Catawba, Cofitachiqui & Iswa

The Catawba People, The People of the River

Cofitachiqui

from a larger article by Gene Waddell (rev. 8 Dec. 2000), for complete version please visit the Catawba People Site

For more than four centuries, there has been uncertainty about who the Cofitachiqui were and where they lived. They were one of the most highly civilized tribes in the Southeastern United States in 1540, and their principal towns were somewhere near the center of South Carolina. They continued to be mentioned in travel accounts and official documents until c. 1685, when they suddenly ceased to be mentioned without any explanation.

The Most Extraordinary Building in the Southeast

The most detailed account of the Province of Cofitachiqui was written by the historian Garcilaso de la Vega (the Inca), who relied on at least two different sources for his account of the DeSoto Expedition. Garcilasco wrote that the principal town, Talomico, was located on a high bluff overlooking a large river and had about 500 houses and a funerary temple over 100 paces long and 40 wide (approximately 250 feet long and 100 feet wide). Its walls and high-pitched roof were covered with multiple layers of woven cane mats and were decorated inside and out with seashells and numerous strands of pearls. This temple was considered “the richest and most superb of all those that our Spaniards saw in La Florida” (the Southeast). A member of the expedition who had been through much of Mexico and Peru said “it was among the grandest and most wonderful of all the things that he had seen in the New World....”

The narrative prepared by Rangel, a member of the expedition, also mentioned a temple which was “very large and very tall and broad, all covered, high and low, with very excellent and beautiful mats, and placed with such fine skill, that it appeared that all the mats were only one mat. Only rarely was there a hut which might not be covered with matting.”

The buildings the expedition had seen previously in the present states of Florida and Georgia were covered with thatch and had walls of wattle-and-daub (a framework woven of wood and plastered with clay). The temple was too broad to have had a barrel vault like houses and temples built on the North Atlantic Coast and so was distinctively different from buildings both to the south and to the north of it. It probably had a hipped roof like most thatched buildings in the Southeast, but its use of mats was similar to the way bark and hide were used for walls and roofs of buildings throughout the Northeast. The materials and methods of construction for houses and for the temple are among the indications that a distinctive culture developed between the two principal cultures of the Eastern United States.

The temple was the burial place of former chiefs and their closest relations, and their corpses were inside wooden sepulchers raised on benches. Another indication of a distinctive culture is that elsewhere in the Southeast, all bodies were usually buried.

Inside the temple on either side of the entrance were six pairs of realistically carved wooden figures. The ones nearest the entrance were about 11 feet tall, and the ones farther away diminished in size.[8] All of these colossal figures were armed as warriors. Elsewhere within the temple were numerous life-sized statues with portraits of men and women. The temple also contained chests filled with so many pearls that 300 horses could not have carried all of them, and it had eight large rooms, each of which was filled with a different type of weapon.

In the late 16th Century, the English artist John White depicted a similar tomb for the chief men of a tribe on the coast of North Carolina, but it was barrel vaulted and had skeletons clothed in deerskins rather than corpses in chests. It had a life-sized, carved figure which was realistically carved. In the early 1700s, John Lawson saw a similar “Quiogozon, which is their Royal Tomb or Burial-Place of their Kings and War-Captains. This is a very large magnificent Cabin... [in] which lie all their Princes, and Great Men, that have died for several hundred Years....” This temple contained “idols” and in most respects corresponded to what the DeSoto narratives recorded about the funerary temple at Cofitachiqui, but in the Quiogozon, skeletons were cleaned and clothed in deerskins as White had shown. White also depicted large carved posts in his watercolors of the Indians of the North Carolina coast.

Numerous buildings of extraordinary size are known to have existed in South Carolina in the 17th and early 18th centuries. In 1663 William Hilton visited a large communal building at St. Helena that was about 200 feet around with walls 12 feet high. In 1666 Robert Sandford recorded a similar structure on Edisto Island, and in 1670 the first settlers found another one at Sewee. Another building of equivalent size was described in detail by Lawson, who saw it in 1701 at the Waxaw town near the Wateree River. Most or all of these buildings were round and thatched rather than rectangular and covered with mats, and they were used as houses of state, but they indicate that even the small tribes of South Carolina constructed large buildings.

