately, few records have been preserved concerning the number of Indian slaves captured and exported from Carolina during the early years of the colony. Because these transactions were illegal, the Goose Creek Men could not record or report them. In 1680 the Lords Proprietors referred to this fact when they demanded that they regularly be sent a “list of what vessells come to you . . . and from whence, and what they bring to you and what they are loaden back with” (Salley 1928:1:119). The proprietors, though they collected 80 percent of the pro¤ts made by Woodward through the sale of deerskins, furs, and slaves, also left little record of their dealings in Indian captives, perhaps because of the animosity their pro¤teering had already created in Carolina. In addition, the proprietors likely wished to escape paying taxes on Indian slaves to the British Crown, which regularly taxed the importation and sale of Africans (Gallay 2002:300–302). One of the few references the proprietors made concerning their participation in the Indian slave trade was a request in 1680 for “an account of all skins, furrs, slaves, etc . . . that remayne undisposed of by Dr. Woodward” (Salley 1928:1:113). As useful as the Westos seem to have been to Woodward and the proprietors, they had now become an unwanted hindrance to the Goose Creek Men’s plan to expand the Indian trade. The depredations of the Westos had forced increasing numbers of natives to seek the goods of the English traders. Since the practice of going to war for the express purpose of capturing people to be sold as slaves had now spread to others in the South, the Goose Creek Men discovered they no longer needed the commerce of the Westos. Because the Westos


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were determined to retain their once considerable advantages, their presence was a hindrance to the expansion of the Indian trade. A number of Goose Creek Men also hoped to pro¤t from land speculation once the lightly populated Savannah Valley was emptied of Westos (Cheves 1897: 334, 378). In order to compromise the position of the Westos and remove them as obstacles in the trade, the Goose Creek Men ¤nanced a private war against them in 1680 without the consent of the Lords Proprietors (Rivers 1856:397–398; Salley 1928:1:104). Having armed a rival group—the Savannas—with guns and ammunition from the colonial stores they controlled, the Goose Creek Men and their new native allies betrayed their former trading partners, the Westos, beginning a war that would rage intermittently over the next two years (Salley 1911:183–184). A group of Savannas visited Hickauhaugau while Woodward was there in 1674, and they seemingly established an amicable relationship with the Westos by warning them of an impending attack against the town. Woodward noted that the Savannas possessed Spanish trade goods but that they were dissatis¤ed with their trading partners in Florida—likely because they could not procure ¤rearms there (Cheves 1897:461). The Savannas, however, were not originally from Florida, but from the Midwest. They have been identi¤ed as a group of Shawnee Indians from the greater Ohio Valley area, and it is possible that their move to the South was a result of the Five Nations’ gaining access to the Ohio country circa 1656 (Milling 1940:84– 86). Despite their apparent friendship with the Westos, survival in the lower South required access to arms and ammunition. Thus, as friction grew between the Goose Creek Men and the Westos, the Savannas seized their opportunity to acquire that access. The relationship between the Carolinians and the Westos had been a stormy one over the years, despite the fact that the Westos were directly responsible for generating a substantial income for a number of planters as well as the Lords Proprietors. In 1677, when Woodward established a seven-year monopoly on trade with interior native groups, other colonists were passing laws prohibiting the Westos from entering the colony until they had “given satisfaction for the blood and murder of two English by them destroyed” (Salley 1907:82–83). The hot and cold reception the Westos were receiving from Carolinians must have been quite confusing. Carolinians were willing to trade ¤rearms to the Westos but generally treated the slave catchers with suspicion (Milling 1940:82). Woodward, it seemed, was the only Englishmen who had not been duplicitous with the Westos, and they would continue to consider him a friend and ally during and after the Westo War. The ambiguous attitude of most planters concerning the aggressive Westos is perhaps best exempli¤ed by the events of spring 1680. Recall that in early spring of that year some Westos, Uchises, and Chiluques, who were



led by a handful of Englishmen, marched south to the Spanish missions in the hopes of destroying Santa Catalina de Guale and capturing Indians in the process (Worth 1995:31). On this occasion, however, the Spanish prudently armed some of their mission Indians with guns, enabling them to repel the attack of the Westos and their European and native allies. The failure of this combined force of 300 Indians and Carolinians to penetrate the defenses of the Spanish seems to have signaled the end of all amicable relations between the Goose Creek Men and the Westos. Although the former had used the Westos to their advantage in their bid to gain control of the Indian trade from the proprietors, the Westos’ trade strategies had by now become an unendurable hindrance to the Goose Creek Men.

The Westo War In spring 1680, shortly after the failed attack on Santa Catalina de Guale, the Goose Creek Men began a campaign to displace the Westos from their town on the Savannah River. The Westos were again warned to stay out of the colony “lest that they should fall among some of the people whose friends they had causeleslie killed for whose bloud noe Reperation hath yet been made” (Salley 1907:84). In the previous six years, several planters had turned a pro¤t from illegally purchasing settlement Indians from the Westos. In June 1680, however, the Grand Council, under heavy in®uence from the Goose Creek Men, ordered all planters who had lately bought slaves from the Westos “contrary to the league and amitie made by us with [the settlement Indians]” to bring them into Charles Town, “where they shall be restored to their former liberty and freedom” (Salley 1907:84). At the same time, “it was made illegal to sell powder, shot, or supplies to the Westos or their allies . . . [and] . . . no smith was to repair their guns” (Salley 1907:85). Following this session of the Grand Council, James Moore and John Boone, two of the leading Goose Creek Men, traveled to Hickauhaugau to speak with the Westos (Crane 1929:19). Although the exact reasons behind this treaty mission remain unclear, Woodward believed that the intentions of Moore, Boone, and their associates were not in the best interest of either the Westos or the Lords Proprietors. Accordingly, Woodward “inforced the said Indians [Westos] to a belief that the said Mr. Moore and Mr. Boone repaired to their Countrey to Espy and observe their strength and manner whereby they might ye easier be destroyed and withall added that if they did come to ye English settlement upon their invitation that they should be sent in shipps beyond the seas and sold for slaves and that while they were above in their Countrey, the English below are ¤tting themselves to come and destroy them in their towne” (Salley 1907:83). This was later con¤rmed by “an aged cassique” of the Westos, Ariano, who informed the


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council that “Dr. Woodward did say that the people of [Charles Town] were bad and therefore they should knock Captain Moore and Mr. Boone on the head” (Salley 1907:83). Although little in the way of speci¤c information concerning the skirmishes of the Westo War have been preserved, it is apparent that the ¤ghting began with treachery on the part of the Carolinians, “ye heads of ye Westoes being taken whilst they were in treaty with ye government and so under ye publiche faith for their safety, and put to death in Cold blood” (Salley 1928:1:256). It is not clear whether this occurred during the mission of Moore and Boone, but it does seem that Woodward’s warning to his native allies was well founded. In response to the actions of the Goose Creek Men, the Westos contacted the Savanna Indians, who apparently had established a village in the area sometime after they initially met the Westos in 1674 (Swanton 1922:317). The two groups had seemingly enjoyed an amicable relationship since the Savannas had warned them of an impending attack on Hickauhaugau in 1674 (Cheves 1897:460–461). It seems that “the Westohs would have peace and sent some of their people to the Sevanahs to mediate for them [with the Goose Creek Men] but their messengers were taken and sent away to be sold” (Salley 1928:1:257). Following this treachery, a full-scale war between the Westos and the Savannas began in earnest. In what must have been a bloody and costly affair, the Savannas killed or enslaved a signi¤cant percentage of the Westo peoples (Crane 1929:19; Hewat 1779:63–64; Swanton 1922:307; Wright 1981:139). The Lords Proprietors, far removed from these developments, did not hear about the Westo War until it was well under way. And when they did hear of it, they were unsure about what exactly happened and why, as is evident from statements contained in letters written to the Grand Council in February and March 1681: “By letters that came from Carolina by Capt. Strong to divers persons here we are informed you have had a warr with the Westoes. . . . [We] cannot but accuse you of great neglect in not informing us yourselves. We cannot well judg whether this warr was made upon a reall necessity for the preservation of the Colony, or to serve the ends of particular men by trade” (Salley 1928:1:104, 115). To complicate matters further, the Goose Creek Men laid the blame for the Westo War on the actions of the Lords Proprietors’ principal agent and deputy, Henry Woodward. Ironically, they accused him of encouraging the Westos to take slaves from among the settlement Indians and then providing them with a market for their illegal prisoners—exactly the means by which they themselves had grown powerful (Salley 1907:84–85, 1911:183–184). Because of their uncertainty as to Woodward’s role in the affair, the proprietors stripped him of his position, for a time losing the staunchest ally they had in the colony (Salley 1928:1:118, 166–167).



