The greater part of East Florida appears to have been originally in possession of the Yemasees—a powerful people, who not only occupied this province, but spread themselves over Georgia, and into the limits of South Carolina, which on its first demarcation was bounded on the South by the Altamaha. Some of the tribes resided within the present limits of that State, in and about Beaufort and Savannah River, and also the Sea Islands. Bartram relates that these people, after a hardy contest, and many bloody defeats, were nearly exterminated by their ancient enemies the Creeks, who had a tradition, that a beautiful race of Indians, whose women they called Daughters of the Sun, resided amidst the recesses of the great Oakefanokee wilderness, where they enjoyed perpetual felicity, in ever blooming islands, inaccessible to human approach.
Bartram with probability supposes, that this fable took its rise from a fugitive remnant of the Yemasees, who found a refuge in this swamp, and were perhaps, after a lapse of years, accidentally seen by some of the hunters of the Creek nation.
There is frequent mention, in the early colonial history of South Carolina of wars between the first settlers and the Yemasees, the latter having been excited to attack the Colony by the Spanish authorities in St. Augustine.
A formidable war was kindled by these people, which would have proved destructive to the infant settlement of Carolina, had not timely intimation of the danger been obtained by means of one of the outsettlers to whom Sanute, a chief of the hostile Indians, from a feeling of friendship, gave notice of the impending attack. On this occasion the Indians were defeated by Gov. Grant, and driven out of the province. Dr. Ramsay mentions that the Yemasees retired into Florida, to which country they seem to have been subsequently restricted by the increasing power of the whites, and by the Creeks. No further mention of them occurs, until the Seminoles came into notice, by whom they were conquered, and nearly exterminated, in 1721, in the manner mentioned by Bartram. When in the year 1715, the Yemasees were driven within the limits of Florida, they became slaves to the Seminoles. Another account states, that the Yemasees left St. Augustine in a body, in 1722; or rather were expelled by the Spaniards, who essayed in vain to compel them to labours which were regarded as degrading drudgeries by the warriors of Yemasee.
The Yemasees were remarkably black people, and the Ocklewahaw tribe, who are of a deeper shade than the Seminoles, are descendants of the conquered race. The chief of the Ocklewahaws, Yaha Hadgo, who was killed by General Shelton in the campaign of ’36, was very dark; but generally, the Seminole’s complexion is like that of the Creeks.
Under King Payne, grandfather of Micconope, (the present Chief) the Seminoles invaded and achieved the conquest of the territories they lately occupied. He lived to near 100 years of age, and married a Yemasee woman, his slave, by whom he had the late chief Payne, who bore, in the darkness of his complexion, a proof of his Yemasee descent.
The Indians were formerly very numerous in Florida, perhaps as much so as in Mexico. They are now reduced to comparatively small bands, in few villages.
