The Yamasee were a Native American tribe that lived in coastal region of present-day northern Florida and southern Georgia near the Savannah River. Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States Florida ( is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the The State of Georgia ( is a state in the United States and was one of the original Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule For the Department of Energy facility see Savannah River Site The Savannah River is a major river in the southeastern United States Starting in the late 16th century, the Spanish established Catholic missions in the area in which the Yamasee lived. Spain () or the Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España is a country located mostly in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. See also Evangelism, Christianization A Christian mission has been widely defined since the Lausanne Congress of 1974 as that which In the 1670s the Westo tribe forced the Yamasee to move south from the Savannah River. The Westo were a Native American tribe of the 17th century They probably spoke an Iroquoian language They were mentioned regularly on Spanish mission census records in northern Florida and the missionary provinces of Guale and Mocama, but usually did not convert to Christianity and remained somewhat segregated from the Christian Indians of Spanish Florida. Guale was a Native American Chiefdom that became part of Spanish Florida 's missionary system in the late 16th century Mocama was a Native American Chiefdom that became part of Spanish Florida 's missionary system in the late 16th century

Pirate attacks on the Spanish missions in 1680 forced the Yamasee to migrate again. Some moved to Florida. Others returned to the Savannah River lands, safer after the destruction of the Westo. The Yamasee near the Savannah River became allies of the new colony of South Carolina, while those in Florida grew increasingly disenchanted with the Spanish. The Province of Carolina from 1663 to 1712, was a North American British proprietary Colony, controlled by eight English noblemen They revolted against Spanish rule in 1687 and fled to South Carolina where they were allowed to settle. South Carolina ( is a state in the southern region ( Deep South) of the United States of America. For years, the Yamasee and the Carolinians conducted slave raids upon Spanish-allied Indians and attacks on St. Augustine itself. St Augustine is the County seat of St Johns County, Florida, in the United States. However, in 1715, the Yamasee began to attack South Carolinian colonists, triggering the Yamasee War, which lasted until at least 1717. This article is about a type of political territory For other uses see Colony (disambiguation. The Yamasee War (also spelled Yemassee War) ( 1715 - 1717) was a conflict between colonial South Carolina and various Native American Indian Many tribes allied themselves with the Yamasee. In 1716 the Cherokee allied themselves with South Carolina and began to attack the Creek, which turned the tide of the war. The Cherokee (ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯ a-ni-yv-wi-ya, in the Cherokee language) are a people native to North America, who at the time of European contact While the South Carolina militia could not fight the powerful Creek, they did defeat the Yamasee in pitched battle at Salkehatchie on the Combahee River. The Combahee River is a short Blackwater river in the Southern Lowcountry region of South Carolina formed at the confluence of the Salkehatchie

The Yamasee then migrated south to the area around St. Augustine, Florida, and became allied with the Spanish against the English. St Augustine is the County seat of St Johns County, Florida, in the United States. In 1727, the British attacked the tribe's settlement and slaughtered most of them; this and conflicts with the Creek decimated the Yamasee population. The survivors eventually assimilated into the Seminole tribe. The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida and now residing in Florida and Oklahoma.

Language

The Yamasee spoke an unknown language. It is reportedly preserved in works by missionary Domingo Báez. Diego Peña was told in 1716-1717 that the Tuskegee also spoke Yamasee (Hudson 1990).

Hann (1992) claims that Yamasee is related to the Muskogean languages based upon a report that a Yamasee spy within a Hitchiti town could understand Hitichiti and was not detected as a Yamasee. Muskogean (also Muskhogean, Muskogee) is an indigenous language family of the Southeastern United States. The Hitchiti was a Muskogean Tribe formerly residing chiefly in a town of the same name on the east bank of the Chattahoochee River, 4 miles below Chiaha However, Diego Peña obtained information in 1716 and 1717 that shows that Yamasee and Hitchiti-Mikasuki were considered separate languages. The Mikasuki language (also Miccosukee or Hitchiti-Mikasuki) is a Muskogean language spoken by around 500 people in southern Florida. Francis Le Jau stated in 1711 that the Yamasee understood the Creek and also that many Indians throughout the region used Creek and Shawnee as lingua francas. The Creek language, also known as Muscogee ( Mvskoke in Creek is a Muskogean language spoken by the Muscogee (Creek Nation and Seminole The Shawnee language is a Central Algonquian language spoken in parts of central and northeastern Oklahoma by only around 200 Shawnee, making it very A lingua franca (from Italian, literally meaning Frankish language, see etymology under Sabir and Italian below is any Language widely

