The Lawson Trek
  • Home
    • About
    • Interactive Map
    • The Trek
  • Along the Path: Blog
  • John Lawson
    • "A New Voyage to Carolina"
    • The Carolina Colony
  • Talk to us!
  • Store
  • Press

Along the Path

Updates as we learned about Lawson's journey and times -- and reports from the trail as we progressed along it. Plus tales of the process of publishing the result.

"A well-humour'd and affable People"

2/4/2015

5 Comments

 
In my first two treks I spent quite a bit of time with the descendants of the French Huguenots, settlers along the lower Santee River who welcomed and housed Lawson after he had made his way down the coast and started up the Santee. Just like their ancestors, the Huguenot descendants fed me, found me places to sleep, directed me, and wished me well.

From the Huguenot settlement Lawson continued north, likely following an Indian path along the edge of the swamp on the northeast bank of the Santee River, now called the Santee Swamp. The first native people he met there were the Santee Indians, whom he described as "a well-humour'd and affable People; and living near the English, are become very tractable."
Picture
Lawson talks about Santee skills in making corncribs, on stilts and daubed with mud, that kept out rodents, thus enabling them to leave them unguarded, "always finding their Granaries in the same Posture they left them."  They needed significant corn storage, "there being Plantations lying scattering here and there, for a great many Miles [along the Santee River]." Especially beans and corn, the Santee, whose name means something like "river people," were great farmers in the rich bottomlands near the Santee River.

Says Lawson, "They came out to meet us, being acquainted with one of our Company, and made us very welcome with fat barbacu'd Venison," and let me promise you, Carolinians have been welcoming visitors with barbecue ever since. 


All of this is to say, from the wonderful hospitality of the Huguenots (which their descendants recreated with me), Lawson advanced to the wonderful hospitality of the Santee, and I was anxious to see if I could meet their descendants and see how time had treated them. I was thus thrilled when Chris Judge of the Native American Studies Center of the University of South Carolina-Lancaster gave me contact information for the current chief and vice-chief of the Santee, Randy Crummie and Peggy Scott. Chief Crummie was working seven days a week keeping body and soul together, so he asked me to reach out to vice-chief Scott, whom I now think of as Peggy and regard as a friend, and who welcomed me to her region just as openly as her ancestors did centuries ago.
Picture
Vice-chief Scott at the South Carolina State House. Red, black, and white are Santee colors.
Picture
Peggy Scott, vice-chief of the Santee Tribe, drove up in a Mustang and greeted with a hug. Wherever Lawson and her ancestors are sitting around retelling old stories, they're probably happy.
We had invited Peggy to meet us on the road, and to walk along with us for a while as part of the Trek. But schedules grew complex and we ultimately met Peggy in our luxe cabin at Santee State Park, named for her ancestors.

Peggy shared the life of a modern member of the Santee Indian Tribe, and let me tell you, it's not all barbecue and affability. "We're the only race to have to prove who you are," she says of American Indians as a minority group. By the way, like many I've spoken with, Peggy tells me she perceives Indian and Native American as equally inoffensive terms; I use the two interchangeably. 
Given that the U.S. government has a Bureau of Indian Affairs, I'm loth to get offended on anybody's behalf. And when I asked Peggy whether she'd grown up identifying as a Santee, she said, "We were identified as a derogatory name, that I don't choose to repeat."

She attended an Indian school, segregated and denied resources to the point where she says "I didn't know what a gymnasium was. I didn't even know what a library was." A couple of her friends went to the high school but were treated so badly they left. She says when she was in fourth grade the Indian school closed and she moved into the middle school, where she describes a segregated system having white and black drinking fountains. If an Indian child was thirsty? "The teacher or principal would go get you a paper cup of water."

