The Pee Dee people, also Pedee and Peedee, are American Indians of the Southeast

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. Historically, their population has been concentrated in the

Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

of present-day

South Carolina )''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

. In the 17th and 18th centuries, English colonists named the

Pee Dee River The Pee Dee River, also known as the Great Pee Dee River, is a river in the Carolinas of the United States. It originates in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, where its upper course, above the mouth of the Uwharrie River, is known as ...

and the

Pee Dee The Pee Dee is a region in the northeast corner of the U.S. state of South Carolina. It lies along the lower watershed of the Pee Dee River, which was named after the Pee Dee, a Native American tribe that historically inhabited the region. Hi ...

region of South Carolina for the tribe. Several organizations, including state-recognized tribes, one state-recognized group and unrecognized groups, claim descent from the Pedee.

Name

The meaning of the name ''Pedee'' is unknown.

Precontact history

The Pee Dee culture is an archaeological culture spanning 1000 to 1500 CE. It is divided into the Teal phase (1000–1200), Town Creek phase (1200–1400), and Leak phase (1400–1500). The Pee Dee were part of the

South Appalachian Mississippian culture The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building large, ear ...

that developed in the region as early as 980 CE, extending into present-day

North Carolina North Carolina () is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 28th largest and List of states and territories of the United ...

and

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...

. They participated in a widespread trade network that stretched from

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

to South Carolina, eastern

, and the mountain and

regions of North Carolina. The Pee Dee culture had developed as a distinct culture by 980 CE and thrived in the

region of present-day

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

and South Carolina during the

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

era. As an example, the Town Creek Indian Mound site in western North Carolina was occupied from about 1150 to 1400 CE. Town Creek Indian Mound in

Montgomery County, North Carolina Montgomery County is a rural county located in the southern Piedmont of the U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds gover ...

is a proto-historic Pee Dee culture site. Extensive archeological research for 50 years since 1937 at the Town Creek Indian Mound and village site in western North Carolina near the border with South Carolina has provided insights into their culture."Town Creek Indian Mound: An American Indian Legacy"
North Carolina Historic Sites, 2012, accessed 22 April 2014 The mound and village site has been designated as a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places liste ...

History

Around 1550, the Pedee migrated from the lower Pee Dee River of the

Atlantic Coastal Plain The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe a ...

to the upper Pee Dee River of the

and remained there for about a century. They displaced local hill tribes, such as the

Saponi The Saponi or Sappony are a Native American tribe historically based in the Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia.Raymond D. DeMaillie, "Tutelo and Neighboring Groups," pages 286–87. They spoke a Siouan language, related to the languages of ...

, who resettled the region when the Pedee left. Historian

Charles M. Hudson Charles Melvin Hudson Jr. (1932–2013) was an anthropologist, a professor of anthropology and history at the University of Georgia. He was a leading scholar on the history and culture of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the pr ...

believes their migration may have been an effort to avoid Spanish

slave raids Slave raiding is a military raid for the purpose of capturing people and bringing them from the raid area to serve as slaves. Once seen as a normal part of warfare, it is nowadays widely considered a crime. Slave raiding has occurred since ant ...

along South Carolina's coast. These 16th-century Pedee practiced

head flattening Artificial cranial deformation or modification, head flattening, or head binding is a form of body alteration in which the skull of a human being is deformed intentionally. It is done by distorting the normal growth of a child's skull by applyin ...

, as did the neighboring Waxhaw. In 1567, Spanish explorers encountered the village Vehidi on the Pee Dee River, believed to be a Pedee settlement. In 1600, the population of Pedee people was estimated to be 600.Swanton 97 Europeans, mostly from the British Isles, began settling in South Carolina in large numbers in the 17th and early 18th century. The English established a trading post at Euauenee or Saukey in 1716 to trade with the Pedee and

Waccamaw The Waccamaw people were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, who lived in villages along the Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers in North and South Carolina in the 18th century.Lerch 328 Language Very little remains of the Waccam ...

. The Winyaw and Algonquian-speaking

Cape Fear Indians The Cape Fear Indians were a small, coastal tribe of Native Americans who lived on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina (now Carolina Beach State Park). Name and language The autonym of the Cape Fear Indians may have been Daw-hee. Their name f ...

migrated from the Atlantic Coast up the Pee Dee River to the trading post.Rudes, Blumer, and May 310 In 1711, the

Tuscarora War The Tuscarora War was fought in North Carolina from September 10, 1711 until February 11, 1715 between the Tuscarora people and their allies on one side and European American settlers, the Yamassee, and other allies on the other. This was con ...

broke out in North Carolina,Rudes, Blumer, and May 308 and South Carolina tribes joined in the fighting. In 1712, Pedee warriors, along with the Saraw,

Saxapahaw Saxapahaw ()
from the North Carolina Collection's website at the

, Winyaw, and Cape Fear Indians, served in British Captain John Bull's company to fight alongside the British against the Tuscarora and helped defeat them. As a result, most of the Tuscarora left the area and migrated north, reaching present-day New York and Ontario to join the related

Haudenosaunee Confederacy The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

tribes. In 1715, English mapmakers recorded a Pedee village on the west band of the Pee Dee River's central course.Mooney 77 The political relationships formed between the Pedee and other tribes in the area at this time carried over into their alliances of the

Yamasee War The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee and a number of other allied Native American peoples, incl ...

