Enslaved Native Americans and the Making of Colonial South Carolina

In 1708, the governor of South Carolina responded to a request from London to describe the population of the colony. This response included an often-overlooked segment of the population: Native Americans, who made up one-fourth of all enslaved people in the colony. Yet it was not long before these descriptions of enslaved Native people all but disappeared from the archive.

In Enslaved Native Americans and the Making of Colonial South Carolina, D. Andrew Johnson argues that Native people were crucial to the development of South Carolina’s economy and culture. By meticulously scouring documentary sources and creating a database of over 15,000 mentions of enslaved people, Johnson uses a uniquely interdisciplinary approach to reconsider the history of South Carolina and center the enslaved Native people who were forced to live and work on its plantations. Johnson also employs spatial analysis and examines archaeological evidence to study Native slavery in a plantation context.

Although much of their impact is absent from the historical record, Native people’s influence persisted: in the specific technologies they brought to the plantations where they were enslaved; in the development of Creole culture; and in the wealth and power of the founders and early leaders of the colony. This book is an important corrective to our understanding of the colonization and development of South Carolina. By focusing on the Native minority of the enslaved population, Johnson recasts the colonial history of America, uncovering the importance of enslaved Native people to the colonial project and the complex historical connections between race and slavery.