Colonial Period of South Carolina - Overview

Overview

After several expeditions and settlement attempts in the 16th century, the France and England had abandoned the area of present-day South Carolina north of the Edisto River. In 1629 Charles I granted his attorney general a charter to everything between latitudes 36 and 31. Later, in 1663, Charles II gave the land to eight nobles, the Lords Proprietor. There was a single government of the Carolinas based in Charleston until 1712, when a separate government (under the Lords Proprietors) was set up for North Carolina. In 1719, the Crown purchased the South Carolina colony from the absentee Lords Proprietor and appointed Royal Governors. By 1729, seven of the eight Lords Proprietors had sold their interests back to the Crown; the separate royal colonies of North Carolina and South Carolina were established.

Throughout the Colonial Period, the Carolinas participated in numerous wars with the Spanish and the Native Americans, particularly the Yamasee, Apalachee, and Cherokee. During the Yamasee War of 1715-1717, South Carolina faced near annihilation due to Indian attacks. A pan-Indian allliance had formed to try to push the colonists out, in part a reaction to their trade in Indian slaves for the nearly 50 years since 1670. The effects of the slave trade affected tribes throughout the Southeast. Estimates are that Carolinians exported 24,000-51,000 Indian slaves to markets from Boston to Barbados. The emerging planter class used the revenues to finance the purchase of enslaved Africans. So many Africans were imported that they comprised a majority of the population in the colony during most of the years before the American Revolution.

The Carolina upcountry was settled largely by Scots-Irish immigrants arriving from Pennsylvania and Virginia, German descended people in the Piedmont, and the white population of the Lowcountry was dominated by wealthy plantation owners of English and French descent. Toward the end of the Colonial Period, the upcountry people were underrepresented and mistreated. In reaction, they took a loyalist position when the Lowcountry complained of the new taxes that would later spark the American Revolution.

In North Carolina a short-lived colony was established near the mouth of the Cape Fear River. A ship was sent southward to explore the Port Royal, South Carolina area, where the French had established the short-lived Charlesfort post and the Spanish had built Santa Elena, the capital of Spanish Florida from 1566 to 1587, until it was abandoned. Captain Robert Sanford made a visit with the friendly Edisto Indians. When the ship departed to return to Cape Fear, Dr. Henry Woodward stayed behind to study the interior and native Indians.

In Bermuda, an 80-year-old Puritan Bermudian colonist, Colonel William Sayle, was named governor of Carolina. On March 15, 1670, under Sayle (who sailed on a Bermuda sloop with a number of Bermudian families), they finally reached Port Royal. According to the account of one passenger, the Indians were friendly, made signs toward where they should land, and spoke broken Spanish. Spain still considered Carolina to be its land; the main Spanish base, St. Augustine, wasn't far away. The Spanish missionary provinces of Guale and Mocama occupied the coast south of the Savannah River and Port Royal. Though the Edisto Indians were not happy to have the English settle permanently, the chief of the Kiawah Indians, who lived farther north along the coast, arrived to invite the English to settle among his people and protect them from the Westo tribe, slave-raiding allies of Virginia. The sailors agreed and sailed for the region now called West Ashley. When they landed in early April at Albemarle Point on the shores of the Ashley River, they founded Charlestown, in honor of their king. On May 23, Three Brothers arrived in Charles Town Bay without 11 or 12 passengers who had gone for water and supplies at St. Catherines Island, and had run into Indians allied with the Spanish. Of the hundreds of people who had sailed from England or Barbados, only 148 people, including three African slaves, lived to arrive at Charles Town Landing.