Yamasee

The Yamasee were a diverse group of Native Americans whose roots lay with the Guale of coastal north Florida. Leaving the major Guale settlements in the early 16th century, the Yamasee settled near the Savannah River in present-day South Carolina. By the 1580s, when Spanish Franciscans established a string of missions throughout Florida and coastal South Carolina, the Yamasee were recognized as a separate people distinct from the Guale of Florida. Much to the frustration of the Spanish missionaries, the Yamasee refused to convert to Roman Catholicism and retained their own religion and cultural integrity.

When the English settled the Carolinas in the 1660s, the Yamasee became central players in a complex system of European-Indian diplomacy and trade. The first traders in the Carolinas were Virginians who allied with the Westo, who themselves used the coalition with the Virginians to become the dominant Indian power in the region. As part of this process, the Westo drove the Yamasee into northern Florida and southern Georgia.

By the 1670s the Virginians were supplanted by a new group of English settlers, many coming from the English Caribbean colony of Barbados. Viewing the Westo as allies of their Virginian enemies and hence as a threat to their control over the South Carolina colony, the new Carolinians allied with a band of refugee Shawnee, the Savannah. During the first half of the 1680s, they destroyed the Westo as a people. Returning to their homelands, the Yamasee soon became staunch allies of the new South Carolinians.

Heavily involved in trade with the English, during the final decades of the 17th century, the Yamasee joined with their fellow Muskogean speakers, the Creek, to raid Spanish missions in Florida and southern Georgia. Many of the Yamasee raids took them as far south as the Spanish capital of St. Augustine. However, by the 1710s, English traders and settlers began to see the growing strength of their Yamasee and Creek allies as a potential threat; many merchants also viewed all Indian peoples on the southern frontier as potential slaves. Faced with increasing cheating, enslavement, and violence, the Yamasee mounted a coordinated surprise attack on a number of English settlement and trading posts in 1715. The resulting Yamasee War lasted until 1718, when the English and their Cherokee allies defeated the main body of Yamasee warriors at Saltketchers on the South Carolina frontier.

Following their defeat in the Yamasee War, the remaining Yamasee people migrated south into Florida, where they allied with the Spanish for protection. In 1727 most of the remaining Yamasee were killed in an English raid against the Spanish. The handful of survivors sought refuge with the Seminoles and were quickly absorbed into their villages.

—Ronald Schultz

Yamasee War (1715-1718)

The Yamasee War involved a pan-Indian attempt to retain territorial and cultural integrity on the South Carolina frontier in the face of increasingly violent English attacks on their former Indian allies. Beginning in 1715 with a series of coordinated attacks by the Yamasee, Creek, and Catawba on English traders and frontier settlements, the scale and success of the attacks seriously threatened the existence of the fledgling South Carolina colony. The war continued intermittently for three years as English colonists struggled to suppress the Indian coalition. Only when the Cherokee decided to ally with the British against their Creek enemies were the English able decisively to defeat the Indian alliance. The English coalition crushed the Yamasee and drove the survivors into Florida, where they sought refuge with the Spanish. The Creek and Catawba remained intact as a people, but they were chased well away from established English settlements. To protect themselves further, British South Carolinians entered into an alliance with the Iroquois, who systematically attacked the Catawba for the next decade, seriously weakening them as a potential military force.

Like many conflicts between Europeans and Indians, the Yamasee War was ultimately about sovereignty: who would control land and trade. The Yamasee as well as the

Creek and Catawba were eager to trade with British colonists. However, the increasing integration of Indian peoples into larger trade networks worried the English, who both feared and profited from their Indian allies. As a result, English traders turned to fraud, intimidation, and force in their increasingly contentious relations with the Indian people around them. The Yamasee War was an Indian attempt to halt this process and restore their independent position in South Carolina.

Further reading: Steven J. Oatis, A Colonial Complex: South Carolina's Frontiers in the Era of the Yamasee War, 1680-1730 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).

—Ronald Schultz

Yeardley, Sir George (1587-1627) government official

George Yeardley served as an early governor of Virginia, and he arranged the purchase of the first African slaves in British North America. Born in the Southwark borough of London, England, the son of Ralph Yeardley and Rhoda Marston, Yeardley became a ward of Sir Henry Peyton, his godfather, after his parents died in 1601. Peyton arranged a military apprenticeship, which Yeardley served in the Netherlands. Attaining the rank of captain, he sailed for Virginia in 1609. Delayed by shipwreck, he did not arrive until May 1610. Yeardley served various officials in a military capacity until 1616, when he became deputy governor to Thomas West, baron De La Warr. West spent most of his time in England, leaving Yeardley to govern Virginia until Samuel Argall replaced him on May 15, 1617.

Yeardley returned to England, when he married Temperance Flowerdieu. On November 18, 1618, he was appointed governor of Virginia for a three-year term and knighted by King James I (1603-25) on November 22. Yeardley returned to Virginia to institute a new government that included an assembly comprised of his council and eight elected burgesses. The Virginia Company instructed Yeardley to distribute land to individuals, which, combined with the growth of tobacco cultivation, created demand for laborers. Yeardley worked to bring English indentured servants to the colony while governor. He also organized buying the first African slaves in British North America in 1619 as well as purchasing brides for the colony’s predominantly male settlers. He became wealthy and one of the largest owners of servants in Virginia. Yeardley died after being reappointed governor.

Further reading: Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975).

—Eugene VanSickle