Colonial government victory The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee[1] or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee, who were supported by a number of allied Native American peoples, including the Muscogee, Cherokee, Catawba, Apalachee, Apalachicola, Yuchi, Savannah River Shawnee, Congaree, Waxhaw, Pee Dee, Cape Fear, Cheraw, and others.

Some of the Native American groups played a minor role, while others launched attacks throughout South Carolina in an attempt to destroy the colony.

Tribes that sent warriors to South Carolina's militia included the Yamasee, Catawba, Yuchi, Apalachee, Cusabo, Wateree, Sugaree, Waxhaw, Congaree, Pee Dee, Cape Fear, Cheraw, Sissipahaw, Cherokee, and various proto-Creek groups.

The Lower Yamasee included the Altamaha, Ocute (Okatee), Ichisi, (Chechessee), and Euhaw, who had come to the coast from the interior of Georgia.

[8] When the warnings about a possible Ochese Creek uprising reached the South Carolina government, they listened and acted.

The government sent a party to the main Upper Yamasee town of Pocotaligo (near present-day Yemassee, South Carolina).

They were joined by Thomas Nairne and John Wright, two of the most important people of South Carolina's Indian trading system.

One war party attacked the settlements of Port Royal, but Seymour Burroughs had managed to reach the plantation of John Barnwell and a general alarm had been raised.

The second war party invaded Saint Bartholomew's Parish, plundering and burning plantations, taking captives, and killing over a hundred settlers and slaves.

While the Yamasee were the main concern within the colony's settlements, British traders operating throughout the southeast found they were caught up in the conflict.

Attackers included warriors of the Creek (the Ochese, Tallapoosa, Abeika, and Alabama peoples), the Apalachee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Catawba, Cherokee, and others.

[11] In the ambush the Northern Indian war party managed to kill 26 of them including Barker, ten of which were Le Jau's parishioners.

The defeat of Barker prompted the evacuation of the Goose Creek settlement leaving it entirely abandoned but for two fortified plantations.

[12] Le Jau noted that, rather than press their advantage, the Northern Indian war band stopped to besiege a makeshift fort on Benjamin Schenkingh's plantation.

The remaining Northern Indians then faced a rapidly assembled militia of 70 men under the command of George Chicken, Le Jau's own son being among them.

By July 1715, Catawba diplomats arrived in Virginia to inform the British of their willingness to not only make peace, but to assist South Carolina militarily.

When the war broke out, they promptly killed all the South Carolinian traders in their territory, as did the other Creek, the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee.

The Ochese Creek were buffered from South Carolina by several smaller Indian groups, such as the Yuchi, Savannah River Shawnee, Apalachee, and Apalachicola.

Other prestigious and respected Cherokee leaders urged caution and patience, including Charitey Hagey the Conjurer of Tugaloo, one of the Lower Towns closest to South Carolina.

Many of the Lower Town Cherokee were open to peace with South Carolina, but reluctant to fight anyone other than the Yuchi and Savannah River Shawnee.

In response to The Tugaloo massacre and the Cherokee attacks, the Ochese Creek made a strategic defensive adjustment in early 1716.

In 1716 and 1717, as no major Cherokee-British attack materialized, the Lower Creek found themselves in a position of increased power and resumed raiding their enemies—British, Cherokee, and Catawba.

In response, South Carolina sent a group of emissaries to the Lower Creek towns, along with a large cargo of trade good presents.

After the Yamasee and Catawba had pulled back, South Carolina's militia reoccupied abandoned settlements and tried to secure the frontier, turning a number of plantation houses into makeshift forts.

Although it took several years to accomplish, the Yamasee War led directly to South Carolina's overthrow of the Lords Proprietors.

The end of the war marked a definitive shift towards an exclusive reliance of African slavery in South Carolina and a stricter delineation of racial boundaries in the colony.

The reoccupation of the Chattahoochee River by the Ochese Creek, along with remnants of the Apalachicola, Apalachee, Yamasee, and others, seemed to Europeans to represent a new Indian identity, and needed a new name.

The Catawba confederacy emerged from the Yamasee War as the most powerful Indian force of the Piedmont region, especially as the Tuscarora migrated north to join the Iroquois.

In 1716, a year after the Catawba had made peace with South Carolina, some Santee and Waxhaw Indians killed several colonists.

[19] There is another theory, originating with Robert Ney McNeely's history of Union County, published in 1912, that the Waxhaw continued on as an independent tribe until the 1740s but this seems to lack the backing of primary sources.