The Waniah War Freed from the interference of Woodward and the Westos, the Goose Creek Men used the excuse of further hostilities with the Westos to continue sending their Indian allies into the interior to slave. In 1682, colonist Thomas Newe noted that the Carolinians were still in pursuit of fugitive Westos, “who have lately killed two eminent planters that lived far up in the Country, so that they [the Carolinians] are resolved now if they can ¤nd their settlement (which they often change) to cut them all off. There is a small party of English out after them, and the most potent Kingdome of the Indians [Savannas] armed by us and continually in pursuit of them” (Salley 1911:182). The Lords Proprietors, however, could not understand the justi¤cation behind these military actions considering that they had been informed by sources in Carolina that “there are not 50 Westohs left alive, and these divided” (Salley 1928:1:257). In reply, the Goose Creek Men held that the threat of the fugitive Westos was a “charge to the people and a stop [to] the further setling of the Countrey” (Salley 1911:183). Quickly, however, the Goose Creek Men set the Savannas on another group, the Waniah, who lived in the vicinity of the colony. The Waniah War began “upon the pretense they [the Waniahs] had cutt off a boat of runaways” that were sold without recompense to their English owners (Salley 1928:1:256). After discovering that Waniah emissaries seeking peace with the colony were sold into slavery, much as the Westos’ emissaries had been, the Lords Proprietors again questioned the actions of the planters, noting, “if there bee peace with ye Westohs and Waniahs where shall ye Sevannahs get Indians to sell ye Dealers in Indians” (Salley 1928:1:257–258). The proprietors were becoming concerned that “ye sending away of Indians made ye Westoh and Waniah Warrs and Continues them and will not only Continue them but make other warrs if ye Indians are Suffered still to be sent away” (Salley 1928:1:258). The proprietors also questioned whether the pro¤ts to be made through the sale of Indian slaves had caused the planters themselves to induce the Savannas “through Covetuousness of your gunns, Powder and shott and other European Comodities to make war upon their neighbors, to ravish the wife from the Husband, kill the father to get ye child and to burne and Destroy ye habitations of these poore people” (Salley 1928:1:258). In reply to the accusations of the Lords Proprietors, the Goose Creek Men claimed to have been helpless to stop the Waniah War because the Savannas “haveing united all their tribes are become powerful [and] it is dangerous to disoblige them” (Salley 1928:1:255). The Goose Creek Men went as far as claiming they had bought the Waniah prisoners from the Savannas in order “to keep them from being put to Cruell deaths” (Salley 1928:1:256). The proprietors retorted that the planters, after having been


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“charefully Receved by [the Waniah], Cherished and supplyed when wee were weake,” had now set the Savannas upon them “to doe all these horrid wicked things to get slaves to sell [and] ye dealers in Indians call it humanity to buy [the Waniah prisoners] and thereby keep them from being murdered” (Salley 1928:1:258). The Lords Proprietors went on to ask the Goose Creek Men “how came the warr with ye Waniahs, for ye ¤rst yeares after ye Settlement and when ye English were weake they had warrs with none of ye neighbour Indians” (Salley 1928:1:256). The proprietors were angered that without demanding the Waniahs to give up the guilty parties, “a warr [was] proclaimed against them, and Inocent women and Children Barberously murdered, taken and sent to be sold as slaves, who in all probability had been Inocent of ye fact” (Salley 1928:1:259). The proprietors wondered if the “Waniahs would have denyed to have delivered up any peons that had been guilty of any such fact considering how Impossible it was for them to Resist ye force of ye English, and ye best they could hope for was to be driven from their habetations and put to live a miserable Sculking life” (Salley 1928:1:259).

The Lords Proprietors Attempt to Reign in the Trade The absentee Lords Proprietors did all they could to quell the rising tide of Indian slavery. In late spring 1680, about the time the Westo War was brewing, they issued orders to the council that they were “to take special care not to suffer any Indian that is in League or friendly correspondence with us and that lives within 200 miles of us to be made slaves or sent away from the Country without speciall directions from us” (Salley 1928:1:99). In 1682 they extended the distance to 400 miles (Salley 1928:1:141). Once they became informed about the Westo War, the proprietors attempted to halt the con®ict and reinstall the Westos in their former position in the trade, ordering the council to “get a Peace with the Westoes upon such honorable termes for ye English, that neither ye Westoes nor ye other Indians may have any reason to despise us, and upon such equall termes to ye Westoes that it may be theire Interest to keep it” (Salley 1928:1:106). Further instructions concerning the reestablishment of the Indian trade included restricting exchange to only two locations: the plantations of the Earl of Shaftesbury and Sir Peter Colleton, both proprietors (Salley 1928:1:107). By September 1683, however, the Lords Proprietors discovered that the once formidable Westos had been reduced to “not above 60 [warriors] in number” (Salley 1911:182, 1928:1:257). Despite the loss of the Westos, described by one historian as “the favorite children of Shaftesbury” (Milling 1940:81), and Woodward’s suspected treason, the Lords Proprietors continued to press the Grand Council to abide by their original plan:



[T]o sett up some other Nation in the roome of the Westos (whoome we deeme ruined) . . . that shall be furnished by us with arms and ammunition: but with restriction to them not to furnish any other Nation: which Nation soe furnished by us will owe their strength to us and absolutely depend on us for ye continuation of it . . . the which will keepe your neighbors the stricter united to you and ye Northern and Spanish Indians from dareing to infest you: And those Indians being thus sett up above the others by us will never be able to abstain from insulting ever their neighbors, and by consequence drawing on themselves their hatred and envy: soe that whenever that Nation that we sett up shall misbehave themselves towards us, we shall be able whenever we please by abstaining from supplying them with Ammunition, and making show of Invadeing them to ruine them and lay them open to ye wrongs of their neighbors. (Salley 1928: 1:117–118) The Lords Proprietors, however, did not truly understand the situation in the colony. Their impression that guns had been kept from other native groups besides the Westos was false. While it was true that the Westos enjoyed privileged access to arms and ammunition before the founding of Carolina, since that time they had had increasing dif¤culty keeping these weapons out of the hands of other Indians. Despite the Westos’ predominant role, the illegal trade developed by the Goose Creek Men had been a potential source of arms and ammunition for other native groups for at least a decade by the close of the Westo War. Further, Virginia’s Piedmont Indian trade had been developing rapidly during that same time. By 1684, at the end of the designated seven-year proprietary monopoly on trade established by Woodward in 1677, almost all semblance of restricted access to ¤rearms had been lifted.

The Westo Advantages Negated As a result of the Westo War of 1680, in the matter of less than three years, the dreaded Westo Indians, who for over two decades had haunted the lives of southern Indians, were reduced and scattered, their formidable in®uence all but gone. Between 1656 and 1680 the Westos developed and pursued a successful livelihood in the South. Their livelihood, as discussed in chapter 5, was based on four important advantages: ¤rst, knowledge of the tactics and strategies of European-Indian trade gained during the Beaver Wars; second, the ignorance of southern colonists concerning the land and native peoples of the South; third, new economic opportunity in the region in the form of a burgeoning trade in Indian slaves; and fourth, privileged access to European ¤rearms and ammunition. Together, these advantages allowed


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the Westos to exert a profound in®uence on both the social geography and the political development of the seventeenth-century South. Other Indian groups, however, learned from their experiences with the Westos, just as the Westos had learned from the Five Nations Iroquois. The Savannas and the Occaneechees provide two particularly instructive examples. Recall that the Savanna Indians, after they received ¤rearms from the Goose Creek Men, were instrumental in displacing the Westos from the Savanna River area, and for a time they replaced the Westos as the preeminent slave raiders in the region. The Savannas, it seemed, were as apt a set of pupils as the Westos had been in Iroquoia. Similarly, the Occaneechees became a hindrance to the Westos’ trade relationship with the Virginians after the former ¤rst acquired guns circa 1670. As English trade expanded, other native societies followed the lead of groups such as the Westos, Occaneechees, and Savannas. By the time of the Yamassee War in 1715, virtually every southern Indian group participated in the native slave trade, and few people likely remembered the days before the Westos began the dreaded practice of exchanging captives for arms and ammunition. An even more important factor in the undermining of the Westos’ advantages was the valuable experience Europeans were gaining in the southern interior. When Carolina was founded in 1670 the only colonist who possessed extensive experience with the land of Carolina and its native peoples was Henry Woodward. By 1680, however, several men had made forays into the Carolina backcountry and dealt extensively with issues related to the native populations of the area. Many of these adventurers were entrepreneurs such as the Goose Creek Men. In 1674 no European in Carolina knew the location of Hickauhaugau, but six years later Moore and Boone could apparently travel there without guides. The tentative expeditions of explorers such as Lederer, Needham, and Woodward in the early 1670s would give way to the bold forays of the Goose Creek Men and their Indian allies into Spanish Florida in the 1680s. No longer could the Westos hope to keep English traders away from the large native groups of the interior—a fact that undoubtedly undermined the Westos’ preeminent position in the slave trade. Ironically, the other native groups now being contacted by English traders, such as the Upper and Lower Creeks, the Catawbas, and the Yamassee, likely owed much of their cultural mix and cohesiveness to Westo aggression. The third important advantage enjoyed by the Westos, economic opportunity provided by the development of the Indian slave trade, became a terrible disadvantage as the volume of the trade increased. While the trade in Indian slaves was in its ®edgling state during Carolina’s ¤rst decade, the Westos could supply the lion’s share of the skins and slaves the colony demanded. As the market expanded, however, the demand for these products far outweighed what the Westos were able to provide. At the same time,



Westo depredations created a need for guns among the native societies they victimized. Thus there were other native groups willing to help ful¤ll the Carolinians’ appetite for slaves. During the latter half of the 1670s, the Westos made a determined but ultimately futile effort to keep other native groups from trading with the Goose Creek Men. Because ¤rearms, powder, and shot were the regular payments for these products, it became increasingly dif¤cult to keep guns out of the hands of other native groups, and to the degree the Westos failed at this task their advantage was reduced even further. When the Westos ¤rst migrated to the lower South from Iroquoia, they were the only Indians in the region who possessed a signi¤cant number of ¤rearms and a dependable market for powder and shot. Since Europeans at this time rarely attempted to venture far into the interior, the Westos generally preyed on native peoples who had little direct contact with Europeans. Attacking these people with ¤rearms gave the Westos a considerable military advantage. Again, however, as the market in Indian slaves expanded, more and more native groups became familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of European ¤rearms in combat. When rivals of the Westos were able to obtain arms and ammunition, they were able to cancel out the primary advantage of the northern invaders. It is telling how easily the Goose Creek Men removed the Westos as obstacles in the westward expansion of the trade. As described above, by arming another native group—in this case the Savannas—and withholding powder and shot from the Westos, the Goose Creek Men removed a decade-long threat to Carolina in a matter of months. The Westos, however, did not react passively to the changes brought about by the development of the English market in skins and slaves. Instead, they devised geopolitical strategies designed simultaneously to keep the settlement Indians of Carolina demoralized through the terror of slave raids, to dissuade fearful colonists from traveling in the interior, and to prevent other native groups from gaining access to the colony from the outside. Although their strategy worked for a time, the lengths to which the Westos were forced to go in order to try to maintain their advantages were continually stretched, and their actions became increasingly desperate and ineffective. The factors that had combined during the middle decades of the seventeenth century to allow the Westos to exercise a degree of in®uence and military dominance over other native groups did not survive until the end of the century. After but a single generation, the advantages that once made the Westos’ livelihood so successful had vanished, replaced by the dawning of English dominance in the American South.


