3-2.5

It Is Essential For Students To Know:

• At first, most of the Native Americans were friendly to the Europeans because they were enjoying the trading relationship.
• Europeans traded with the Native Americans for furs in exchange for knives, guns and other manufactured goods.
• Trade relations between the two groups worsened when they were handled unfairly by the Europeans.
• As European settlers moved west from the lowcountry into the back country they encountered more Native American tribes who had moved farther west themselves.
• As Europeans continued to encroach on the territories or hunting grounds of the Native Americans around them, conflict arose over the ideas of land ownership and land use. Native Americans believed in communal ownership of the land and believed it could not be owned while Europeans believed in individual ownership of the land and claimed it for themselves.
• The settling of the town of Beaufort was the last straw for the Yemassee nation of the southern coast. The Yemassee fought back and for a year there was much violence and bloodshed between the native nations and the European settlers of South Carolina.
• However, not all native tribes resisted the Europeans. The Cherokee sided with the English against the Yemassee and their allies. The Yemassee War ended in a truce with both sides badly wounded by the year of hardship. The Yemassee were eventually driven out of the state.
• Disease killed large numbers of the Native Americans in South Carolina after the arrival of the Europeans because the natives had no immunity to European diseases.

It Is Not Essential For Students To Know

• Students do not need to know the particular details regarding dates or battles between the Yemassee and the colonists.
• Students do not need to know such details as treaties or names of individual Native Americans.