3-2.4

It Is Essential For Students To Know:

• Students need to know that there are Native American tribes of the Eastern Woodland region who lived in South Carolina and that they were different from one another in language. However their cultures and government were similar.
• Culture depended on the geographic area in which they lived.
• Cherokee culture involved living off the mountainous land of the Blue Ridge Mountain region and the hilly western Piedmont. The Cherokee settled near rivers and the Cherokee nation was comprised of many villages that were loosely united with each other. Cherokee traveled from village to village in large dugout canoes. They were hunters/gatherers, fishermen and farmers. They lived in longhouses during the summer and wattle and daub houses in the winter. The Cherokee were powerful and thought of themselves as “the real people.” Their villages were run by councils where different leaders made decisions affecting the people. The leaders were elected and the Cherokee had a form of a constitution. Cherokee women sat on the village councils and had a significant voice in whether or not the tribe went to war. The Cherokee were traders and had a well traveled trail that ran from the mountains to the Atlantic Ocean.
• The Catawba lived off the land of the Piedmont. This Native American group were hunters and farmers. The Catawba traveled the rivers in dugout canoes and were known as “River People". these people were powerful in their part of the state, near where Rock Hill is today. The Catawba lived in wigwams and were also governed by councils. The Catawba were famous for their pottery and were more peaceful than many Native Americans of that time in South Carolina.
• The Yemassee lived in the coastal zone on the southern coast of South Carolina, near the Georgia border. This Native American group lived in wigwams close to the coast in the summer and farther inland in wattle and daub houses along rivers during the winter. The Yemassee hunted, fished, farmed, and gathered clams and oysters.

It Is Not Essential For Students To Know

• Students do not need to know all of the other Native American groups in South Carolina.
• While the origin tales are popular in the reading texts, the legends and lore of the Native Americans of South Carolina are not essential information in the social studies classroom.