Native American Life - Dataw Historic Foundation

Lower Coast American Indians

Bill — Tue, 31 May 2022 16:00:49 +0000

Like all of the United States, the Lowcountry was inhabited by indigenous peoples when Bonum Sams II (1663 ~ 1743) and John Barnwell (1771 - 1724) immigrated here in 1681 and 1701, respectively. Long before William Sams (1747 - 1798) bought Datha Island in 1783, the conflicts between Europeans and American Indians had played out here in the Lowcountry. The American Indians were gone from this corner of South Carolina. It may surprise you to know that nineteen American Indian tribes lived in our area at one time. We are reminded of the American Indians by the river/estuary names even today.

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Dataw Island on Datha Island

Bill — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 11:00:27 +0000

In response to an article about Northern Datha Island, a resident who has lived here thirty years (!) commented, "I have always questioned why ALCOA did not call the Island by its real name: Datha?"
Researching this question took me on a fascinating journey from a Muskogean Indian Chief to the King of Spain to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. In the end, I can provide this answer; Dataw Island is the name of our development on a sea island in South Carolina called Datha Island.

What's left for this journey is to explain why our sea island is called Datha Island and why our development is called Dataw Island.

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Northern Datha Island

Bill — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 20:17:11 +0000

This week I focus on the history of the north half of our island. Datha Island has been inhabited continually from the Late Archaic period (3,000 - 1,000 B.C.) up to the present. I'll address the prehistoric periods, the Lewis Reeve Sams ownership years, and farming after the Civil War. I am indebted to archaeologist Larry Lepionka and his team for their work back in 1987-1988 to investigate and document the historic sites on Dataw Island. The island would be covered in a forest if left to nature. This is one factor that distinguishes the northern from the southern half of Datha Island. The north half was plowed and cultivated continuously from the mid-1700s to 1960; the southern half was not. The northern half is also where the preponderance of evidence was found for Native American habitation as far back as 3000 B.C. Therefore, where the Native Americans once lived was also the area most disturbed by farming in the 19th and 20th centuries. Kudos go to Lepionka and other archeologists for rediscovering their presence thousands of years before. I'll explore middens, and then I'll show you Domino.

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THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF DATAW ISLAND – CONCLUSIONS

Bill — Sat, 19 Oct 2019 02:53:45 +0000

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF DATAW ISLAND ARCHITECTURAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT THE SAMS PLANTATION COMPLEX This report documents architectural and archaeological data recovery that has been conducted at five historic…

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