8 The Aftermath of the Westo War

The Westo War of 1680 effectively dispersed, if not shattered, the Westos as a polity in the South. As one early historian phrased it, “two Potent Nations called the Westoes, and the Savannah, which contained many Thousands who broke out into an unusual Civil War and thereby reduced themselves into a small Number, and the Westoes, the more cruel of the two, were at last forced quite out of the Province” (Carroll 1836:2:88–89). Cut off from their normal sources of powder and shot in the Carolina country, the Westos had few options for acquiring munitions. In such a situation, they were at a terrible disadvantage to the well-supplied Savannas. Although extant documents contain precious little evidence concerning the details of the Westo War, apparently hundreds of captive Westos were auctioned in Charles Town and shipped to the Caribbean sugar islands (Wright 1981:139). It is more dif¤cult, however, to ascertain what happened to those Westos who were not sold away into slavery. Late in 1680, a contingent of Westos of unknown size left Hickauhaugau and headed north toward their former homeland in Iroquoia, apparently for the purpose of petitioning for entrance into the Iroquois League under the sponsorship of the Senecas (Hoffman 1964:210). The groups’ journey to the Senecas was arduous, though, and several of them were captured by an unspeci¤ed group of southern Indians that pursued these Westos on their journey north (Hoffman 1964:210). Two years later, in 1682, a group of “six hundred men, women, and children of the nation of the chats, near Virginia, surrendered voluntarily [to the Senecas], for fear that they might be compelled to do so by force” (Thwaites 1896– 1901:62:71). Perhaps this new group had heard that an acceptable life could be found among the villages of the Senecas, or perhaps the refugees felt they would live best among their Iroquoian-speaking cousins despite old feuds and bitterness. In any case, in later times there was apparently a


The Aftermath of the Westo War / 107

signi¤cant proportion of Erie among the Seneca settlements west of the Genesee River, including perhaps a number of those Erie who had been known in the South as the Westos (Parker 1926:48). Not all the remaining Westos, however, went north after the war. A smaller contingent of Westos, perhaps 50 or 60 warriors and their families, after being displaced from the Savannah River, headed west and settled near the Lower Creek town of Coweta on the Ocmulgee River (Swanton 1922:307). In May 1681, a friar from the Spanish mission among the Chatot reported that he was visited by a Coweta chief who informed him that several Chichimecos (Westos) were currently living at Coweta (Swanton 1922:307). Other sources report that a remnant of the Westos had their own village among the Creek towns, perhaps recorded on the Purcell map as Woristo, located between the Lower Creek towns of Kasihta and Okmulgee (Crane 1929:20; Swanton 1922:307–308). By around the turn of the eighteenth century, references to the Westos as an identi¤able part of the Creek Nation began disappearing from the record. Perhaps the last mention of the Westos was a reference to 15 warriors and their families who moved to the Chattahoochee River in 1716 with the Creeks they were living among at Ocmulgee Town near present Macon, Georgia (Cheves 1897:461).

The Expansion of English Trade Once the Westos were displaced and the supposed threat to the colony reduced, the Goose Creek Men came up with new reasons to make war on other native groups so that slaves could be captured legally. The seven-year proprietary monopoly on trade with interior native groups was being ignored well before its of¤cial end in 1684. In 1683, in an attempt to quell the tide of the slave trade, the Lords Proprietors stripped Maurice Mathews and James Moore, perhaps the two most prominent Goose Creek Men, of their positions as captains because they “most contempuously disobeyed our orders about [the] sending away of Indians” (Salley 1928:1:266–267). Mathews and Moore, however, ignored the directives of the proprietors and continued to operate as they had previously. The next year, in 1684, the proprietors reiterated their dismissal of Mathews and Moore and warned the Grand Council not to “licence the transporting of Indians bought of other Indians by way of trade, nor are [you] to suffer it, for that would but occation the dealers in Indians to contrive those pore people into warrs upon one another that they might have Slaves to buy” (Salley 1928:1:291). Despite the Lords Proprietors’ objections, the Indian slave trade continued to expand for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that they were essentially powerless to stop it. In 1685 the proprietors ordered governor Joseph West not to allow Mathews or Moore to partici-


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pate in the Grand Council, since they were leaders of the so-called “Indian Dealers,” a political party with decided anti-proprietary leanings (Gallay 2002:67). The Goose Creek Men, however, because of their wealth and their in®uence over members of the Grand Council, had insulated themselves from the reproach of the proprietors. The Lords Proprietors seem to have begun to understand this fact when they noted later in 1685 that the Goose Creek Men could with a bole of punch get who they would Chosen of ye parliament and afterwards who they would chosen of ye grand Councell, by which means they have heretofore gotten acts of parliament past that no man should sell armes to the Indians upon penalty of for¤ture of all his estate and perpetual banishment, which by Reason of their power in ye grand Councell and parliament they caused to be observed by others but brook it themselves for their private advantage and escaped ye penalty. (Salley 1928:2:33–34) Evidence for the political power of the Goose Creek Men can be gleaned from the fact that between 1692 and 1707 one of their number always acted as the Speaker of the Commons House of Assembly (Edgar 1998: 88–89). The Westos’ abandonment of Hickauhaugau and their subsequent dispersal into splinter groups had a profound impact not only on the Goose Creek Men and their associates but also on the remaining native groups in the region. The removal of the Westos meant that movement in the interior, for both natives and colonists, became less restricted. Previous Westo raids had created a widespread desire for ¤rearms and ammunition among other native groups. The combination of the lessening of the Westo threat and willing English traders pulled native groups inexorably toward Charles Town, where those who had withstood the ¤rst onslaught of the slavers now had a chance to prosper. At the same time that Indians were being drawn east toward Charles Town, Carolinians were exploring west beyond the Savannah River. Sometime shortly after 1685, in fact, Carolinians and a work crew of settlement Indians began construction on a forti¤ed trading post located near the fall line of the Ocmulgee River at present Macon, Georgia (Figure 5) (Waselkov 1994:193). Although this post appears never to have been mentioned in extant primary documents, it was discovered in the 1930s during a WPA project under the direction of A. R. Kelly (Kelly 1939). The Macon Trading House, as it is now known, was a pentagonal stockade whose longest side was approximately 43 meters, containing a number of buildings believed to be both storehouses and residential cabins (Waselkov 1994:190, 192). A branch of what would soon be known as the Creek Trading Path ran “al-



Figure 5. The southern colonial theater

most to the very walls of the trading house” (Mason 1963:69). By 1690, a large group of Creek peoples who had formerly lived on the Chattahoochee River in the province of Apalachicola moved to the Ocmulgee River, where they constructed a signi¤cant number of houses surrounding the trading post (Mason 1963:81–96). Most of the Indian burials associated with the site contained European trade goods, including “glass beads, iron knives and bracelets, gunparts, and brass ornaments” (Waselkov 1994:193). All of these items dated to between 1680 and 1720 (Kelly 1938:55, 1939:332). The construction of the Macon Trading House was a blow to the Spanish, who had been attempting to establish missions in Apalachicola for a number of years (Bolton and Ross 1925:46–49). The volume of Spanish trade could not compare with that of the English, however, and the Creek peoples of the province of Apalachicola desired European goods more than the guidance of the friars. They were also interested in dealing with merchants willing to trade them arms and ammunition in exchange for Indian slaves, something they could not count on among the Spanish. For these reasons, the peoples of Apalachicola were receptive to trade overtures made by the Carolinians. Ironically, it was Henry Woodward and a small contingent of Westo warriors who traveled with him as his personal cadre that forged Carolina’s trading partnership with the people of the province of


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Apalachicola, soon to be known among the English as the Lower Creeks (Braund 1993:6–7; Ross 1973). Recall that in explaining the Westo War to the Lords Proprietors, the Goose Creek Men blamed the affair on Woodward, which resulted in his being ¤ned and relieved of his position in the Indian trade. The proprietors also requested that Andrew Percivall and Maurice Mathews, both prominent Goose Creek Men, “take an exact account of all ye English Goods by us sent to Carolina that remayne undisposed of by Dr. Woodward: as allsoe an account of all skins, furrs [and] slaves . . . and send to us at ¤rst opportunity all the furrs and skins that remayne of what Dr. Woodward hath traded for . . . [and] dispose of ye Cargoe now sent and ye Goods that shall remayne in ye hands of Dr. Woodward to our [the proprietors] best advantage” (Salley 1928:1:112–114). With virtually no allies and many enemies in Carolina, Woodward decided to return to England in order to plead his case to the proprietors in person. Because he had been a loyal agent of Lord Shaftesbury and his associates since the initial founding of Carolina, Woodward was granted a pardon in May 1682, which included an order to the Grand Council to reimburse him for the 50 pounds he had already paid of the 100-pound ¤ne that had been leveled against him (Salley 1928:1:165–171). The Lords Proprietors not only restored Woodward’s position in Carolina but also granted him a commission to explore the interior of the colony, with the ultimate aim of discovering a passage over the Appalachian Mountains. Woodward was instructed to “take with you as many persons as you shall think ¤tt and are willing to goe with you and to search and make discovery of those parts of our Province where you shall think any Mines are or other things ¤tt or usefull for us to know . . . and wee doe strictly Comand [and] require all Governors, Magistrates, Military Of¤cers, and all other persons whatsoever not to molest or hinder you in your discovery” (Salley 1928:1:159–160). By 1684, Woodward had returned to Carolina to begin preparations to set out in spring the following year. In June 1685 he headed for the province of Apalachicola, taking six Westo warriors and a pack train of trade goods with him (Bolton and Ross 1925:48; Ross 1973). The Westos who stayed in the South after the Westo War remained steadfast allies of Woodward throughout the rest of his career and served him well in his campaigns in Florida as guides, scouts, and sentries (Ross 1973). It is likely that the warriors who accompanied Woodward resided among the Apalachicolas, where, as already mentioned, a contingent of Westos established a small village in 1681 (Swanton 1922:307). That summer, Woodward and his companions arrived without incident at the Apalachicola towns on the Chattahoochee River. Woodward stopped ¤rst in Coweta, where he was granted an audience



