Sewee
|
FOUR
DIRECTIONS INSTITUTE
Sewee |
| Ethnie: | SEWEE |
| Language: | Catawba |
| Family: | Southeastern Siouan |
| Stock: | Siouan Proper |
| Phylum: | Siouan |
| Macro-Culture: | Eastern Woodlands |
| Speakers | None |
| The Sewee were a sedentary hunter/ farmer tribe. The eastern Siouans fissioned from the greater Siouan culture about 1,000 B. C. and crossed the Appalachians displacing the previous inhabitants. The Sewee lived along the lower course of the Santee River and southwest along the coast to about present Charleston, South Carolina. |
| They developed a theoretically ingenious enterprise which would eliminate the British middlemen in fur trade. They constructed large ocean going canoes with mat sails an set out for Europe. The experiment unfortunately killed nearly every able bodied male in the tribe. |
| Aboriginal Locations: Subdivisions (Villages) |
| SC (1) |
|
| Year | History |
| 1521 | A Sewee carried away by Spanish |
| 1609 | Tribe mentioned by Captain Ecija |
| 1670 | May have been first Indians met by English colonists, provided Whites with corn, assisted them against Spaniards, decimated by smallpox, alcoholism rampant |
| 1701 | Visited by Lawson; had just lost a fleet of canoes attempting to sail to England for purposes of fur trade, canoes swamped in a storm, survivors picked up by a British ship and enslaved |
| 1715 | Reduced to one village in Yamasee War, ultimately joined Catawba after temporary fusions with the Santee and/or Cheraw |
| Year | Total SC Pop. | Source | |
| 1600 | 800 | Mooney estimate | |
| 1700 | 50 | NAHDB calculation | |
| 1715 | 57 | Indian census | |
| 1800 | 0 | NAHDB calculation | |
| 1900 | 0 | NAHDB calculation | |
| 2000 | 0 | NAHDB calculation |
| Other speakers of the same language: |
| Catawba, Cheraw, Congaree, Santee, Wateree, Waxhaw, Woccon |
| Sewee Sites: |
| Catawba Language http://www.angelfire.com/az2/catawba/ |
| Catawba Language http://www.native-languages.org/catawba.htm |
| Catawba Language http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_language.asp?code=CHC |
| Catawba Language Department http://www.ccppcrafts.com/language/ |
| Catawba Linguistic Lineage http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_lang_family.asp?code=CHC |
| Indian Trader John Lawson's Journal http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6379 |
| Sewee http://www.sciway.net/hist/indians/sewee.html |
| Sewee Indian Shell Mounds http://www.charlestontours.net/tours/tourDetail.cfm/tid/5136 |
| Sewee Indian Tribe History http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/siouan/seweehist.htm |
Last updated 10/11/05 Copyright © 2005 by Four Directions Press