The Westo Indians: Slave Traders of the Early Colonial South

THE WESTO INDIANS

THE WESTO INDIANS

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.

ISBN 978-0-8173-8262-9 (ebook)

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

1. The Westos and Their World

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

Appendix: Chronology of Key Sources

Works Cited

Index

Figures

1. Early colonial America

2. Erie Country

3. Rickahockan Country

4. Westo Country

5. The southern colonial theater

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 first manuscript to fruition. Any mistakes in the final 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.

1

The Westos and Their World

The Westo Indians, who lived briefly 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 significant 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 conflict 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 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 first 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 firearms (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 conflicts 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 fields (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 firearms 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 boundaryof 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 first 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). Terrified 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 financed a secret war against the Westos, forcing the group to abandon their fortified 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 significant 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 influential during the early years of the Carolina colony, they have failed to ask important questions concerning the nature of Westo influence 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 specific advantages did the Westos possess? What circumstances afforded them these advantages, and how were they eventually compromised? What specific effects did the Westos have on other groups, both Indian and European? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what can the history of the 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 first 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 influence, 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 chiefly 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 difficult 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 floors 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 characteristicscommon 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 firearm 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 first 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 firearms. 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 significant numbers of firearms, 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 final 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 significant 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 field 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 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 first 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 difficult 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 intensified through increased efficiency 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 scientific 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 modified 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] efficiency 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