Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

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Proprietary Rule in South Carolina
In 1713, the Yamassees and other South Carolina Indians had helped
North Carolina annihilate the Tuscaroras. Yet, only two years later, the
Yamassee and Creek Indians launched a general attack on the South Carolina
settlements. What had turned erstwhile faithful allies into enemies ? Partly, it
was the old story of settler encroachment on Indian land. But even more
important in the case of the Yamassee war were the abuses against the Indians
by the white traders. The traders systematically engaged in theft, fraud, and
illegal enslavement of free Indians. They expropriated the Indians' farm animals
and crops and often paid much of the account in violence rather than
acceptable commodities. Often they held an entire Indian town collectively
liable for a private Indian's debt.
These accumulating grievances prompted the Yamassees, Creeks, and their
allies to launch an attack on the white settlements in South Carolina. Contemporary
opinion, quick to scent alleged foreign conspiracy, accused the Spaniards
at St. Augustine and the French on the Mississippi of inciting the Indians
to attack, but these powers played only the secondary role of selling
ammunition to or purchasing plunder from the Indians. The Indian grievances
were real and so was their opposition to the regime.
The Yamassee war was launched in the spring of 1715, and might have
succeeded in driving the English into the sea. Governor Charles Craven used
the occasion to become virtual dictator of the colony—prohibiting emigration,
conscripting ships and supplies, drafting Negro slaves into the army along
with their masters, and mobilizing the militia. But the Indians would have
been successful had not the whites induced the powerful Cherokees to remain
aloof, and indeed to aid the English. The Yamassees were ejected from the
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