Keyauwee Indians [1]

Keyauwee Indians

by Michael D. Green, 2006

[2]The Keyauwee Indians, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, were living in a town surrounded by palisades located near the Uwharrie River in present-day Randolph County [3]. Nestled in a valley surrounded by cornfields, their village was vulnerable to attack, and their numbers, according to the chronicles of John Lawson [4], were minimal. Shortly after Lawson's 1701 visit, the Keyauwee relocated. Joining with the Tutelo, Saponi [5], Occaneechi [6], and others in 1714, they briefly found shelter at Fort Christanna, an outpost and reservation established by Virginia's governor Alexander Spotswood. After a few years the Keyauwee left to join with the Saura [7] (Cheraw) and the Peedee on the Pee Dee River in South Carolina, where they carried on a trade in deerskins with Charleston traders. The Keyauwee allied with their Indian neighbors in the 1715 Yamassee War [8] against South Carolina, after which they joined other Siouan-speaking people in the Catawba Nation.

References:

James H. Merrell, The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (1989).

Douglas L. Rights, The American Indian in North Carolina (1947).

Image Credit:

"Indians Dancing Around a Circle of Posts," watercolor by John White, created 1585-86." Image courtesy of the Trustees of the London Museum accessed via the Nation Park Service. Available from http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/jamesriver/colonization.HTM [2] (accessed May 23, 2012).

Subjects:

American Indians [9]

UNC Press [10]

Authors:

Green, Michael D. [11]

Origin - location:

Randolph County [12]

From:

Encyclopedia of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press. [13]

1 January 2006 | Green, Michael D.