Did Cofitachiqui Disappear?

Since nearly every detail of the DeSoto narratives was confirmed by later accounts, there can be no doubt that in 1540 the Spanish encountered a high level of civilization somewhere in South Carolina. In 1670 the same civilization was encountered by the English, yet soon afterwards and without any explanation, Cofitachiqui ceased to be mentioned. What disappeared was probably the name rather than the people.

Juan Pardo visited Cofitachiqui in 1566 and 1567, and his notary, Vandera, mentioned that a large number of chiefs had gathered there, indicating that it continued to be a major town. Vandera later referred to the town as “Canos, which the Indians call Canosi and, for another name, Cofetazque.” Since the Indians themselves used another name, it is likely that “Cofitachiqui” was a foreign word applied initially by DeSoto’s Indian interpreter and later adopted by other Europeans from published accounts and maps. Biedma states that Indians near Cofitachiqui “understood the interpreter,” which is not the same as saying that the interpreter could understand their language. The suffix-chiqui means house in Muskhogean. Cofa and Cofaqui must also be descriptive terms because they had previously been used to designate two towns located in Muskhogean territory in central Georgia.

The narratives refer to the principal town of the Cofitachiqui as “Talimico,” which is a Muskhogean word meaning “chief town,” but this was definitely a descriptive rather than a distinctive name. The same descriptive name Talimico was used for another major town in Muskogean territory west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Were the Catawba the Principal Part of the Cofitachiqui?

In 1670, within a few months after the first English colonists arrived at Charleston Harbor, Henry Woodward went inland to create an alliance with the Emperor of Cofitachiqui to gain the protection of his 1,000 warriors. Since the colony initially consisted of only about 140 men, Indian alliances were essential for its survival.

Two years after the Kussoe War began, the Governor and Council declared war on the Westo, the "enemy" of the Lowcountry Indians, and the province needed all the allies it could get. In 1673 the Westo were living on the Savannah River near the Fall Line, and they were rumored to be planning to invade the English settlement. On 7 October 1673 Maurice Mathews and others were instructed to go to the “Esaugh Indians” (Esaw) to seek their help in the “present warr of the Westoes,” and by 2 February 1673/4, they had returned “from Esaugh” and reported on their mission.

The earliest mention of the Esaw is in a list of tribes which Matthews himself had made in 1671 for the Earl of Shaftesbury. He started his list of all known tribes with the “St. Helena ye Southernmost,” and he continued from south to north until he ended it with the “...Esaw, [and] Cotachicach....” The Cofitachiqui lived nearest to the Esaw of all the tribes in the list.

Beginning around 1673 the English began to refer to their strongest allies as the Esaw (“people of the river”), the name used by part of the Catawba to refer to themselves. Soon afterwards, the Esaw were recognized to be less important than the main body of the Catawba, and both of these divisions of the Catawba Nation began to be referred to jointly as the Catawba. Identifying the Cofitachiqui as the Catawba fits all the known evidence. The name Cofitachiqui does disappear from the written record, but since a people with equivalent power continued to exist in the same vicinity, the Cofitachiqui must have consisted primarily of the Catawba and secondarily of the Esaw, and they probably included the Kussoe and a number of other tribes who acted together as necessary for their mutual benefit.

In 1540 the Cofitachiqui were such a powerful nation that the Indians of central Georgia were afraid even to enter their hunting grounds. The Georgia Indians had no idea where the towns of the Cofitachiqui were located. The DeSoto Expedition found the piedmont between the Altamaha River and the Santee River almost wholly without towns, and archaeological evidence has confirmed that major settlements which had previously existed on the Savannah River were deserted well before 1540. There is only one tribe known to have lived in the South Carolina piedmont that had so great a reputation for valor, and since the Catawba were feared to the north all the way to the Great Lakes, they were undoubtedly feared a much shorter distance to the south. They are the only known tribe which can be identified as the Cofitachiqui.

It was pure speculation to suppose that another tribe with so great a reputation once existed in central South Carolina. It piled speculation on top of speculation to conclude that what never existed must suddenly have disappeared.