with the gran cacique, and then at the nearby town of Cassita (Bolton and Ross 1925:48–49; Crane 1929:34–35). The English goods, especially the ¤rearms, were well received by the Lower Creeks (Braund 1993:28–29). Permission was even given to Woodward to construct a stockade for the purposes of trade above the falls of the Chattahoochee, but it was never completed (Hoffman 2002:161). The English alliance with the Creeks, forged by Woodward in 1685, was one of the key factors that allowed Carolina to eventually drive the Spanish completely out of the South. Woodward’s trade agreement with the Creeks, however, has received little attention in the secondary literature, despite the fact that Carolina’s relationship with the group would prove to be far more important than its earlier partnership with the Westos (Bolton and Ross 1925:48–49; Braund 1993:28– 29; Crane 1929:34–35; Hoffman 2002:160–161). The Creeks were far more numerous than the Westos, whose earlier aggression had constituted at least some of the impetus for the alliance among Creek towns. By offering a free and open trade, Woodward was able to convince the Creeks to side with the English against the Spanish, and in the coming years many of the slave raiders who roamed Florida came from Lower Creek towns.

The Destruction of the Spanish Mission System The Spanish took exception to Woodward’s trade mission among Indians whom they considered to be Spanish subjects, and Antonio Mateos was dispatched with a contingent of soldiers and 250 mission Indians to attempt to catch “El Capitan Enrique,” as Woodward was known among the Spanish (Bolton and Ross 1925:49). Woodward, however, learned of the Mateos expedition before it arrived in Cassita, perhaps having been warned by his Westo guides and scouts, and he and his associates beat a hasty retreat. Before leaving, though, Woodward left a note for Mateos: “I am very sorry that I came with so small a following that I cannot await your arrival. Be informed that I came to get acquainted with the country, its mountains, the seacoast, and the Apalache. I trust in God that I shall meet you gentlemen later when I have a larger following. Septemper 2, 1685” (Bolton and Ross 1925:50). Woodward did not retreat far, however, and as soon as Mateos and his army left the area, Woodward and his associates returned. Mateos’s spies learned of the Carolinians’ presence and noti¤ed Mateos, who returned to the region with a larger force in December 1685 (Bolton and Ross 1925:50). Near Coweta, Mateos was able to con¤scate approximately 500 deerskins and a quantity of English trade goods (Bolton and Ross 1925:51). Again, however, Woodward was warned in time and made his retreat. Angered by Woodward’s escape, Mateos ordered the caciques of all twelve towns in the province of Apalachicola to appear before him at


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Coweta and repent for their conspiracy to trade with the Carolinians. Only eight publicly repented for their actions, while the caciques of the four northernmost towns (including Coweta and Cassita) refused. As punishment Mateos looted and burned the towns of those caciques before he and his force returned south (Bolton and Ross 1925:51). Although he would soon pay lip service to the Spanish again, the gran cacique of Coweta and his allies among the Lower Creeks would continue to trade with the English at Charles Town. In the summer of 1686, after returning to Apalachicola to trade, Woodward fell ill and had to be carried on a stretcher back to Charles Town by his faithful cadre of Westos. They were accompanied by a contingent of 150 Creeks who brought many furs and skins to trade at Charles Town (Bolton and Ross 1925:52). Although Woodward never returned to the Creeks, apparently dying of his illness shortly after arriving in Charles Town, he had served as the vanguard for English expansion into Spanish Florida, which was continuing despite Spanish efforts to stop it. As the Woodward-Mateos incident illustrates, the Spanish did not have enough manpower to keep the Lower Creeks from trading with the English. In 1689, the Spanish constructed a fort at the recently rebuilt town of Coweta in order to maintain a military presence in the province (Hoffman 2002: 161). This was the last serious attempt to prevent the Creeks from allying with the Carolinians. Many Creek families, however, simply moved east from the Chattahoochee Valley and settled on the Ocmulgee River near the recently built Macon Trading House (Waselkov 1994:191–192). Shortly after they settled on the Ocmulgee, a number of Creeks and Yamassees attacked and burned the Timucuan mission town of San Juan de Guacara, selling many of its native residents into slavery (Hann 1996: 265–266; Worth 1998:2:141–142). The town was never rebuilt (Worth 2002a:6). Those Creeks who remained in the Chattahoochee Valley were driven to move closer to their English partners in 1694. At that time, the towns of Coweta, Cassita, Oconi, and Tiquipachei were burned by their people before they retreated in the face of an invading force of 400 Apalachees, led by seven Spanish soldiers (Hoffman 2002:163). This particular raid was launched in direct retaliation for a Creek slaving expedition in which forty-two Apalachee people had been captured (Hoffman 2002: 163). The con®ict between the English-backed Creeks and the Spanish had grown hot enough that it was safer for the Creeks to abandon the Chattahoochee Valley than to remain so close to the province of Apalachee. The struggle for Spanish Florida reached a climax in the ¤rst years of the eighteenth century. In May 1702, the Timucuan mission of Sante Fe was struck by a devastating Creek slave raid, and in the fall of that year a raid was launched against the province of Apalachee (Hahn 1995:293–



294; Worth 2002a:6–7). The second raid was larger than the ¤rst, being composed of three Englishmen and almost 400 Creeks and a few Chiscas and Westos (Worth 2002a:7). A group of 800 Indians under the command of a small number of Spanish soldiers advanced to engage the invaders before they could reach the province of Apalachee. Although they outnumbered the Indians allied to the English two to one, perhaps 300 Spanish Indians were killed or captured, while approximately 200 more ®ed on foot (Carroll 1836:2:351; Worth 2002a:7). It is likely that the success of the English-led Indians was due in large part to their armament, since most of them had ¤rearms and the Spanish Indians had only a few (Hoffman 2002:176). Carolina’s ¤nal blow against the Spanish in 1702, however, was even more devastating. In November, James Moore, whose power and in®uence had not been curbed by the Lords Proprietors, led a group of 500 Creeks and Yamassees south down the coast, where they were able to rout what was left of the mission provinces of Guale and Mocama (Worth 1998:50). Two years later, in 1704, Moore, along with 50 other Carolinians and 1,000 warriors from among the Creeks, destroyed the Apalachee province, which they had been continually harassing with small raids throughout 1703 (Worth 2002a:7). The invaders took at least 1,000 prisoners and burned 14 towns, leaving probably 2,000 people as refugees (Hahn 1995: 60–62, 264–317, 385–397). Many of the Timucuan missions were soon destroyed as well, and the Indians who survived were forced to move either east to the main town of St. Augustine, the lone remaining Spanish garrison in the area, or west toward Pensacola Bay (Worth 1998:2:145–149). Although the Spanish continued to maintain a presence in the South throughout the eighteenth century, they were never able to seriously challenge English dominance after Moore’s 1704 raid. I have been at pains to explain the important role the Westos played in the development of the southern Indian trade. Yet no matter how engaging or pivotal that role was, it sheds only a little light on the seventeenth century, which remains as something of a black hole in the southern past. The Westo episode, however, is instructive concerning the nature of the early colonial South. The Westos were known to have had experience in the Northeast as well as in Spanish Florida and the mid-Atlantic English colonies. Thus, tracing the history of the Westos has resulted in more than just an understanding of that particular group. It has also helped illustrate how vital the interplay among a number of strategies—pursued by both Europeans and Indians in the seventeenth century—was to the development of the Old South. Of those polities who pursued a predatory strategy in the South, the Westos are the best represented in the written documents, something that has allowed us to understand this type of strategy with some


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clarity, as I hope the chapters of this work have shown. In addition, however, our understanding of the Westos has opened a window into the seventeenth century that should allow us to develop a fruitful research strategy for investigating other questions related to this immensely important period in American history.


Appendix: Chronology of Key Sources

Included here are excerpts from nineteen documents concerning the Westos. Although these transcriptions represent a signi¤cant percentage of the primary evidence on the Westos, this is by no means an exhaustive collection. The following writings are the “facts” upon which this work has been built and should therefore be made plain to the reader. In general, I have chosen to include only documents dating from the period during which the Westos were a viable political entity in the lower South, circa 1659–83. I did not, however, include excerpts from all of the extant documents from this period, only the ones most heavily relied on in the text. If I were to have included them all, along with the primary sources that mention the Westos after their demise in the South, this appendix would easily have doubled in length. Needless to say, if I had included the primary sources related to all six groups equated with the Westos in the text, the length of the appendix would have rivaled that of the manuscript itself.

Excerpts from “Mr. Carteret’s Relation” (1670) “These Indians [of the Carolina coast] understanding our business to St. Hellena told us that ye Westoes a rangeing sort of people reputed to be the Man eaters had ruinated that place killed sev’all of those Indians destroyed and burnt their Habitations & that they had come as far as Kayawah doeing the like there, ye Casseeka of which place was within one sleep of us with most of his people whome in two days after came aboard of us” (Cheves 1897:166). “We weighed from Port royall river & ran in between St. Hellena & Combohe where we lay at Anchor all ye time we staide neare ye Place where ye distressed Indian sojourned, who were glad & crying Hiddy


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doddy Comorado Angles Westoe Skorrye (which is as much to say) English very good friends Westoes are nought, they hoped by our Arrivall to be protected from ye Westoes, often making signes they would ingage them with their bowes & arrows, & wee should with our guns” (Cheves 1897: 167–168).