It's no surprise, of course. Indigenous peoples like the Santees were already reeling from the results of European contact by the time Lawson met them in 1700. Smallpox had devastated them, rum had taken them unawares, and they had been not only uprooted from their land but commonly enslaved -- Indian slavery was such an enormous undertaking that before 1715, Charleston actually exported more Indian slaves than it imported African slaves. The Santees numbered around 1000 in 1600 but declined as precipitously as their neighbors. In 1711 they fought with the British against the Tuscarora (who had killed Lawson), though by then their number was so reduced that according to The Indian Slave Trade they sent only a portion of a group of 155 that comprised at least seven tribes' worth of warriors. in the 1715 Yamassee War in South Carolina that finally sealed the fates of the Southeastern tribes, they fought with their Indian neighbors against the colonists, but it was basically over when the Yamassee lost. The remnant of the Santee (80 or so people in two villages) moved up the river to join the Catawba or melted into the swamps, just trying to keep away from the colonists, over the years mixing with other outcasts like escaped slaves and poor whites. The wonderful Those Who Were Left Behind tells the story of the South Carolina tribes who remained, explaining how the current Santees may descend from a group of indeterminate Indian background who found themselves a small piece of land southeast of the Santee River in the mid-1700s and have been around there ever since, reasserting the name "Santee" in the 20th century. Exactly what blood runs in whose veins is a subject for debate -- constant debate, given that the Santee Tribe is currently recognized by South Carolina but not the federal government -- but Peggy has no doubts.

"I was born in the middle of my tribe," she says. "My father and the elders delivered me in my mother's bedroom."
Picture
Picture
Things changed for Peggy when her father, in the military, served at Fort Polk in Louisiana. The Army famously sees only green, so for the first time in her life she was taught history and encouraged -- even allowed -- to ask questions. "When you are not educated, when you do not understand your history," she says, "you're lost." She talks about discovering Lawson's book in college: "He is like a huge part of my life," she says of Lawson, who described her ancestors kindly and with admiration. "It's like the whole world opened up when you have access to your history."

It's still complex. She has a son. "The old saying is you have to have one to put in this world and one to put in the other world," she says -- a child for the Tribe and a child for the greater society. For her part, she has embraced all aspects of her complicated background, though that's not always the case. She talks of tribe members who feel no need of tribal culture, seemingly buying into the old image of Indians as uncivilized. When her son was born, her father urged him to take advantage of his light skin, but Peggy smiles. "I raised him differently." He lives in Charleston, fully integrated into the world at large. But now engaged, he wants to be married on tribal land and include Santee tribal customs in his wedding.

She's worked much of her life for the betterment of her tribe. She's taken the special training you have to take as you try to work your tribe towards federal recognition, she's traveled to pow-wows hither and yon, and she has spent years of her life helping her tribe get, literally, back on the map. "We have land," she says. The U.S. Forest Service had an unused fire tower near Holly Hill, South Carolina, she says, and "We got an idea." 

She worked it, eventually getting the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources to donate the land, and the Orangeburg County Council provided money for a building, which opened in 2013.
Of that new building, Peggy told a an amazing story. Much of our discussion had to do with persecution, with the difficulties of gaining recognition, with the troubles of growing up Indian in a country that has never known what to do with you. "Even as a child it used to irk me," she recalls. "You came here, you tell us we're savages," she says. And then, when you try to get recognition for your tribe, "now, hundreds of years later, they say go find your history, your heritage -- that we took from you."

Some of it they can't have, though. 

"I'm part of the South Carolina Native American Ladies Traditional Dance group," she says. There was a time, after a significant accident, when Peggy could barely function, much less dance. But as her rehabilitation continued, she ended up able to dance, and a dance was scheduled at a pow wow the Santee hosted.

Let her tell you about it.
The Santees have waned and waxed again, growing stronger in recent years -- from only a few in the 1700s back to near a thousand now, the Santees remain by the river. Peggy brought us their welcome, and we certainly can be no less grateful for it than Lawson was.
5 Comments
Douglas Guerry
2/15/2015 02:18:52 am

Awesome article. How far south/east on the Santee did the tribe live?

