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In the early 1700s, the Lords Proprietors of the colony of South Carolina were unsuccessful in regulating Indian trade, which shaped the lives of Native Americans who lived in this colony, particularly the Yamasee at the town of Pocataligo near present-day Beaufort, South Carolina. As early as 1713, the Board of Indian Trade began hearing complaints from Indians concerning abuse committed by Carolina traders. The growing crisis that occurred between the traders and the Native American population was a by-product of ecological and economic changes taking place within the colony, reflecting the depopulation of the whitetail deer. Furthermore, it was common practice for traders to incite native groups to attack one another within the colony in an attempt to acquire native slaves. The colony's attempt to regulate trade served to create factionalism between the traders based on economic competition. Trader factionalism also led to an increase in abuse by the traders, resulting in the development of a pan-Indian confederacy – the Yamasee War, April 15, 1715. In the years from 1715 to 1716, South Carolina was rife with war that took a devastating toll financially and defensively on the colony. Trade came to a standstill during these years, and tribes that had once been a buffer for the colony against Spain and France were either eradicated or removed. This chapter argues the importance of reporting on indigenous warfare as part of the Catawba Indians' adaptive response to colonialism.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-1065-2_5

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