Excerpt from “Stephen Bull to Lord Ashley” (September 12, 1670) “ . . . wee found very great Assistance from the Indians who shewed them selves very kinde & sould us Provisions att very reasonable rates & takeinge notice of our necessitys did almost daylie bringe one thinge or another otherwise wee must undoubtedly have binn putt to extreame hardshipps & they doe seeme to bee very well pleased att our Settlinge heere expectinge protecon under us which wee have promised them against another sorte of Indians that live backwards in an intier body & warr against all Indians they are called Westoes & doe strike a great feare in these Indians havinge gunns & powder & shott & doe come upon these Indians heere in the tyme of their cropp & destroye all by killinge Caryinge awaye their Corne & Children & eat them & our neighbouringe Indians doe promise Ayd upon all Exigencies which they have manifested” (Cheves 1897:194).

Excerpt from “William Bull to Lord Ashley” (September 1670) “My Lord I wish we did well knowe how to demeane ourselves for as there is a mixture of Spaniards and Indians and a strict League att home which we would not give the least incouragment to infringe and Consious of our owne strength if ye Spaniard were in good earnest soe we seeme to appeare onlye defensive, which if we seeme to continue we shall hazard our reputacons among our owne Indians who we now depend upon for they Looke upon it somthing strange if we doe not goe to Wallie and shoote as they call it, that they may come along, we excuse it all we cann to please them, as for them att home we have them in a pound, for to ye Southward they will not goe fearing the Yamases Spanish Comeraro as ye Indian termes it. Ye Westoes are behind them a mortall enemie of theires whom they say are ye man eaters of them they are more afraid than ye little children are of ye Bull beggers in England. To ye Northward they will not goe for there they cry that it is Hiddeskeh, that is to say sickly, soe that they reckon themselves safe when they have us amongst them, from them there cann be noe danger apprehended, they have exprest us unexpected kindness” (Cheves 1897:200–201).


Appendix / 117

Excerpt from “Capt. Brayne to the Proprietors” (November 20, 1670) “Seing some Indians on shore I tooke my boat Mr. Carteret and one of the two Indians of our Country which I had to Virginia with me and 2 or 3 servants with a gun or two and went towards them and coming neere we spied a Flagg of truce about a quarter of a mile from two or three of those Indians that the boddy of them had sent downe to the water side to invite us on shore, but our Indian was verie sure thay was none of our Country Indians which made me begin to mistrust that they ware eyther spanish Indians or those that we call westows and rowing alongst shore about 2 mile from them we went on shore and sent our Indian toward them and coming prettie neare our indian had spied a bow made fast alongst his back whereupon he made signe to the other Indian that he might heave hime away which he did cast the bow upon the sand and then they came toward one another and the rest behind at their rundizvous about half a mile from them; and when they mett the straing Indian sprung to our Indian and indevered to take hoult of hime but being a brave, bould spritly fellow hee sprang from hime and made twoards us; we seeing that; thought it the best of pollicie to make twoard the Enimie to make them stand fore we had gott our Indian before us; and getting into the boat we rowed off and I think there was about 9 or 10 musquits ¤red after us but neaver a shott did reach” (Cheves 1897:226–227).

Excerpt from N. Carteret to Sir G. Carteret (November 22, 1670) “On munday the 22nd of August in the morne we came in between the Breakers and turning it to windward in the hopes to gett into the River we were forct the tide of ebb being made to drop anchor and stay for the tide of ®ood. Capt. Brayne one seaman and the passenger we brought from Virginia my selfe and one of the Indians we carryed with us in the Shipp went ashore in the skif to gett grass or the like for the Cattle. As we came neare to the Land we perceived some Indians on the strand with a ®agge of truce which as we neared proved to be a white Hankerchif which made us question amongst ourselves how the Indian might come by it and when we were close aboard the shoare we made our Indian call to them (but they not answering) he told us they were Westoes and if they ketcht us they would eat us, at length we espied a great number of them which lay in Ambush behinde the banke which caused us to row off againe, but I being desirous to know the result of what might be, desired Capt. Brayne to goe ashoare at a place more distant which was done, and when we were gott on the


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strand we held up a cravatt spread abroad for a ®agge of truce and made signes for one to come towards us. Then one of them movinge forward we sent one to meet him who as he approached the Indian threw down his cloths and spread his armes abroad to signify he was unarmed and that the Indian might doe the like the Indian seemed to throw down something from him but as he approached nearer our friend perceived his bow and Arrows which were tied to his back above his head which caused him to returne to us because he was told by our Indian they were Westoes our Indian then seeing the other throw down his Armes was desirous to goe and endeavor to bring one of them to speak with us and goeing did tell them (at a convenient distance) that wee were English and that we were very good friends then they beckoned him to come nearer but he not suffering them to come no nearer then 30 yards to him they sprang upon him and he ran back towards us but seeing them with in some 8 or ten yards of our Indian I ran to rescue him which gave a stop to theire pursuit then we retreating to our boat I looked back and saw severall more of them who ¤red musketts at us before we went into our boate and two after we had but one Muskett with us which I ¤red at them. These Indians were very good marksmen for theire bullots gras’d just opposite against us and had they given theire Peeces their full charge they had undoubtedly shott some of us” (Cheves 1897:238–239).

Excerpt from “Joseph Dalton to Lord Ashley” ( January 20, 1671) “There is a river next St. Helena to the Southwards called by the Indians Westoe bou signifying the enemies River a sorte of Indians at enmity with ours which runns in fresh water into the Maine backwards of us beyond the reach of their travills which if an outlett can be found answerable to the vast length it is reported to be of when discovered may prove of great advantage to this settlement” (Cheves 1897:378).

Excerpt from “Maurice Mathews to Lord Ashley” (August 30, 1671) “[Indians of the Carolina coast are] Afraid of ye very foot step of a Westoe; A sort of people that live up to the westward (which they say eat people and are great warriors); The Generall Letters will informe of Treatys & matters of peace we have had of Late with them; before Winter comes in I hope if God gives Leave there will be A greater discovery made Amongst them” (Cheves 1897:334).


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Excerpts from “Council Journals” (1672–1673) July 2, 1672: “In order to the better defence it is resolved that a party of thirty men be dispatched to the Southward against the Westoes who are said to lurke there with an intent to march secretly to this place” (Cheves 1897:406). July 6, 1672: “For as much as some former apprehensions of the approaches of the Westoes have occasioned such constant and diligent watches among the people the continuation whereof may not only hazard their healthes but will prove altogether destructive to their improvements. And for as much as nothing appears but that the said watches may be eased. It is therefore advised and resolved by the Grand Council that halfe of the severall guards be drawne off presently and be dismissed till tomorrow morning at which time they are to appeare at the Guards and continue there till Monday morning and if no further cause be given to the contrary then to be wholly discharged” (Cheves 1897:406–407). September 3, 1673: “Upon consideration had of the murther committed by a certain nation of Indians called Westoes, their continuall Alarums & publick declaration of an intended invasion in & upon this settlement. It is ordered that a party of men be raised under the command of Lt. Col. Jonothan Godfrey & capt. Maurice Mathews jointly & be expedited to marche against the said Indians to kill and destroy them or otherwise subject them in peace. Resolved & advised that all Horses be taken up & that 1 pound of powder & 2 pounds of shott for every man 10 pounds of lead & such things are absolutely necessary for to ¤tt the people in the said expedition out of the Lords Proprietors’ store” (Cheves 1897:427– 428). October 4, 1673: “The time having lapsed by intervening accidents, upon a new motion the question was putt whether the design of going against the Westoes be prosecuted according to the former resolution” (Cheves 1897:428). October 7, 1673: “For the improvement as well as the safety of this settlement consists in the knowledge of the lands & inhabitants contigious to this place & for as it is advised that the present Warr of the Westoes will be most effectually accomplished by the assistants of the Esaugh Indians who are well acquainted with the Westoes habitacons & have promised all the help they can afford. Resolved that capt. Maurice Mathews, Mr. William Owen, Mr. Joseph Dalton & Mr. Jonathan Boone be imployed to the said Esaugh Indians there to treat & agree with the said Indians as they shall ¤nd most convenient for the better accomplishing the said warr & for the discovery of those parts of this country. And for the better knowledge of the maritime parts. It is advised that Coll. Joseph West


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& Lt. Col. Jonathan Godfrey doe undertake the same soe farr as the same be not Southward of Westoe bou” (Cheves 1897:428).

Excerpts from “Instructions for Mr. Henry Woodward” (May 23, 1674) “1. You are to treate with the Indians of Edisto for the Island and buy it of them and make a Friendship with them. “2. You are to setle a Trade with the Indians for Furs and other Comodities that are either for the Supplye of the Plantation or advantageous for Trade. “3. You are to consider whether it be best to make a peace with the Westoes or Cussitaws which are a more powerfull Nation said to have pearle and silver and by whose Assistance the Westoes may be rooted out, but noe peace is to be made with either of them without Including our Neighbour Indians who are at amity with us. “4. You are in management of the trade and treaty of the Indians alwayes to have the consent and Direccon of Mr. Percivall my principal Agent. “5. You are to consider what other Comodities besides these we already know are to be had from any of the Indians which may be pro¤table unto us. “6. You are to have 1/5 of the pro¤t of the Indian trade. “7. Having consulted Mr. Percivall you are to writ a letter to Don Pedro Melinza about setling a Trade betweene mee and the Spaniards which if by your care and industry it succeed well I purpose shall bee an occasion of my further kindnesses to you” (Cheves 1897:445–446).