Reply
Roten Jackson
4/24/2018 12:08:17 pm

The derogatory name she would rather not repeat is Brass ANKLE






The derogatory name she would rather not repeat isBrassankle

Reply
professional cv writers link
6/19/2018 08:50:49 am

Education tells us how to accept the realities and how to believe on the science and logics. Being educated we learn that there is a solid reason behind every thing. We understand logics because of it.

Reply
Harris Winns
4/22/2020 12:08:11 pm

In fact, my family still lives in my father’s house in the St. James Santee (Parish) area formerly referred to as either Lower Santee or French Santee.

I conducted some genealogical research and could trace my family back to at least the mid 1750's, attaching themselves to the Santee Indians of Charleston SC. They were Aboriginal/Autonomous people of this particular region.

If that's the case, then it's a good chance that I'm of the tribe of Gad. Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto spoke of these people/tribe as being the people he interacted with in the early 1500's. This is approximately 150 years prior to the so-called beginning of the SUPPOSED Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade which is purported to began in 1619. (Yeah, .. right,)

Then approximately 100 year later, the French Huegonots exploder the same area on the coast of So. Carolina in the 16th and 17th centuries and again, interacted with the same people, the Santee Indians. The French claimed that they were escaping religious persecution. (whatever) This tribe was subsequently enslaved by the French, to no surprise at all!

The Santee River splits two Lowe Santee communities. South Santee resides within the jurisdiction of Charleston County, SC and North Santee resides within the jurisdiction of Georgetown County, SC.

At a later point, quite a few Santee Indians were shipped off to various islands in the Caribbeans, most notably, the island country of Barbados.

In 2016, The Smithsonian Magazine had this to say in regards to Native/Indian slaves of the southeastern United States:

“Enslaving Native Americans became one of the primary ways to expand the economy for colonists in South Carolina and to a lesser extent in North Carolina, Virginia and Louisiana. "From 1670 to 1720 more Indians were shipped out of Charleston, South Carolina, than Africans were imported as slaves—and Charleston was a major port for bringing in Africans," Gallay writes.

Well, needless to say, my people that still live in the St. James Santee (Parish) region and they most certainly do not look like Ms. Peggy or have a shared phenotype.

