Santee. A
tribe, probably Siouan, formerly
residing on middle Santee river, S. C., where Lawson in 1700 found their
plantations extending for many miles. One of their villages was called
Hickerau. While friendly to the white people, they were at war with the
coast tribes. According to Rivers (Hist. S. C., 94, 1874), they had two
villages with 43 warriors in 1715, and were then settled 70 miles north of
Charleston. Bartram (Tray., 54, 1791) tells us that in 1715 they sided
with the Yamasee against the British, and that they were attacked and
reduced by the Creeks, who were
allies of the British. It appears from South Carolina colonial documents
that the Santee and Congeree were cut off
by the "Itwans and Cossabos," coast tribes in the English interest,' and
the prisoners sold as slaves in the West Indies in 1716. Those that
escaped were probably incorporated with the
Catawba. Lawson states that their
chief was an absolute ruler with power of life and death over his tribe,
an instance of despotism very rare among Indians. Their distinguished dead
were buried on the tops of mounds, built low or high according to the rank
of the deceased, with ridge roofs supported by poles over the graves to
shelter them from the weather. On these poles were hung rattles, feathers,
and other offerings from the relatives of the deceased. The corpse of an
ordinary person was carefully dressed, wrapped in bark, and exposed on a
platform for several days, during which time one of his nearest kinsmen,
with face blackened in token of grief, stood guard near the spot and,
chanted a mournful eulogy of the dead. The ground
around the platform was kept carefully swept, and all the dead man's
belongings gun, bow, and feather robes-were placed near by. As soon as the
flesh had softened it was stripped from the bones and burned, and the
bones themselves were
cleaned, the skull being wrapped separately in a cloth woven of opossum
hair.
The bones were then put into a box, from which they were taken out
annually to
be again cleaned and oiled. In this way some families had in their
possession the
bones of their ancestors for several generations. Places where warriors
had been killed were sometimes distinguished by piles of stones or sticks,
to which every passing Indian added another.
After the manner of the
Cherokee and other Southern tribes
the Santee kept corn in storehouses raised on posts and plastered with
clay. They made beautiful feather robes and wove cloth and sashes of hair.
Consult Lawson, Hist. Carolina, repr.
1860; Mooney, Siouan Tribes of the East, 80, 1894. J. M. Santee.-Lawson
(1700), Hist. Carolina, 34, 1860.
