Saura, or Saxapahaw (Amerind tribe)
Years: 1500 - 1750
The Saura are a tribe of Native Americans who live in the Piedmont area of North Carolina near the Sauratown Mountains, east of Pilot Mountain and north of the Yadkin River.
They aee believed to have spoken a Siouan language.
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The Hernando de Soto expedition of 1540 had traveled into Yamasee territory, including the village of Altamaha.
Spanish explorers in 1570 had established missions in Yamasee territory.
The Yamasee were later included in the missions of the Guale province.
Starting in 1675, the Yamasee are mentioned regularly on Spanish mission census records of the missionary provinces of Guale (central Georgia coast) and Mocama (present-day southeastern Georgia and northeastern Florida).
The Yamasee usually do not convert to Christianity and remain somewhat separated from the Christian natives of Spanish Florida.
While often described as a tribe, the Yamasee are an amalgamation of the remnants of earlier tribes and chiefdoms, such as the Guale and groups originating in the provinces of Tama and Ocute in interior Georgia (Worth 1993:40–45).
The Yamasee had emerged during the seventeenth century in the contested frontier between South Carolina and Spanish Florida.
At first allied with the Spanish, pirate attacks on the Spanish missions in 1680 had forced the Yamasee to migrate again.
Some had moved to Florida.
Others had returned to the Savannah River lands, safer after the destruction of the Westo.
Spaniards had attempted in 1687 to send Yamasees to the West Indies as slaves, so the tribe had revolted against the Spanish missions and their native allies, and the tribe had moved into the British colony of the Province of South Carolina, establishing several villages, Pocotaligo, Tolemato, and Topiqui, in Beaufort County, and had soon become South Carolina's most important native ally.
The Yamasee and the Carolinian colonists have for years conducted slave raids upon Spanish-allied natives and attacked St. Augustine, Florida.
A 1715 census conducted by John Barnwell counts twelve hundred and twenty Yamasee living in ten villages in near Port Royal, South Carolina.
The Yamasee have long profited from their relation with the British, but by 1715 find it difficult to obtain the two trade items most desired by the British—deerskins and enslaved natives.
In fact, some historians have suggested that the census taken by the British the same year had fueled Yamasee fears of enslavement.
With the deerskin trade booming over an ever-larger region, deer have become rare in Yamasee territory.
Slave-raiding opportunities are limited after the Tuscarora War.
The Yamasee have become increasingly indebted to the British traders, who supply them with trade goods on credit.
Rice plantations had begun to thrive in South Carolina by 1715, and much of the accessible land good for rice has been taken up.
The Yamasee had been granted a large land reserve on the southern borders of South Carolina, and settlers have begun to covet their land, which they deem ideal for rice plantations.
Historians have not determined if the Yamasee were leaders in fomenting native unrest and plans for war.
The Ochese Creeks (later known as the Lower Creeks) may have been more instrumental in gaining support for war.
Each of the native tribes that joins in the war has its own reasons, as complicated and deeply rooted in the past as the Yamasee's.
Although the tribes do not act in carefully planned coordination, the unrest increases, and intertribal communication begins about the possibility of war.
Rumors of growing native support for war is by early 1715 troubling enough that some friendly natives warn colonists of the danger.
They suggest the Ochese Creek are the instigators.
The colonial armies in the Tuscarora War had been composed mainly of native troops.
The Yamasee had been strong military allies of South Carolina colonists for many years, and Yamasee warriors had comprised the core of both armies.
Other natives had been recruited over a large area from diverse tribes that in some cases are traditional enemies of one another.
Tribes that had sent warriors to South Carolina's armies included the Yamasee, Catawba, Yuchi, Apalachee, Cusabo, Wateree, Sugaree, Waxhaw, Congraree, Pee Dee, Cape Fear, Cheraw, Saxapahaw, Cherokee, and various proto-Creek groups.
This military collaboration had brought natives of the entire region into closer contact with one another.
The natives had seen the disagreements and weaknesses of the British colonies, as South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia bickered over various aspects of the Tuscarora War.
Essentially all of the tribes that had helped South Carolina during the Tuscarora War join in attacking settlers in the colony during the Yamasee War, just two or three years later.
The South Carolina government listens and acts when the warnings about a possible Ochese Creek uprising reach them.
The government sends a party to the main Upper Yamasee town of Pocotaligo (near present-day Yemassee, South Carolina).
They hope to obtain Yamasee assistance in arranging an emergency summit with the Ochese Creek leaders.
The delegation that visits Pocotaligo consists of Samuel Warner and William Bray, sent by the Board of Commissioners.
They are joined by Thomas Nairne and John Wright, two of the most important people of South Carolina's native trading system.
Two others, Seymour Burroughs and an unknown South Carolinian, have also joined.
The men speak to an assembly of Yamasee on the evening of April 14, 1715, promising to make special efforts to redress Yamasee grievances.
They also state that Governor Craven is on the way to the village.
The Yamasee debate during the night, as the South Carolinians sleep, over what to do.
There are some who are not fully pledged to a war, but in the end the choice is made.
After applying war paint, the Yamasee wake the Carolinians and attack them.
Two of the six men escape.
Seymour Burroughs flees and, although shot twice, raises an alarm in the Port Royal settlements.
The Yamasee kill Nairne, Wright, Warner, and Bray.
The unknown South Carolinian hides in a nearby swamp, from which he witnesses the ritual death-by-torture of Nairne.
The events of the early hours of Good Friday, April 15, 1715, mark the beginning of the Yamasee War.
