24 HISTORY IslandVibesIOP.com ow many of us, as children, dressed for a Thanksgiving play in elementary school, adorned in either Pilgrim or Native American costumes? We learned that the Native Americans in Plymouth, Massachusetts taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn and helped them survive their first winter in the New World. After the first successful crop was harvested, they supposedly all sat down together for the first Thanksgiving dinner. The story has been told – and performed – by generations of American children. How much of the story is fact and how much is fable is beside the point. The takeaway was that the help from the indigenous people was crucial to the survival of the new residents to America. So what about in our area? Did the Europeans who arrived here five decades later sit down for a feast with the native people on our coast? In short, the answer is no, at least not in the traditional sense. “Island People” The first Europeans to arrive in South Carolina were Spanish explorers in search of gold. They landed near present-day Georgetown in 1521, a century before the Pilgrims came to the New World. The indigenous people were trusting of the newcomers, as they had never seen ships nor beards like those worn by the travelers and viewed them as God-like. But the Spanish explorers took advantage of the natives’ adoration, welcoming many of the tribesmen and women onboard and then departing to the Caribbean with the trusting passengers to sell them into slavery there. The various coastal tribes of South Carolina were collectively referred to by Europeans as Cusabo, or “island people.” But it was the Sewee tribe who inhabited the land stretching from the Santee to Cooper rivers and the sea islands on the coast. In what is now Mount Pleasant, they lived in small villages from Awendaw southward to Mockand (now a part of Boone Hall Plantation), but spent much of each year on Dewees Island and the Isle of Palms. The reason? Rather than hauling their catch from the sea back to their villages, the Sewee simply spent summers on the islands, taking advantage of the sea breezes and avoiding the plague of mosquitoes that infested the woodlands several miles inland. Sewee (Shee-a-wee) When the first English H Photo Courtesy of Leigh Handel Jones The Shell Ring Boardwalk Trail in Awendaw passes a shell mound or midden, a gathering place used by the Sewee people for centuries A Lowcountry Thanksgiving Sewee Indians: Early settlers of IOP By Mary Coy
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