Excerpt from “Woodward’s Westo Discovery” (December 31, 1674) “Having received notice at Charles Towne from Mr. Percyvall that strange Indians were arrived at your Lordship’s Plantation, Immediately I went up in ye yawle, were I found according to my former conjecture in all probability that they were ye Westoes not understanding ought of their speech, resolving nevertheless (they having ¤rst bartered their truck) to venture up into ye maine with them they seeming very unwilling to stay ye night yet very desireous that I should goe along with them. The tenth of October being Saturday in ye afternoon I accordingly set forth, ye weather raw and drizzling, they being ten of them and my selfe in Company. We travelled ye remaining part of that afternoon West & by North thorough your Lordships land towards ye head of Ashley River, passing divers tracks of excellent oake and Hickery land, with divers spatious Savannas, seeming to ye


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best of my judgment good Pastorage, as we travelled this day I saw (as divers other times likewise in my journey) where these Indians had drawne uppon trees (the bark being hewed away) ye ef¤gies of a bever, a man on horseback & guns, Intimating thereby as I suppose, their desire for friendship, & comerce with us, ye weather continuing wett wee tooke up our quarters, having steered exactly by Compass from St. Giles Plantation according to ye forenamed Course. The Indians being diligent in making two barke covered Hutts, to shelter us from ye injury of ye weather, these night as well as ye afternoone proved tedious, having had soe large a vacation from my travels, ye diet before almost naturalized now seemed unpleasant, & the ground altogether was uneasy for lodginge soe soon as ye day appeared wee set forth steering West & by South, after wee had passed ye head of Ashley River I found ye land indifferently good, in ye afternoon wee entered a large tracke of Pines, which continued untill we came with in two or three miles of that part of Edistaw River where wee crossed over. The land seemeth fertyl along ye banks of this River, whose head they report to bee about four score mile up in ye main from ye part wee passed, being then twenty mile or something more distant from where divideing himselfe he makes ye pleasant plantation of Edistaw. Here killing a large buck wee tooke up our rendeavouze with two mile of ye river, glad of ye opportunity of lying in two of their hunting hutts. Uppon Monday morning four of ye company went to give notice of our comeing wee following steered West South West, ye land Piny except along ye skirts of small rivulets, many of which wee passed this day, ye weather all over cast, this evening wee provided shelter, ye night proveing extreame wett wee supped with two fatt Turkeys to helpe out with our parcht corn ®ower broth, the following day proveing as bad as ye night, wee forsooke not the bene¤tt of our hutts uppon Wedensday morneing wee sett forth nothing at all varying our former course this day wee had sight of Edistaw River bearing north west by north of us ye soyle very promiseing, & in some places excellently tymbered in ye afternoon wee shott a fatt doe which proportionably divideing amongst them, was carried along by them for our better comons at night quartering along ye sides of a pleasant run, Thursday wee tooke our journey dew West passing many large pastorable Savanas the other land promising very well. This day wee shott two Bucks ye best of both with a fatt Turkey wee carried along with us, for our better accomodation at night. Fryday wee traveled West & by South having towards three the afternoon a sight of ye mountaines, which bore northwest of us, passing ye head of Port Royall river over a tree, where ye river intricately runs through large vallies of excellent land. At ye beginning of ye adjoyning Hills, along whose banks in a mighty thicke wood wee tooke up our Quarters, the ensuing day wee went over many fattigous hills, ye land especially ye vallies being excellent good, our course West a little Southwardly in the afternoon wee


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mett two Indians with their fowling peeces, sent by their chiefe to congratulate my arrivale into their parts who himselfe awaited my comeing with divers others at ye Westoe River, the ridge of hills through which ye river runs then being in sight bore West & by North ye banks of this river seeme like white chalky cliffs and are at least one hundred foot perpendicular opposite to which banks uppon a sandy poynt where two or three hutts under whose shelter was their chiefe with divers others in his company the two Indians wee met had a canoe ready to pass us over, where soe soon as wee landed, I was carried to ye Captains hutt, who courteously entertained mee with a good repast of those things they counte rarietys amonge them the river here being very deep with a silent curent trended North & by West & by South and by East nearest, soe soone as ye rain ceased wee sett upp ye fertyle banks of this spatious river, having paddled about a league upp wee came in sight of ye Westoe towne, alias ye Hickauhaugau which stands uppon a poynt of ye river (which is undoubtedly the river May) uppon ye Westerne side soe that ye river encompasseth two-thirds thereof when we came with in sight of towne I ¤red my fowling peece & pistol which was answered with a hollow & imediately thereuppon they gave mee a vollew of ¤fty or sixty small arms. Here was a concourse of some hundred of Indians, drest up in their anticke ¤ghting garbe Through ye midst of whom being conducted to their chieftaines house ye which not being capable to containe ye crowd that came to see me, ye smaller fry got up & uncouvered the top of ye house to satisfy their curiosity. Ye chiefe of ye Indians made long speeches intimateing their own strength (& as I judged their desire of friendship with us) this night ¤rst having oyled my eyes and joynts with beares oyl, they presented mee divers deare skins setting before me suf¤cient of their food to satisfy at least half a dozen of their owne appetites. Here taking my ¤rst nights repose, ye next day I viewed ye Towne which is built in a confuse maner, consisting of many long houses whose sides and tops are both arti¤tially done with barke uppon ye tops of most whereof fastened to ye ends of long poles hang ye locks of haire of Indians that they have slaine. Ye inland side of ye towne being duble Pallisadoed, & that part which fronts ye river having only a single one. Under whose steep banks seldom ly less then one hundred faire canoes ready uppon all occasions. They are well provided with arms, amunition, tradeing cloath & other trade from ye northward for which at set times of ye year they truck drest skins furrs & young Indian Slaves. In ten daies time that I tarried here I viewed ye adjacent part of ye Country, they are Seated uppon a most fruitfull soyl, ye earth is intermingled with a sparkling substance like Antimomy, ¤nding severall ®akes of Isinglass in ye paths, ye soales of my Indian shooes in which I travelled glistened like sylver, ye clay of which their pots & pipes are made is intermingled with ye like substance ye wood land is abounding with various sorts of very large straite timber. Eight daies journey from ye


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towne ye River hath its falls West N. West where it divides it selfe into three branches, amongst which dividing branches inhabit ye Cowatoe and Chorakae Indians with whom they are at continual warrs. Forty miles distant from the towne northward they say lye ye head of the Edistaw river being a great meer or lake. Two days before my departure arrived two Savana Indians living as they said twenty days journey West Southwardly from them. There was none here that understood them but by signes they intreated friendship of ye Westoes showeing that ye Cussetaws, Checsaws & Chiokees were intended to come downe and ¤ght ye Westoes. At which news they expeditiously repaired their pallisadoes, keeping watch all night. In the time of my abode here they gave me a young Indian boy taken from ye falls of that River. The Savana Indians brought Spanish beeds & other trade as presents making signes that they had comerce with white people like unto mee, whom were not good. These they civilly treated & dismissed before my departure ten of them prepared to accompany mee in my journey home returning by ye same ways that I came, killing much game with two large she beares uppon ye way through much rain ye fresshes being mightly encreased ye 5th of November wee our selfes carrying our trade upon barke logs swam over Edistaw River & ye 6th of that Instant in safety I arrived at your Honors Plantation at ye Head of Ashley River, for good reasons I permitted them not to enter your Plantation, but very well satisfyed dispatcht them homewards that evening, whom I againe expect in March with deare skins, furrs & younge slaves. In this relation as in all things else I am your Lordships faithfull Servant. Henry Woodward” (Cheves 1897:456–462).

Excerpt from “Order Concerning the Trade with the Westoes and Cussatoes Indians” (April 10, 1677) “Wheras ye discovery of ye Country of ye Westoes & ye Cussatoes, two powerfull & warlike nations, hath bine made at ye charge of ye Earle of Shaftsbury, one of our number, & by the Industry & hazard of Dr. Henry Woodward, and a strict peace & amity made Betweene those said Nations and our people in our province of Carolina, which will conduce very much to ye peace & settlement of our said people there, & ye incouraginge of others to come and plant there when those ¤erce and warlike nations are not onely at peace with us, but are become a safeguard unto us from ye injuries of ye Spaniards and other Indians. Wee therefore have thought ¤tt for ye preservacon of ye said peace soe necessary to us, and consideringe that if a Generall Trade and Comerce should bee allowed to those Nations with our people inhabittinge there before our strenths & numbers are increased, that ye weakness of our streanth may be discovered to them, and severall injuries, provocations, frauds & quarrells may arise & happen, by


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which meanes this soe necessary a peace may be interrupted. Wee doe therefore thinke ¤tt, and doe hereby strictly charge, require and comand that noe person of what quallity soever, being under our Government, there doe presume to have any comerce, trade & traf¤ck, or correspondency with any of ye Westoes, Cussatoes, Spaniards, or other Indians that live beyond Port Royall, or at ye same distance from our present Settlement that ye Westoes & Cussatoes doe now inhabitt, without such persone have thereunto license under ye hand & seale of ye Earle of Shaftsbury and some one more of us, ye Lords Proprietors, and this our order is to continue during the space of 7 yeares onely; after which tyme (if it shall please God) that ye streanth of our settlement may bee considerably increased, wee resolve not to continue our restraintes upon the trade with those Indians. But in ye meane while there is noe man hath reason to complaine that wee haveinge left them free and open, all ye trade northward upon ye sea coast as far as Alp, & Southward as far as Porte Royall, and any other way not less than 100 miles from there plantacon, which is all they can pretend or expect from us, it beinge in justice & reason ¤tt that wee should not bee inturrupted by them in our treatyes & transactions with those Nations that inhabitt those disttant Countryes, with whome by our grant & Charter from his Majesty, Wee onely have authority to treat or intermeddle, and wee are carefull, as you may perceive, to give you open & free liberty to trade with those nations that lye neere, or within any convenient disstance of you, and with whome, without any hazard or danger to ye publicke safty, you may intermix & maintaine a Commerce; having therefore laid downe soe plainly to you ye reasons & right of our proceedings in this matter, wee doe expect an exact & punctuall compliance with our order & comand, or you may bee assured wee shall cause such as shall presume to breake them severely to be prosecuted and punished” (Rivers 1856:388–389).

