Sewee, A small
tribe, supposedly Siouan, formerly living in east South Carolina.
According to Rivers (Hist. So. Car., 36, 1856) they occupied the lower
part of Santee river and the coast westward to the divide of Ashley river,
about the present Monks Corner, Berkeley county, where they adjoined the
Etiwaw. Nothing is known of the language, but judging by their alliances
and their final incorporation with the
Catawba they are assumed to have been
Siouan. Lawson, who met them in 1701, when they were living at the
mouth of Santee river, states that they had been a
large tribe, but had been wasted by alcohol and smallpox, which disease
was commonly fatal because the afflicted plunged into cold water to
alleviate the fever. At Sewer bay he found a deserted village,
Avendaughbough, which may have been one of their towns. Lawson says that
they undertook to send a fleet of canoes to England in charge of most of
their able-bodied men, for the purpose of trade; a storm swamped most of
the canoes, and the survivors were rescued by an English ship and sold as
slaves in the West Indies. In 1715 there remained but one village of 57
souls. The Yamasee war of that year probably put an end to their separate
existence as a tribe, forcing the survivors to join the Catawba. An
anonymous old chronicle published by Rivers (Hist. So. Car., 38, 1874)
states that they belonged to the Cusabo tribes. Consult
Mooney, Siouan Tribes of the East, Bull. B. A. E., 1894.
