Waccamaw

Tribes neighboring the Waccamaw included the Sewees, Santees, Sampits (Sampa), Winyahs, and Pedees.

[5] According to ethnographer John R. Swanton, the Waccamaw may have been one of the first mainland groups of Natives visited by the Spanish explorers in the 16th century.

Within the second decade of the 16th century, Francisco Gordillo and Pedro de Quexos captured and enslaved several Native Americans, and transported them to the island of Hispaniola where they had a base.

[9] In 1755, John Evans noted in his journal that Cherokee and Natchez warriors killed some Waccamaw and Pedee "in the white people’s settlements.

In the later 19th century, they cultivated tobacco and cotton as commodity crops, on a small scale, as did yeomen among the neighboring African-American freedmen and European-Americans.

Waccamaw Siouan people in the late 19th century in North Carolina farmed diverse crops on inherited lands, but agriculture was depressed.

Men collected turpentine from pine trees to supplement their income, while women grew cash crops, including tobacco and cotton, and /or worked as domestic laborers and farm hands.

[11] In 1910, the Waccamaw Siouan Indians, one of eight state-recognized groups in North Carolina, organized a council to oversee community issues.

Lumbee Legal Services, Inc., represents the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe in its administrative process for seeking federal recognition.