The Yamasee quickly organize two war parties of several hundred men, which sets out later in the day.
One war party attacks the settlements of Port Royal, but Seymour Burrough has managed to reach the plantation of John Barnwell and a general alarm has been raised.
By chance, a captured smuggler's ship is docked at Port Royal.
By the time the Yamasee arrive, several hundred settlers have found refuge on the ship, while many others have fled in canoes.
The second war party invades Saint Bartholomew's Parish, plundering and burning plantations, taking captives, and killing over a hundred settlers and enslaved people.
Within the week, a large Yamasee army is preparing to engage a rapidly assembled South Carolinian militia.
Other Yamasee go south to find refuge in makeshift forts.
The Yamasee War is the first major test of South Carolina's militia.
Governor Craven leads a force of about two hundred and forty militia against the Yamasee.
The Yamasee war parties have little choice but to join together to engage Craven's militia.
Near the native town of Salkehatchie (or "Saltcatchers" in English), on the Salkehatchie River, a pitched battle is fought on open terrain.
It is the kind of battle conditions that Craven and the militia officers desire and the natives are poorly suited for.
Several hundred Yamasee warriors attack the two hundred and forty or so members of the militia.
The Yamasee try to outflank the South Carolinians but find it difficult.
After several head warriors are killed, the Yamasee abandon the battle and disperse into nearby swamps.
The casualties are about equal, twenty-four or so on each side, but the practical result is a decisive victory for South Carolina.
Other smaller militia forces press the Yamasee and win a series of further victories.
Alexander MacKay, experienced with native warfare, leads a force south.
They find and attack a group of about two hundred Yamasee who have taken refuge in a palisade-fortified encampment.
After a relatively small Carolinian party makes two sorties over the walls of the fort, the Yamasee decide to retreat.
The Yamasee are ambushed outside the fort and decimated by MacKay and about a hundred men.
The Yamasee are the main concern within the colony's settlements, but British traders operating throughout the southeast had also found themselves to be caught up in the conflict.
Most have been killed.
Of about one hundred traders in the field when the war breaks out, ninety are killed in the first few weeks.
Attackers include warriors of the Creek (the Ochese, Tallapoosa, Abeika, and Alabama peoples), the Apalachee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Catawba, Cherokee, and others.
During the first month of the war, South Carolina had hoped to receive assistance from the northern natives, such as the Catawba, but the first news from the north was that the Catawba and Cherokee had murdered British traders among them.
The Catawba and Cherokee had not attacked traders as quickly as did the southern natives, as both tribes were divided over what course to take.
Some Virginian traders are accused of goading the Catawba into making war on South Carolina.
Although the Catawba kill traders from South Carolina, they spare those from Virginia.
The Catawba by May 1715 send war parties against South Carolina settlers.
About four hundred Catawba warriors, joined by about seventy Cherokee, terrorize the northern parts of the colony.
A smaller battle takes place in the summer of 1715, becoming known as the Daufuskie Fight.
A Carolinian boat scout crew manages to ambush a group of Yamasee, killing thirty-five while suffering only one casualty.
The surviving Yamasee decide before long to move farther south to the vicinity of the Altamaha River.
A South Carolinian force of ninety cavalry under Captain Thomas Barker in June goes north in response.
The Catawba-Cherokee war party manages to ambush Barker's troops, and kills them all.
Another Catawba-Cherokee force attacks a makeshift fort on Benjamin Schenkingh's plantation, where they kill about twenty people.
After this, South Carolina has no defenses for the wealthy Goose Creek district, just north of Charles Town.
Before the northern forces attack Charles Town, most of the Cherokee leave, as they had heard about their own towns being threatened.
The remaining Catawba now face a rapidly assembled militia under the command of George Chicken.
Chicken's militia ambushes a Catawba party on June 13, 1715, and launches a direct assault upon the main Catawba force.
The militia routes the Catawba in the Battle of the Ponds.
The warriors are not used to such direct confrontation.
The Catawba, after returning to their villages, decide on peace.
The Ochese Creeks had probably been instigators of the war at least as much as the Yamasee.
When the war broke out, they had promptly killed all the South Carolinian traders in their territory, as did the other Creek, the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee.
The Ochese Creek are buffered from South Carolina by several smaller native groups, such as the Yuchi, Savannah River Shawnee, Apalachee, and Apalachicola.
These natives make several successful attacks on South Carolina settlements in the summer of 1715.
Generally the Ochese Creek are cautious after South Carolina's counterattacks proved effective.
The smaller native groups flee the Savannah River area, many finding refuge among the Ochese Creeks, where plans are being made for the next stage of the war.
The Upper Creek are not as determined to wage war, but have strong respect for the Ochese Creek.
They might join in an invasion if conditions are favorable.
An issue is trade goods.
The Creek people have come to depend on English trade goods from South Carolina.
Facing possible war with the British, the Creek look to the French and Spanish as possible market sources.
The French and Spanish are more than willing to supply the Creek, but they are unable to provide the same quantity or quality of goods which the British have been providing.
Muskets, gunpowder, and bullets are especially needed if the Creek are to invade South Carolina.
The Upper Creek remain reluctant to go to war.
Nevertheless, the Creek form closer ties to the French and Spanish during the Yamasee War.
The Ochese Creeks have other connections, such as the Chickasaw and Cherokee, but the Chickasaw, after killing their English traders, had been quick to make peace with South Carolina, blaming the deaths of the traders in their towns on the Creeks—a lame excuse that is gladly accepted by South Carolina.
The Cherokee's position becomes strategically important.