The People Before Frederica

A Map of the Colony of Georgia in 1741

NPS Archives

The People Before Frederica on Saint Simons Island

Long before James Oglethorpe arrived in the new colony of Georgia in 1733, there were people who lived throughout coastal Georgia. The American Indians that Oglethorpe met, the Yamacraw, descended from people from over 20,000 years ago. These first people travelled from Asia to North America on the Bering Land Bridge and then migrated across the Americas. Archeologists found evidence of humans in the southeast from over 10,000 years ago by discovering tools, weapons, and even a human skeleton near Russel Cave National Monument, in Alabama. Over the next thousand years, the people in the Southeast developed permanent villages that cultivated crops such as corn, squash, pumpkins, and beans. As time went on these people relied more on agriculture production, which gave them more time to develop skills, arts, and practice religion.

In present day Georgia, the Hopewell people lived across the state starting in 300 BCE to about 600 ACE. These people built large mounds throughout North America, mostly along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. After this period, Mississippian people who thrived across North America form Oklahoma, to the Great Lakes, and down into Florida. The Mississippians also built mounds and cities that had over 40,000 people. The groups of people that made up the Mississippian culture were connected through trade routes between different cities. The cities prospered because of agricultural practices which support large groups of people. Unfortunately, in coastal Georgia and across the continent, the arrival of Europeans started the greatest decimation of people in the world.

When Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and English people arrived in the Americans in the late 1400s and early 1500s, it forever changed the landscape of the world. These European nations were looking for more land, different trades routes, resources, and people to further develop their own nations. Following their arrival, the Mississippian culture deteriorated rapidly. The powerful chiefdoms, which scattered throughout the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee Rivers, were ending. The population of North America was estimated to be 25 million people before the arrival of Europeans in the late 1400s. By the late 1500s, over ninety percent of those people were dead. Disease killed most people, but warfare within chiefdoms, and fighting against Europeans caused this terrible loss of life. The several empires throughout the continent were virtually wiped out. In present day Georgia, the Mississippian people were gone. In their aftermath, similar language speaking individuals banded together to create new groups such as the Guale and Timucuan in coastal Georgia.

 

James Oglethorpe meets with the Creek People

NPS Archives

The need for free labor by the Europeans created a slave trade system in the Americas. English traders gave groups of American Indians guns and ammunition and demanded to be repaid with enslaved people. These new slave raiders took thousands of people and sold them to Dutch, French, English, and Spanish traders, who then brought them to plantations in the Caribbean, South Carolina, and Virginia. In the Southeast, the Westos were the largest American Indian slave raiding group and from 1679 to the earlier 1700s, the Westos rained terror down on other groups. Enslaving thousands of people, the Westos violence caused groups of people to unite and form new tribes throughout Georgia. The Creek, Choctaw, Cherokees, and Yamasee formed together in inland Georgia and South Carolina and allied with the British. The Guale, Timucuan, and Apalachee settled along coastal Georgia and Florida, but allied with the Spanish.

In the 1600s, The British allied groups quickly started to enslave and attack the coastal Georgia tribes who were living near Spanish missions. On Saint Simons Island, there were two Spanish Missions. On land that would eventually become Fort Frederica, a Guale village was settled. The residents of the Guale village became allies with the Spanish through trade and conversion to the Catholic faith. By mid-1600s however, the island was targeted by British colonists and their American Indian allies to enslave the Guale village and destroy Spanish Missons along the Georgia coast. In 1683, the village and missions were abandoned. The Spanish fled South to Florida and the villagers either willingly followed the Spanish or they were forcibly removed.

By the early 1700s, the Spanish allied American Indians were decimated, causing groups such as the Timucuan and the Guale to cease to exist. In 1715, war broke out between the Yamasee and the British in South Carolina over disputes of the slave trade. After two bloody years, South Carolina lost seven percent of its population, the Yamasee retreated to Florida where they allied with the Spanish. The Creek, who fought against the Yamasee during the war, continued their positive relationship with the British and fought against Spanish forces over the next forty years. The Yamacraw, the group of American Indians that Oglethorpe met in Savannah, were a mix of Creek and Yamasee people. However, unlike the rest of the Creek people, they refused to fight against the Spanish and chose to be peaceful. The Yamacraw became the treaty negotiators between James Oglethorpe and the Creek which allowed for the peaceful creation of Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island in February, 1736.