Sewee
Sewee
Total population
extinct as a tribe
Regions with significant populations
South Carolina
Languages
Eastern Siouan[1]
Religion
Native American religion
Related ethnic groups
Catawba,[2] merged with the Wando people[3]

The Sewee or "Islanders" were a Native American tribe that lived in present-day South Carolina in North America.

Their territory was on the lower course of the Santee River and the coast westward to the divide of Ashley River about present day Moncks Corner, South Carolina.[1]

History

Ethnologist John Reed Swanton estimated there were 800 Sewee in 1600.[4]

In 1670 the English founded the coastal town of Charleston in the Carolina Colony on land belonging to the Etiwan people and neighboring tribes like the Sewee.[5] Sewee and other native peoples began participating in the Deerskin trade shortly thereafter. The Sewee hunted, processed, and exchanged deer hides for manufactured goods and glass beads from the English. However, they felt that English traders had become middlemen. Noting that the English ships always landed at the same location, the Sewee believed that by rowing to the point on the horizon where the ships first appeared, they could reach England and establish better trading prices. Therefore, the Sewee nation decided to construct canoes with woven mat sails for their expedition.[6]

English land surveyor John Lawson, having heard the story from a Carolina trader, described the process in his book A New Voyage to Carolina:

It was agreed upon immediately to make an addition of their fleet by building more canoes, and those to be of the best sort and biggest size as fit for their intended discovery. Some Indians employed about making the canoes, others to hunting - everyone to the post he was most fit for, all endeavors towards an able fleet and cargo for Europe.[7]

Eventually the Sewee had completed their navy of canoes, and they filled the vessels with hides, pelts, and provisions. Most able-bodied Sewee men boarded the boats and took to the sea, while children, the sick and the elderly stayed home. As the Sewee entered open ocean, an abrupt storm engulfed their canoes and caused many to drown. The survivors were picked up by a passing English slave ship and sold into slavery in the West Indies.[6][7][3]

The surviving Sewee settled with the Wando people, with whom they later intermarried.[3]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 Swanton, 98
  2. ↑ Swanton, 99
  3. 1 2 3 Olexer, Barbara (2005). The Enslavement of the American Indian in Colonial Times. Joyous Pub. p. 116. ISBN 9780972274043.
  4. ↑ Swanton, John Reed (1952). The Indian Tribes of North America. Genealogical Publishing Com. p. 99. ISBN 9780806317304. Retrieved 20 September 2017.
  5. ↑ Butler, Nic (November 19, 2021). "The First People of the South Carolina Lowcountry". Charleston County Public Library. Retrieved March 10, 2023.
  6. 1 2 Merrell, James H. (2009). The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (2nd ed.). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 49–50. ISBN 978-0-8078-7142-3.
  7. 1 2 Lawson, John (1709). A New Voyage to Carolina. University of North Carolina: London. pp. 11–12. Retrieved 17 October 2014.

References

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