Excerpt from “The Articles and Agreement of ye Lords Proprietors of Carolina, Betweene Themselves, Concerning the Trade There” (April 10, 1677) “Wheras wee have thought it nessessary for ye safty and good of those people that are planted under our Government in Carolina upon Ashley and Cooper Rivers, or therabouts to take into our hands dureinge ye space of 7years the whole trade & commerce with ye Westoes, Cussatoes, & other Nations that live at a greate distance from ye said Rivers, and wheras it is absolutly nessessary that trade be carried on with those nations, that soe they may be supplyed with comodities acordinge to agreement made with them, By which meanes a ¤rme and lastinge peace shall bee continued, and wee become usefull & nessessary to them, it is therfore mutu-


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ally articled, covenanted & agreed betwixt us, ye Lords Proprietors of Carolina, whose names & seales are hereunto sett and subscribed at or before ye 24th day of June next, wee shall each of us pay into ye hands of Mr. William Saxby, our Secretary and Treasurer, one hundred pounds of good & lawfull money of England, and if any of us shall fayle in payinge in his said money as aforesaid, then & in such case it hereby convented & agreed, that ye benne¤tt of ye said trayde shall wholy come & acrew (dureinge the tyme abovesaid) unto such of us, the said Lords Proprietors as shall have paid in there money aforesaid. And it is further agreed betweene us, ye Lords Proprietors, that ye agreementes already made by ye Earle of Shaftsbury with Dr. Henry Woodward, wherby hee is to have one 5th part of ye cleare prof¤tt of ye said Trade, shall stand ¤rme & good” (Rivers 1856:390).

Excerpt from “Instructions for the Comissioners Appoynted to Heare and Determine Differences Between the Christians and the Indians” (1680) “You are to regulate all disputes in or about Trade or Comerce between the Christians & Indians, but you are not to meddle with or contradict any orders that we have or shall give concerning the Trade with the Westos & those other remote nations dureing the tyme limited, the meaning of this power comitted to you being soe to regulate all injurys done to the Indians in Trade that it may not draw a war upon us” (Salley 1928:1:100).

Excerpt from “British Public Records Of¤ce” (February 21, 1681) “By Letters that came from Carolina by Capt. Strong to divers persons here we are informed you have had a warr with the Westoes, but for what reason and the true & perticular successe hath been we are ignorant of. And cannot but accuse you of great neglet in not informing us yourselves by this Conveyance of all perticulars whereby we might have been enabled to have given such directions as this affayre required. If friendship had been preserved with ye Westoes it would have kept all the neighbouring Indians from dareing to offend you; and if you had protected them from being injured by the Westoes, that protection would have made them love as well as feare you which consideration hath been ye maine inducement of our endeavours to hold a fayre Correspondence with ye Westoes by making ourselves usefull to them by trade. Peace is in the Interest of Planters, and that your People may without feare quyetly againe follow the business of their Plantations. Wee desire you to make peace with the Westoes as soone as it can be had upon safe and honourable termes, we have discoursed to


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Mr. Percival our opinions, and what what we would have donne upon the various conjectures we have had of ye cause and success of this warr, with directions to communicate it to youwhich we desire you to follow, and alsoe we desire you for ye future you will be more punctuall in giving us an account of all ye affayres of our Province under your Government and that you will cause the Secretary from tyme to tyme to send us Lists of all the people that came to plant and inhabitt with you. And from whence they came. Allsoe a Lyst of all vessells that came to you what burthen and from whence” (Salley 1928:1:104–105).

Excerpt from “Instructions for Mr. Andrew Percivall” (February 21, 1681) “And for as much as it will be very usefull to our Collony to have the Westoes our perfect friends, all the other Indians being to be kept thereby from dareing to offend us, and the more closely united to us by reason of the protection we give them from being injured by the Westoes; you are therefore by ye Articles of Peace to allow them to be supplyed by us with necessarys by way of Trade which will make us usefull to them, but you are to tye them up not to come to any Plantation of the English but that of the Earle of Shaftsbury and Sir Peter Colleton, which being strong in numbers of men and well fortifyed will be without danger and the English Inhabitants will not be frightned by comeing among them And ye Westoes must be plainely told that if they goe to any other Plantations it shall be look’d upon as a breach of the peace and they must take what follows. You must allsoe have an Article that they shall doe no Injury to any Indians we have taken into our Protection and if they doe it shall be look’d upon as a breach of the peace. These Articles and what others shall be made with them we think ¤tt should be translated into ye Indian Language, and a Coppy written in that Language signed left with them: And another kept to be read to them every tyme they come amongst us” (Salley 1928:1:106–107).

Excerpt from “British Public Records Of¤ce” (March 7, 1681) “If this warr were occationed by a reall necessity for ye preservation of the Collony we must approve of it: but if to serve the ends of particular men we cannot but take it extremely ill that wee and the whole Collony have been disturbed and putt in danger by a Warr to promote the advantage of particular persons. Wherefore we require that by ye next Conveyance after the receipt of this you send us the Depositions of those persons who informed you of the matter of Fact upon which this warr was grounded, and


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alsoe the Depositions of ye Interpreters that they did truly interpret what was delivered by ye Indians. Allsoe a Copy of Dr. Woodward’s Letter attested wherein he says if Trade were not permitted to ye Westoes they would cut all your Throats. . . . The Trade that we have hitherto had with ye Westoes hath not been merely out of a designe of gaine: But with this further consideration, that by furnishing a bold and warlike people with Armes and Ammunition and other things usefull to them, which they could not fetch from Virginia New England New Yorke or Canider without great labour and hazard; We tyed them to soe strict a dependence upon us, that we thereby kept all the other Indians in awe: and by protecting our Neighbors from their Injuryes would make them think our being seated neare them a bene¤t to them. . . . We desire you seriously to consider whether it will not be extremely usefull for the quyet and peace of our Collony to sett up some other Nation in roome of ye Westoes (whoome we deeme ruined) and whose Government is lesse Anarchicall then theirs that shall be furnished by us with Armes and Ammunition: but with restriction to them not to furnish any other Nation: which Nation soe furnished by us will owe their strength to us and absolutely depend upon us for ye continuation of it, by furnishing them with Ammunition, the which will keepe your Neighbours the stricter united to you and ye Northern & Spanish Indians from dareing to infest you: And those Indians being thus sett up above the others by us will never be able to abstaine from insulting ever their Neighbours, and by consequence drawing on themselves their hatred and envy: soe that whenever that nation that we sett up shall misbehave themselves towards us, we shall be able whenever we please by abstaining from supplying them with Ammunition, and making show of Invadeing them to ruine them and lay them open to ye wrongs of their Neighbours” (Salley 1928:1:115–118).

Excerpts from “Letters of Thomas Newe” (1682) “Up in the Country they say there is very good land, and the farther up the better, but that which at present doth somewhat hinder the settling farther up, is a war that they are ingaged in against a tribe of Barbarous Indians not being above 60 in number, but by reason of their great growth and cruelty in feeding on all their neighbours, they are terrible to all other Indians, of which, there are above 40 severall Kingdoms, the strength and names of them being known to our Governer who upon any occasion summons their Kings in. We are at peace with all but those common enemies of mankind, those man eaters before mentioned, by name the Westos, who have lately killed two eminent planters that lived far up in the Country, so that they are resolved now if they can ¤nd their settlement (which they


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often change) to cut them all off. There is a small party of English out after them, and the most potent Kingdome of the Indians armed by us and continually in pursuit of them” (Salley 1911:182). “I ¤nd the Commonalty here to be mightily dissatis¤ed, the reason is 3 or 4 of the great ones, for furs and skins, have furnished the Indians with arms and ammunitions especially those with whome they are now at War, for from those they had all or most of their fur, so that trade which 3 or 4 only kept in their hands is at present gone to decay, and now they have armed the next most potent tribe of the Indians to ¤ght the former, and some few English there are out, looking after them, which is a charge to the people and a stop to the further setling of the Countrey” (Salley 1911:183).


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Index

Abaya, village of, 79 Adair, James, 20 Altamaha River, 77 Apalachee Indians, 12, 13, 112 Apalachee province, 75, 76, 112, 113 Apalachicola Indians, 87, 110 Apalachicola province, 24, 77, 87, 109–13 Appomattox Indians, 74 Appomattox River, 74 Ariano, Westos cassique, 99 Arrigahaga Indians, 32, 36. See also Erie Indians Arthur, Gabriel, 30, 82 Ashley River, 83, 96 Barbados, 14–16, 63, 64 Beavers, 2, 9–11, 26, 27, 31, 36, 41, 44 Beaver Wars, 2, 13, 27, 31, 38, 39, 44, 53, 54, 56, 67, 68, 70, 71, 103 Black Minqua Indians, 32, 36, 49. See also Erie Indians Boone, John, 99, 100, 104 Braudel, Fernand, 9 Byrd, William, 61 Cape Fear River, 14 Carolina colony: con®icts with Spanish Florida, 89, 90, 109–13; economic activities, 13, 14, 54, 63–65, 68, 87, 91, 92, 96, 97, 101, 104;

land grants, 14, 15; population, 16; relationship with Westo Indians, 78–83, 85, 95, 98–100, 102; use of Indian slaves, 16, 27 Cassita, town of, 111, 112 Catawba Indians, 5, 8, 20, 86, 104 Cattaraugus Creek, 42, 43 Catufa (Potofa) province, 77 Charles Town, 62, 81, 87, 90, 91, 97, 106, 108, 112 Chattahoochee River, 87, 107, 109–11 Cherokee Indians, 1, 33 Chesapeake Bay, 2, 10, 11, 41, 44–48, 51, 58, 61, 62, 68 Cheves, Langdon, 21 Chichimeco Indians, 31, 34, 35, 75, 107. See also Westo Indians Chiluque Indians, 89, 98 Chisca Indians, 29, 30, 85, 113 Claibourne, William, 46–48, 58, 62 Co¤tachequi province, 85, 86 Colleton, Peter, 102 Cooper River, 94 Coweta, town of, 107, 110–12 Crane, Verner, 5, 21, 24, 28–31, 33– 35, 79 Creek Confederacy, 7, 8, 19, 36, 87 Creek Indians, 1, 5, 9, 30, 107, 113; effects of Indian trade, 7, 19, 109; Lower Creeks, 8, 29, 30, 87, 104, 110–12; Upper Creeks, 4, 8, 31, 104 Cusoe Indians, 94