Reply
HOMEiA link
10/4/2021 01:19:03 am

The great state of South Carolina has something for everybody. Having lived there for 20-plus years, I can attest to the number of cultural experiences, beautiful landscapes and incredible people that can be found in the Palmetto State.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2020
    October 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    August 2017
    May 2017
    August 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All
    Adventure
    African American
    Angie Clemmons
    Anthropocene
    Apothecary
    Appalachian
    Archaeologists
    Archaeology
    Army-navy
    Art
    Artifacts
    Atlanta
    Backpack
    Banking
    Barbecue
    Barry Beasley
    Bath
    Beaufort
    Beckee Garris
    Beetle
    Beginning
    Ben Franklin
    Berm
    Bill
    Birds
    Blister
    Book
    Bookstore
    Boston
    Botanical
    Boykin
    Breach
    Brent Burgin
    Brownlee
    Buck
    Buffer
    Cabelas
    Cambridge
    Camden
    Camera
    Canoe
    Canty
    Catawba
    Chain
    Charleston
    Charlotte
    Chelsea
    Chocolate
    Chris Judge
    Church
    Cincinnati
    City Of Raleigh Museum
    Civilization
    Coe
    Comment
    Community
    Concord
    Confederate
    Contentnea
    Cornwallis
    Country Music
    Couture
    Crawford
    Creek
    Croatoan
    Cutler
    Cypress
    Danger
    Davis
    Death
    Delightsome
    Delk's
    Denton
    Devices
    Drake
    Drawing
    Drunk
    Duck
    Durham
    Eagle
    Earnhardt
    Earth Day
    East
    Ecologist
    Effron
    Embankment
    End
    Error
    Evans
    Exhibit
    Expeditions
    Facebook
    Feather
    Fern
    Finish
    Fire
    Flag
    Flintlock
    Flood
    Francis
    French
    Gaillard
    Gander Mountain
    Garden
    Geology
    Gimpy
    GIS
    Google
    Great Wagon Road
    Green
    Greenville
    Grifton
    Guerry
    Gun
    Guns
    Haigler
    Hallenbeck
    Hampton
    Hanging
    Hannah Smith
    Harris
    Hartford
    Harvest
    Heat
    Hempton
    Highway
    Hillsborough
    Hips
    Historic Bath
    Hollow Rocks
    Home
    Homeness
    Hortus Siccus
    Hospitality
    Huguenots
    Huntley
    Indians
    Instagram
    Interstate
    Island
    Ivy
    Ivy Place
    Jamaica
    Jarvis
    Jennifer Landin
    Jered
    Jimmy White
    John Jeffries
    John White
    Journalism
    Kadaupau
    Kannapolis
    Katawba Valley Land Trust
    Katie Winsett
    Kayak
    Kershaw
    Keyauwee
    King
    Knife
    Lame
    Land
    Language
    Lawson
    Lawsonians
    Lecture
    Legacy
    Legare
    Legislators
    Leigh Swain
    Lenoir
    Lenoir Store
    Lenses
    Library
    Lichen
    Lies
    Loberger
    Locke
    London
    Longleaf
    Lost Colony
    Lynch
    Lynching
    Magnuson
    Mansplaining
    Maps
    Mass Shooting
    Match-coat
    Mathematical
    Meerkat
    Memorial
    Mental Floss
    Mill
    Millstone
    Miniature
    Monkeyshine
    Moonshine
    Museum
    Museum Day Live
    Musings
    Nancy
    Nascar
    Native American Studies Center
    Natural History Museum
    Nature
    Nesbit
    Netherton
    Neuse
    Newspaper
    Nonfiction
    Notebooks
    Occaneechi
    Orlando
    Pack's Landing
    Palmetto
    Pamlico
    Park
    Patent Leather
    Pedestrian
    Peggy Scott
    Periscope
    Petiver
    Photography
    Physic
    Pig
    Pig Man
    Pittsburgh
    Pocket
    Poinsett
    Polo
    Potsherd
    Pottery
    Preparation
    Presentation
    Press
    Process
    Proofreading
    Property
    Publishing
    Raccoon
    Racing
    Racism
    Racist
    Raleigh
    Rape
    Ray
    Readings
    Reconsideration
    Records
    Revolution
    Richard Smith
    Richardson
    Rights
    Riparian
    Rivulet
    Road
    Roadness
    Roanoke
    Robert Off
    Roland Kays
    Rolling Stone
    Roombox
    Rules
    Salisbury
    Santee
    Sapona
    Sassafras
    Scan
    Sconc
    Seneca
    Seth
    Shakespeare
    Sir Walter Raleigh
    Slavery
    Slime Mold
    Sloane
    Slope
    Small Town
    Smith
    Smithsonian
    Snow
    Sore
    Sounds
    Spanish Moss
    Specimens
    Speedway
    Spencer
    State Fair
    Steve Grant
    Stewart
    St. Mark's
    Suburban
    Sumter County
    Surveying
    Swamp
    Tar River
    Technology
    Textile
    Tide
    Tobacco
    Toms River
    Tool
    Towel
    Trade
    Trading Ford
    Trading Girls
    Trail
    Trap
    Traunter
    Tree
    Tree Farming
    Trek
    Trilobite
    Troi Perkins
    Truth
    Tryon
    Tupelo
    Turkey
    Tuscarora
    Twitter
    Ugly
    Unc
    Val
    Val Green
    Virginia
    Virginia Dare
    Virginia Historical Society
    Walking
    Washington
    Waxhaw
    Weather
    Website
    White
    Writing
    Wrong
    Yadkin
    Yoga

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly