When the English founded Charles Town in 1670, they built it on land that belonged to the Cusabo, a loose group of coastal peoples whose country ran from roughly Charleston to the Savannah River. The names that survive in the record include the Etiwan (also spelled Ittiwan), Kussoe (Cusso), Stono, Edisto, Wando, Kiawah, Ashepoo, Combahee, Wappoo and Bohicket. Several of those names are still on the map. Edisto, Stono, Wando and Kiawah are rivers, islands and creeks you can drive to today.
What the record covers, and what it does not
The written record on the Cusabo was made by Spanish and English outsiders, most of it about trade, land and war. It says little about how these peoples understood their own world. It says less still about the inland country around present-day St. George, which was thinly documented by anyone in the 1600s. Anything this site says about who lived at a specific spot in the county should be read with that gap in mind.
Dates that are on the record
1526: Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon’s Spanish expedition touched this coast and recorded some native names.
1670: The English settled Charles Town on Cusabo land.
October 1671: The colony declared war on the Kussoe, who went into hiding. In 1674 the colony fought the Stono as well. Land cessions followed. The Edisto-Natchez Kusso Tribe says its ancestors the Kusso sold about 12,000 acres to the colonial government in 1675.
1679 to 1680: The colony and its Native allies destroyed the Westo, an Iroquoian-speaking people who had been raiding other Native communities for captives. Smaller groups, the Etiwan among them, had sought safety among the colonists from the Westo.
Around 1700: Many Cusabo lived as what the colony called Settlement Indians, keeping their own villages and identities while serving the colony. They hunted, were paid for killing predators, and were rewarded for capturing runaway enslaved Africans. That last part is uncomfortable, and it belongs in the record.
Early 1715: A colonial census counted the Cusabo in five villages, 95 men and 200 women and children, and the Etiwan in one village, 80 men and 160 women and children. The Yamasee War began that April. The Etiwan first sided with the colony, then switched sides in July.
1724 and 1751: The Etiwan asked the colony for land of their own in 1724. A 1751 proclamation by Governor Glen is the last historical mention of them as a nation.
The Etiwan and the Summerville connection
The Etiwan are the Cusabo group closest to today’s Dorchester County. They lived near present-day Goose Creek, and the record sometimes calls them the Summerville Indians. A missionary named Francis Le Jau wrote in 1710 that their neighbors called their nation Ittiwan, and in 1712 he described an Etiwan ceremony. Today the Wassamasaw Tribe of Varnertown Indians, who are recognized by South Carolina, claim descent from the Etiwan and others.
Are they gone?
Some reference works list the Cusabo as extinct as a tribal group. That describes the end of the colonial paper trail, not the end of the people. After the Yamasee War many survivors joined the Catawba or the Muscogee, and families in the Lowcountry today trace their descent to these peoples. Read the page on the Edisto-Natchez Kusso Tribe for one of them.
Sources: Cusabo (Wikipedia); Ittiwan people (Wikipedia); Charleston City Paper, May 24, 2024.