The Hernando de Soto expedition of 1540…

February 1715 CE

The Hernando de Soto expedition of 1540 had traveled into Yamasee territory, including the village of Altamaha.

Spanish explorers in 1570 had established missions in Yamasee territory.

The Yamasee were later included in the missions of the Guale province.

Starting in 1675, the Yamasee are mentioned regularly on Spanish mission census records of the missionary provinces of Guale (central Georgia coast) and Mocama (present-day southeastern Georgia and northeastern Florida).

The Yamasee usually do not convert to Christianity and remain somewhat separated from the Christian natives of Spanish Florida.

While often described as a tribe, the Yamasee are an amalgamation of the remnants of earlier tribes and chiefdoms, such as the Guale and groups originating in the provinces of Tama and Ocute in interior Georgia (Worth 1993:40–45).

The Yamasee had emerged during the seventeenth century in the contested frontier between South Carolina and Spanish Florida.

At first allied with the Spanish, pirate attacks on the Spanish missions in 1680 had forced the Yamasee to migrate again.

Some had moved to Florida.

Others had returned to the Savannah River lands, safer after the destruction of the Westo.

Spaniards had attempted in 1687 to send Yamasees to the West Indies as slaves, so the tribe had revolted against the Spanish missions and their native allies, and the tribe had moved into the British colony of the Province of South Carolina, establishing several villages, Pocotaligo, Tolemato, and Topiqui, in Beaufort County, and had soon become South Carolina's most important native ally.

The Yamasee and the Carolinian colonists have for years conducted slave raids upon Spanish-allied natives and attacked St. Augustine, Florida.

A 1715 census conducted by John Barnwell counts twelve hundred and twenty Yamasee living in ten villages in near Port Royal, South Carolina.

The Yamasee have long profited from their relation with the British, but by 1715 find it difficult to obtain the two trade items most desired by the British—deerskins and enslaved natives.

In fact, some historians have suggested that the census taken by the British the same year had fueled Yamasee fears of enslavement.

With the deerskin trade booming over an ever-larger region, deer have become rare in Yamasee territory.

Slave-raiding opportunities are limited after the Tuscarora War.

The Yamasee have become increasingly indebted to the British traders, who supply them with trade goods on credit.

Rice plantations had begun to thrive in South Carolina by 1715, and much of the accessible land good for rice has been taken up.

The Yamasee had been granted a large land reserve on the southern borders of South Carolina, and settlers have begun to covet their land, which they deem ideal for rice plantations.

Historians have not determined if the Yamasee were leaders in fomenting native unrest and plans for war.

The Ochese Creeks (later known as the Lower Creeks) may have been more instrumental in gaining support for war.

Each of the native tribes that joins in the war has its own reasons, as complicated and deeply rooted in the past as the Yamasee's.

Although the tribes do not act in carefully planned coordination, the unrest increases, and intertribal communication begins about the possibility of war.

Rumors of growing native support for war is by early 1715 troubling enough that some friendly natives warn colonists of the danger.

They suggest the Ochese Creek are the instigators.