Catawba Pottery

text & picture from: The Catawba People Web Site, please visit this site for more info.

North Carolina, Location

The first humans in North Carolina were Native Americans, the so-called Paleo-Indians of 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. They were nomads who pursued buffalo and other large game animals, some of which are now extinct. Their likely descendants were the Archaic people of about 3,000 to 10,000 years ago, who did not yet have agriculture. Agriculture, along with pottery, was introduced in the Woodland stage of culture, lasting from about 3,000 years ago into the historical period. After AD 800, the Mississippian culture, or Mound Builders, was represented in the south and west. They built large towns centered around ceremonial mounds. North Carolina's Native American population in the 1600s is estimated at about 30,000, organized into about 30 peoples, of which the most important were the Hatteras, Tuscarora, Chowanoc, Catawba, and Cherokee.

Contact between Native Americans and whites resulted occasionally in friendship but often in hostility. In either event it ultimately led to the death or displacement of most of the Native Americans. Even in the friendliest of contacts, the Europeans unwittingly spread diseases to which the Native Americans had no resistance. Deaths from measles, smallpox, and colds decimated their populations and disrupted their societies.

"North Carolina," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

South Carolina, History

In prehistory, many Native American peoples lived in South Carolina. Starting about 900 years ago the Mississippian culture, also called Mound Builders, flourished in this region. The Mississippians built great temple mounds, and some can still be seen today. Major nations in the state in 1600 were the Cherokee, of the Iroquoian language stock; the Catawba, speaking a Siouan language; and the Yamasee, speaking a Muskogean language. In 1715 the Yamasee led other peoples in the Yamasee War (1715-1716) against the English settlers. The Yamasee were defeated and driven out of South Carolina. The Cherokee began warring against the settlers about 1760 and sided with the British in the American Revolution (1775-1783). All but a few Cherokee left the state after the revolution.

The Catawba kept friendly relations with the Europeans, but by the end of the 18th century disease and tribal wars reduced them almost to nothing. About 1,400 strong, their descendants now live on a small reservation on the Catawba River. They received an award of $50 million, in settlement of treaty claims, from the Congress of the United States in 1993. The Catawba are noted for their pottery, which is unique in that it survives in an unbroken tradition from the Mississippian culture to the present.

"South Carolina," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Head-flattening

Tribes along the Columbia River to the west, who compressed the heads of their babies into a peak by means of a cone-shaped wicker headpiece.

The name Flathead has been applied also to several tribes that actually practiced head-flattening: the Chinook of Oregon and Washington, and the Catawba, Choctaw, and Waxhaw of the southern United States.

Catawba

Catawba warriors had a fearsome reputation and an appearance to match: ponytail hairstyle with a distinctive war paint pattern of one eye in a black circle, the other in a white circle and remainder of the face painted black. Coupled with their flattened foreheads, some of their enemies must have died from sheer fright.

Population

Before contact, the Catawba were probably two separate tribes: the Catawba proper and the Iswa. Together, they may have numbered as many as 10,000, but when the first British estimates were made in 1692, their population was about 5,000. During the next 70 years the Catawba absorbed remnants from other Siouan-speaking tribes in the region. Despite this, their population declined rapidly from the combination of disease, war, and alcohol. By 1728 they had 400 warriors and a population of about 1,400. They lost half of these to smallpox epidemic during 1738. A generation later (1759-60), smallpox again took half leaving a total of 400. The census of 1826 found only 110 Catawba.

Presently, about 1,200 descendants are living in the vicinity of Rock Hill, SC. Total tribal membership lists 2,600. The Catawba are recognized as a tribe by the federal government and the State of South Carolina.

Sub-Tribes

Originally composed of two separate tribes that merged as the Catawba: Catawba proper and Iswa. By 1760 the Catawba are believed to have absorbed parts of at least 20 other Siouan-speaking tribes in the region. Originally there were many villages, but few names have survived. In 1728 there were six villages, all on the Catawba River, the most northerly of which was Nauvasa. In 1781 Newton and Turkey Head were the main settlements, also on Catawba River.

From First Nations, for complete history and much more information, please visit the First Nations site