The Catawba Project

Catawba potters traveled from New Town to build and sell their wares on plantationsand in towns throughout South Carolina. This itinerant trade supplied much neededincome for Catawba families, and regularly renewed the Catawbas’ political ties withCarolina’s elites.“… it was the custom of the CatawbaIndians … to come down, at certainseasons, from their far homes in theinterior, to the seaboard, bringing toCharleston a little stock of earthenpots and pans … which they barteredin the city ….They did not, however, bring theirpots and pans from the nation, butdescending to the Lowcountry emptyhanded, in groups or families, theysquatted down on the rich clay landsalong the Edisto, … there establishedthemselves in a temporary abidingplace, until their simple potteries hadyielded them a sufficient supply ofwares with which to throw themselvesinto the market.”William Gilmore Simms, 1841Rachael BrownCatawba potter,1907