Keyauwee Indians [1]
Keyauwee Indians
[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 https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/jamesriver/colonization.HTM [2] (accessed May 23, 2012).
1 January 2006 | Green, Michael D.