Pee Dee (tribe)

'Italic text'The Pee Dee tribe (also spelled Pedee and Peedee"') are a nation of Native Americans of the southeast United States. The Pee Dee River and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina were named for the nation.

History

The history of the Pee Dee is not well known. Anthropologist Charles Hudson describes the prehistoric and protohistoric Pee Dee as a "southern chiefdom" of the southeastern Mississippian type. [cite book |last= Hudson |first= Charles M. |title= The Catawba Nation |year= 1970 |publisher= University of Georgia Press |pages= 16]

Around 1550 A.D. the Pee Dee migrated from the lower Pee Dee River of the Atlantic Coastal Plain to the upper Pee Dee River of the Piedmont, where they remained for about a century. [Hudson (1970), pp. 16-17] The Yamasee War of 1715-1717 caused major changes among the southeastern tribes. By some accounts the Pee Dee, along with many other tribes, were "utterly extirpated". But at least some of the survivors found refuge with the Catawba. [Hudson (1970), pg. 42] Other survivors either remained along the lower Pee Dee River or returned in the years following the Yamasee War. South Carolina referred to Indians living within the colony's settled areas as "Settlement Indians", and a 1740s list of such tribes included the Pee Dee. Additionally, in 1752 the Catawba asked South Carolina to encourage the Pee Dee "Settlement Indians" to move north and join the Catawba. [Hudson (1970), pp. 47-48] During the Revolutionary War, a company of Pee Dee men fought for the United States under Francis Marion. Their company was known as the Raccoon Company. [cite book |last= O'Kelley |first= Patrick |title= Nothing But Blood and Slaughter Military Operations and Order of Battle of the Revolutionary War in the Carolinas 1771-1779 |year= 2004 |publisher= Book Locker |pages= 54]

The Pee Dee tribe received formal recognition by the state of South Carolina in the spring of 2005, after application by remnants of the historic tribe.Fact|date=July 2007 The descendants of the historic tribe are currently split into several "different tribes with members living mostly in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. These tribes include the Pee Dee Indian Nation of Beaver Creek (South Carolina state recognized in 2007), the Pee Dee Nation of Upper South Carolina (South Carolina state recognized in 2005), and the Pee Dee Indian Tribe of South Carolina (South Carolina state recognized in 2006). [http://www.sciway.net/hist/indians/peedee.html] No branch of the Pee Dee tribe is recognized by the United States Federal government. The only tribe in South Carolina that has regained United States federal recognition is the closely-related Catawba tribe.

Language

Little is known about what kind of language the historic Pee Dee spoke. Based on a theory proposed by James Mooney in his 1894 "Siouan Tribes of the East", and reinforced by John R. Swanton in his 1936 essay "Early History of the Eastern Siouan Tribes", the Pee Dee are often said to have spoken a Siouan language, specifically an "Eastern" or "Southeastern" Siouan language. However, Mooney's theory had no linguistic evidence and only very tenuous ethnohistoric evidence to back it up. [Hudson (1970), pp. 6-8]

ee also

Town Creek Indian Mound

References

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