Page 14 →3 Early Human Landscape
Native Americans, ca. 1670
The state’s early human landscape was shaped by peoples migrating from Asia. They arrived in what is now South Carolina about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, although evidence from an archaeological site in Allendale County may record a much earlier arrival date. When Europeans arrived, there were about 15,000 Native Americans divided into numerous tribes. Their language family was Algonquian, Iroquoian, Muskhogean, Siouan, or Uchean. Their population numbers declined significantly after contact with European settlers due to disease, displacement, and war. Evidence of their subsistence and ceremonial lifestyle is visible today in abandoned shell middens and earthen mounds. Native Americans continue to live in South Carolina today, maintaining a rich legacy in the place names of rivers, counties and towns.
Shell middens and shell rings, made up of pottery shards, bones, and shells, represent the history of early native peoples. These deposits can tell us about their diet and local environment. A shell midden, the Spanish Mount, is easily viewable along a hiking trail at Edisto Beach State Park. The Fig Island shell ring (shown) is located nearby along the North Edisto River.
Page 15 →European Contact
A chiefdom refers to a primary village. Cofitachequi, a chiefdom encountered by de Soto and Pardo, is named after the female chieftain, The Lady of Cofitachequi. The Spanish explorers also visited another chiefdom to the northwest—Joara.
The earliest European explorers of South Carolina were the Spanish in the 1520s, but the first permanent European settlers were the English more than one century later. Both the Spanish and French had short-lived settlements along the coast, Santa Elena and Port Royal, respectively. The Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto, traversed the middle section of the state in 1540, encountering Cofitachequi, a chiefdom thought to be located near present-day Camden. Some argue that the chiefdom was closer to the Savannah River. Juan Pardo arrived at Santa Elena in 1566 and explored much of de Soto’s route. The British explorers William Hilton (1663) and Henry Woodward (1666) sought a site for potential British settlers and enslaved Africans from the Caribbean island of Barbados. This laid the groundwork for the triangular trade between Africa, Britain’s colonies, and Europe.
Charles Towne Landing, located along the Ashley River and now a state historic site, is where a group of English settlers landed in 1670. The settlers migrated coastward to Oyster Point, the current location of Charleston, in 1680. Visitors today can see the Adventure, a reproduction of a seventeenth-century trader that carried cargo between the colonies and Barbados in the Caribbean. Barbados and South Carolina were linked through a shared plantation-based economic system reliant on the labor of enslaved Africans.