. The Yamasee War of 1715–1717 resulted in major changes among the

Southeastern tribes Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, Southeastern cultures, or Southeast Indians are an ethnographic classification for Native Americans who have traditionally inhabited the area now part of the Southeastern United States and the nor ...

. Historian William James Rivers wrote in 1885 that the Pedee along with many other tribes were "utterly extirpated."Hudson (1970), 42 However, some survivors may have found refuge with the Siouan-speaking

Catawba Catawba may refer to: *Catawba people, a Native American tribe in the Carolinas *Catawba language, a language in the Catawban languages family *Catawban languages Botany *Catalpa, a genus of trees, based on the name used by the Catawba and other N ...

, who were located near the South and North Carolina border. In 1737, the Pedee tribe petitioned South Carolina for a parcel of land to live upon. They, along with their Natchez cousins were moved to a parcel provided by James Coachman in 1738. This land was in Berkeley County, along the Edisto River. In the 1740s, the Pedee, along with the Sara, Yuchi, Natchez, and Cape Fear Indians, were known as "settlement Indians," by South Carolinian English settlers. Anthropologists

James Mooney James Mooney (February 10, 1861 – December 22, 1921) was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. Known as "The Indian Man", he conducted major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as of tribes on the ...

and

John R. Swanton John Reed Swanton (February 19, 1873 – May 2, 1958) was an American anthropologist, folklorist, and linguist who worked with Native American peoples throughout the United States. Swanton achieved recognition in the fields of ethnology and et ...

both wrote that in 1744 the Natchez and Pedee attacked and killed several Catawba people, so the Catawba drove them into European settlements. Mooney wrote of the Pedee that, "In 1746 they and the Sara are mentioned as two small tribes, which had been long incorporated with the Catawba. They were restless under the connection, however, and again Governor Glen had to interfere to prevent their separation." Like neighboring tribes during this era, the Pedee owned African-American slaves. In 1751, at an intertribal conference in Albany, New York, the Pedee were recorded as being a small tribe living among European colonists. In 1752, Catawba envoys encouraged the Pedee to settle with their tribe. Governor John Glen spoke to Catawba leader King Haigler on May 29, 1755, and said South Carolina had "persuaded the Charraws, Waccamaws, and some of the Pedees to join you

he Catawba He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

" When

Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, th ...

killed Pedee and Waccamaw people in 1755, they were still living in European settlements. This 1755 mention was the second-to-last historical record of the Pedee people until the 20th century. Swanton wrote, "In 1808 White neighbors remembered when as many as 30 Pedee and Cape Fear Indians lived in their old territories," but "In 1808 the Pedee and Cape Fear tribes were represented by one half-breed woman."

Language

The Pedee language was extinct by the 19th century. No words from the language were recorded, but linguists suspect the language belonged to the

Catawban languages The Catawban, or Eastern Siouan, languages form a small language family in east North America. The Catawban family is a branch of the larger Siouan a.k.a. Siouan–Catawban family. Family division The Catawban family consists of two languages: ...

, or Eastern Siouan language branch of the Siouan language family. Pedee may have been dialect of the

Catawba language Catawba () is one of two Eastern Siouan languages of the eastern US, which together with the Western Siouan languages formed the Siouan language family. The last native, fluent speaker of Catawba was Missouri Brindle' The Catawba tribe is now w ...

, which is also extinct.

State-recognized entities

The State of South Carolina has officially acknowledged two Pee Dee state-recognized tribes and one state-recognized group. The state-recognized tribes are: * Pee Dee Indian Nation of Upper South Carolina, Little Rock, South Carolina (state-recognized in 2005), 532 members (2008), living primarily in

Dillon Dillon may refer to: People *Dillon (surname) * Dillon (given name) * Dillon (singer) (born 1988), Brazilian singer * Viscount Dillon, a title in the Peerage of Ireland Places Canada *Dillon, Saskatchewan United States *Dillon Beach, Californ ...

and

Marlboro Marlboro (, ) is an American brand of cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by Philip Morris USA (a branch of Altria) within the United States and by Philip Morris International (now separate from Altria) outside the US. The largest Mar ...

counties;Kevin Smetana
"Pee Dee Indian nation might get federal recognition"
''SC Now Morning News,'' 21 June 2008 (accessed 12 August 2016). * Pee Dee Indian Tribe of South Carolina,

McColl, South Carolina McColl is a town in Marlboro County, South Carolina, United States. It lies in the state's Pee Dee region, from the North Carolina border. The population was 2,174 at the 2010 census. McColl is the home of the Pee Dee Indian Tribe. They are a ...

(recognized in 2006). The one state-recognized group is: * Pee Dee Indian Tribe of Beaver Creek,

Neeses, South Carolina Neeses is a town in Orangeburg County, South Carolina, Orangeburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 374 at the 2010 census. Geography Neeses is located at (33.535160, -81.125372). According to the United States Census Bur ...

(recognized in 2007).

References

External links

Pee Dee Indian Tribe of South Carolina
state-recognized

Native American Indian languages
3-D Model of Pee Dee culture ceramic pot
Town Creek site, 1150–1400 CE, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill {{DEFAULTSORT:Pee Dee People Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands Native American history of North Carolina Native American history of South Carolina Native American tribes in South Carolina South Appalachian Mississippian culture State-recognized tribes in the United States Unattested languages of North America