142 / Index Danckaerts, Jasper, 11 Delaware River, 45 Delaware Valley, 44, 46, 47, 49, 65 Ehressaronon Indians, 42. See also Erie Indians Ehriehronnon Indians, 37, 51. See also Erie Indians Engelbrecht, William, 43 Erie Indians: archaeological sites, 41–43; con®icts with Five Nations Iroquois, 43, 44, 49–52; equated with Westos, 31, 32, 34–37; exchange with Susquehannocks, 2, 49, 51; la Nation du Chat, 32, 38; language, 38; migrations, 2, 107; obtain ¤rearms, 49, 51; population, 24, 40, 51; territory, 39. See also Arrigahaga Indians; Black Minqua Indians; Ehressaronon Indians; Ehriehronnon Indians; Gentuetehronnon Indians; Riguehronnon Indians; Westo Indians Escamacu province, 86 Essaw Indians, 8, 82, 95 Fenton, William, 7 Firearms, 2, 7, 10, 13, 36, 65; Indian desire for, 5, 48, 66, 67 Five Nations Iroquois, 2, 37, 38, 68, 80, 98, 104; adoption of prisoners, 40; con®icts with other Indians, 32, 43, 44, 46, 48–55; obtain ¤rearms, 49, 55; trade strategy, 10, 11, 18, 27, 56, 57. See also Mohawk Indians; Onondaga Indians; Seneca Indians Fort Christina, 47 Fort Henry, 2, 30, 62, 74, 75, 80 Fort Orange, 10, 47, 48, 55, 56 Gallay, Allan, 6, 92 Gentaienton, village, 41 Gentuetehronnon Indians, 41, 42. See also Erie Indians Goose Creek Men, 94–105, 107, 108, 110 Green, William, 23, 35, 53

Guale Indians, 5 Guale province, 24, 77–79, 113 Hickauhaugau, 21–29, 32, 78, 84–87, 92, 95, 98–100, 104, 106, 108 Hill, Edward, 36, 73, 74 Hilton, William, 60 Hoffman, Bernard, 32 Hudson, Charles, 9, 19 Hudson River, 10, 55 Huron Indians, 10, 35, 38–40, 50, 51 Huyache, town of, 78 Indentured servants, 63, 64 James River, 23, 24, 31, 35, 46, 53, 67, 72, 74, 75 Juricek, John, 33–36 Kashita, town of, 107 Kent Island, 46 Knight, Vernon James, 7 Lake Erie, 1, 4, 31, 35, 42–45, 49, 53– 55, 57 La Salle, 5, 29, 30 Lawson, John, 5, 39, 60, 95 Lederer, John, 31, 33, 59, 60, 66, 80, 104 Lenape Indians, 46 Les petites nations, 18, 19. See also Settlement Indians Lords Proprietors of Carolina, 1, 13– 15, 19, 25, 98; disputes with Carolina planters, 3, 92, 94, 95, 101, 102, 107, 108; plan for Carolina’s development, 14, 90, 91; reaction to Westo War, 100, 101, 110; trade policies, 68, 93, 96, 97, 102, 103 Macon Trading House, 108, 109, 112 Mahican Indians, 10, 55 Maryland, 46–48, 50, 51, 56 Mason, Carol, 6, 30 Mateos, Antonio, 111–12 Mathews, Maurice, 95, 107, 110 Minuit, Peter, 47 Mississippi River, 5, 29, 41 Mocama province, 113


Index / 143 Mohawk Indians, 10, 39, 44–46, 52, 56, 59 Mohawk-Mahican War, 55 Mooney, James, 33 Moore, James, 28, 99, 100, 104, 107, 113 Mourning war, 39, 40, 51, 55, 65, 70 Nairne, Thomas, 5 Natchez Indians, 18 Needham, James, 61, 82, 104 Neutral Indians, 35, 38, 39 New Amsterdam, 45, 49 Newe Thomas, 101 New Netherland, 10, 47 New Sweden, 35, 47 Occaneechee Indians, 61, 80, 82, 85, 93, 104 Occaneechee Town, 80 Ocmulgee River, 75, 107–09, 112 Ocmulgee Town, 6, 107 Oconee River, 75, 77 Ohio Valley, 44, 45, 49, 50, 53, 98 Onondaga Indians, 10, 40, 50–52. See also Five Nations Iroquois Opechancanough, leader of Powhatan Confederacy, 67, 69 Oustack Indians, 33 Palmer’s Island, 46 Pamunkey Indians, 73 Patuxent Indians, 47 Percivall, Andrew, 110 Piscataway Indians, 47 Port Royal, 78, 79, 95 Powell, John Wesley, 33 Powhatan Confederacy, 11, 34, 62, 67 Powhatan revolts, 34, 58, 62, 72 Richahecrian Indians, 2, 3, 28, 31–36, 41, 72. See also Westo Indians Richter, Daniel, 70 Rickahockan Indians, 23, 24, 28, 29, 31–36, 41, 72, 80. See also Westo Indians Rigue, town of, 37, 40, 43, 52, 57 Riguehronnon Indians, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 53. See also Erie Indians

Sanchez de Uriza, Juan, 77 San Joseph de Sapala, 77 San Juan de Guacara, 112 San Marcos, 12, 13 San Simon, town of, 90 Santa Catalina de Guale, 24, 78, 79, 90, 99 Santa Elena, 78, 79 Satuache mission, 78 Savannah River, 1–3, 21, 22, 27–29, 78, 80, 83, 87, 99, 104, 107. See also Westobau River Savanna Indians, 20, 29, 85, 98, 100– 102, 104–06 Schuylkill River, 45, 47 Seneca Indians, 10, 50–52, 106, 107. See also Five Nations Iroquois Settlement Indians, 18–20, 59, 92, 93, 96, 105, 108. See also Les petites nations Shaftesbury (Lord), 83, 96, 102, 110 Shawnee Indians. See Savanna Indians Slaves, Indian, 2–4, 16, 27, 39, 64, 65, 74, 75, 91, 92 Smith, John, 45 Smith, Marvin, 36 Spanish mission system: description, 11–13; destruction of, 109, 111– 13; effects of slave raids, 83, 86, 87; prohibition on Indian slavery, 91; prohibition on trade of ¤rearms, 12, 53, 61, 68, 85; target of slave raids, 27, 67, 75–79, 89, 90, 99 Speck, Frank, 28 St. Giles, plantation, 83 St. Lawrence River, 9, 41, 44, 55 Strachey, William, 66 Susquehanna River, 45, 46 Susquehannock Indians: con®icts with Five Nations Iroquois, 46, 48–50; exchange with Eries, 2, 35, 49, 51, 65, 67; language, 44; location, 45; obtain ¤rearms, 56; population, 44; relationship with Maryland, 48, 50, 51; relationship with New Sweden, 44, 47; relationship with Virginia, 10, 11, 44, 46, 53, 57,


144 / Index 58, 61, 62, 68. See also White Minqua Indians Swanton, John, 21, 28–31, 33, 35, 76 Talaje, town of, 77, 78 Tama province, 23, 27, 75–78, 86, 87 Tomahitan Indians, 13, 30, 31, 33 Tooker, William Wallace, 33, 34, 36 Totopotomoi, Chief, 73 Uchise Indians, 89, 98 Utinahica province, 86 Virginia colony, 31, 32, 34, 35, 53, 57, 59, 67, 69, 75, 87, 103, 106; economic practices, 58, 61, 62, 68, 82, 93; relationship with Maryland, 47, 48; relationship with Susquehannock Indians, 2, 11, 45, 46; relationship with Westo Indians, 23, 24, 26, 28, 36, 72, 76, 77, 79, 80; use of Indian slaves, 63–65, 74 Wallace, David, 21 Waniah Indians, 101, 102 Waniah War, 101, 102 Waselkov, Gregory, 7 West, Joseph, 94, 107 Westobau River, 25. See also Savannah River Westo Indians: advantages from European inexperience, 54, 59, 70; advantages negated, 103–05, 108; cannibalism, 26, 69, 70, 79; economic opportunity in the South, 27, 54, 58, 63, 70; effects of slave raids, 5, 7, 86, 87; equated with other Indians, 28–36; experience in the Beaver Wars, 54, 56, 70; kinship system, 26; language, 25; liveli-

hood, 3, 13, 18, 26, 27, 88; migrations, 53, 57, 72, 78, 106, 107; military advantages, 3, 54, 65, 67, 70, 71; population, 23–25; relationship with Carolina, 68, 81–83, 85, 95, 98–100, 102; relationship with Virginia, 73, 74, 79, 80, 82; skill with ¤rearms, 68, 81; slave raids, 4, 75–77, 79, 89, 90; summary of activities, 1–3; trade policies, 96, 97. See also Chichimeco Indians; Erie Indians; Richahecrian Indians; Rickahockan Indians Westo War, 3, 29, 30, 98, 100, 102, 103, 106, 110 White Minqua Indians, 32, 45, 49. See also Susquehannock Indians Wood, Abraham, 2, 30, 58, 61, 62, 65, 68, 74, 75 Woodward, Henry, 31, 88, 92, 99, 102–04; agent of Lords Proprietors, 97, 110; blamed for Westo War, 100, 101; con®icts with Mateos, 111, 112; death of, 112; importance to early Carolinians, 59; journey to Co¤tachequi, 86; journey to Hickauhaugau, 21–25, 30, 32, 83, 84, 98; pardoned, 110; trade agreement with Creeks, 109, 111; trade agreement with Westos, 85, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98 Woristo, town of, 107 Worth, John, 4, 6, 30, 36 Wright, J. Leitch, 24 Yamassee Indians, 78, 86, 104, 112, 113 Yamassee War, 64, 104 Yeamens, John, 94, 95 Yuchi Indians, 21, 22, 28–31, 34, 89



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