Inconclusive evidence has been offered suggesting the Yamasee language was similar to Guale resting on two facts: (1) a copy of a 1681 Florida missions census states that the people of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de la Tama speak "la lengua de Guale, y Yamassa" [the Guale and Yamasee language], and a summary of two 1688 letters sent by the Florida governor mention prisoners of the "ydioma Yguala y Yamas, de la Prova de Guale" [the Yguala and Yamas language of the province of Guale]; and (2) the Guale called the Cusabo Chiluque which is probably related to the Creek word čiló·kki "Red Moiety". Guale was a Native American Chiefdom that became part of Spanish Florida 's missionary system in the late 16th century The Cusabo (also Corsaboy) were a group of Native Americans who lived along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in what is now South Carolina, approximately However, the Spanish documents are not originals and may have been edited at a later date. The name Chiluque is probably a mere loanword and seems to have also been borrowed into the Timucua language. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation Timucua is a Language isolate formerly spoken in northern and central Florida, southern Georgia, and eastern Alabama by the Timucua Thus, the connection of Yamasee with Muskogean is unsupported.

Steven J. Oatis and other historians describe the Yamasee as a multi-ethnic amalgamation of several remnant Indian groups, including the Guale, the "La Tama", Apalachee, Coweta, and Cussita Creek, among others. Chester B. DePratter describes the Yamasee towns of early South Carolina as consisting of Lower Towns, consisting mainly of Hitchiti-speaking Indians, and Upper Towns, consisting mainly of Guale Indians. ^[1][2]

A document in a British Colonial Archive indicates that the Yamasee originally spoke Cherokee, but had learned another language.

See also

• John Barnwell

Notes

References

• Anderson, William L. (1983) A guide to Cherokee documents in foreign archives.
• Boyd, Mark F. (1949). Diego Peña's expedition to Apalachee and Apalachicolo in 1716. The Florida Historical Quarterly, 16 (1), 2-32.
• Boyd, Mark F. (1952). Documents describing the second and third expeditions of lieutenant Diego Peña to Apalachee and Apalachicolo in 1717 and 1718. The Florida Historical Quarterly, 32 (2), 109-139.
• Gallay, Alan. (2002). "The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717". New Haven & London: Yales University Press.
• Goddard, Ives. (2005). The indigenous languages of the Southeast. Anthropological Linguistics, 47 (1), 1-60.
• Hann, John H. (1991). Missions to the Calusa. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
• Hann, John H. (1992). Political leadership among the natives of Spanish Florida. The Florida Historical Quarterly, 71 (2), 188-208.
• Hann, John H. (1994). Leadership nomenclature among Spanish Florida natives and its linguistics and associational implications. In P. B. Kwachka (Ed. ), Perspectives on the Southeast: Linguistics, archaeology, and ethnohistory (pp. 94-105). Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
• Hann, John H. (1996). The seventeenth-century forebears of the Lower Creeks and Seminoles. Southeastern Archaeology, 15, 66-80.
• Hudson, Charles M. , Jr. (1990). The Juan Pardo expeditions: Explorations of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568. Washington, D. C. Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Hudson, Charles M. , Jr. (1997). Knights of Spain, warriors of the sun: Hernando de Soto and the South's ancient chiefdoms. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
• Sturtevant, William C. (1994). The Misconnection of Guale and Yamasee with Muskogean. International Journal of American Linguistics, 60 (2), 139-48.
• Waddell, Gene. (1980). Indians of the South Carolina lowcountry, 1562-1751. Spartansburg, SC: The Reprint Company.
• Worth, John E. (1995). The struggle of the Georgia coast: An eighteenth-century Spanish retrospective on Guale and Mocama. Anthropological papers of the American Museum of Natural History (No. 75). New York.
• Worth, John E. (1998). The Timucuan chiefdoms of Spanish Florida (Vols. 1 & 2). Gainesville: University of Press of Florida.
• Worth, John E. (2000). The Lower Creeks: Origins and early history. In B. G. McEwan (Ed. ), Indians of the Greater Southeast: Historical archaeology and ethnohistory (pp. 265-298). Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
• Worth, John E. (2004). Yamasee. In R. D. Fogelson (Ed. ), Handbook of North American Indians: Southeast (Vol. 14, pp. 245-253). Washington, D. C. : Smithsonian Institution.

External links

• Yamasee artifacts found in S.C. dig