Giving Thanks for Native American Food in 1670 Charleston

Thanksgiving, an American holiday rooted in harvest celebrations, acknowledges the bounty of food so many of us take for granted. This tradition in South Carolina recalls the meals shared by English adventurers who landed at Albemarle Point in 1670. They arrived with modest supplies of perishable provisions and planned to sow fresh crops immediately, but a series of misfortunes quickly eroded their food security. The survival of the infant colony depended on contributions from hospitable Native Americans who sustained the hungry immigrants during a season of need.

Some years ago, way back in Episode No. 41, I talked briefly about the concept of thanksgiving, an ancient tradition practiced in diverse cultures. The general theme, from Mesoamerica to Asia and many points between, is the expression of gratitude to some invisible spirit for another year of survival. The culture of the Indigenous people of early South Carolina probably included rituals of thanks giving, but we have no record of it today. Our modern American holiday, celebrated on the third Thursday of November since 1941, evolved over numerous generations from a Protestant Christian tradition rooted in seventeenth-century England. Modern archives contain no record of South Carolina’s first thanksgiving, in the modern sense, but the English settlers who sailed from the River Thames in 1669 and anchored in the Ashley River in 1670 were certainly grateful for their survival. In fact, if we look closely at the few extant documents from that pioneering year, we can discern an interesting and largely forgotten narrative about poor food security at the founding of Charleston.

Although the English colony called Carolina was formally established in 1663, several years passed before the creation of the first permanent settlement. The eight affluent Lords Proprietors who claimed ownership of the colony encouraged Barbadian adventurers in the mid-1660s to explore and settle lands to the south of Virginia, but the proprietors did not apply their own funds to sponsor a settlement campaign until 1669. In April of that year, the frugal lords agreed to contribute £500 sterling each to fund the purchase of several vessels to carry men, women, and necessary supplies across the Atlantic to North America.[1]

The settlement campaign of 1669 was not a voyage into the unknown, but it was still a risky proposition. The Spanish government objected to the very idea of Carolina because the King of Spain had long claimed the land in question as the northern half of La Florida. Spanish colonists based in St. Augustine harassed every English attempt to explore and settle the Carolina coastline during the 1660s, and were likely to threaten those planning to break ground in 1670. The agents responsible for recruiting settlers also possessed limited information about the climate, soil, and indigenous inhabitants of the remote region. Because their proposed destination at Port Royal was four hundred nautical miles south of Virginia and eight hundred miles east of Bermuda, the volunteer colonists needed to be as self-sufficient as possible from the moment they stepped ashore in Carolina.

During the summer of 1669, proprietary agents purchased three vessels of graduated sizes—the robust ship Carolina and the smaller Port Royal as well as a “shallop” or sloop called the Albemarle—into which they loaded many tons of supplies. Anxiety about Spanish and possibly Native American hostility inspired outfitters to stow a large cache of muskets, gunpowder, swords, sharpened pike heads, and body armor, but that heavy materiel largely represented a defensive contingency. Food and tools for cultivation, on the other hand, represented the most important ingredients necessary to sustain the venture through the arduous labor of establishing a permanent settlement. To that end, the leaders of the expedition procured supplies to pursue several contrasting strategies for survival.

The Lords Proprietors, who sought to cultivate long-term profits from their private investment, required the recruits of 1669 to carry a variety of seeds to plant potential export crops such as sugarcane, ginger, cotton, indigo, and rice to see if they might flourish in the environs of Carolina. None of that produce contributed to the immediate sustenance of the first settlers, however, who would depend on less-exotic provisions during their initial months abroad. Surviving lists of supplies stowed aboard the Carolina, Port Royal, and Albemarle include numerous barrels of ship’s bread, English beer, wheat flour, oatmeal, salt, butter, cheese, as well as dried peas and fish. Once they arrived at Port Royal, the immigrants were to plant garden seeds to cultivate fresh supplies of “Indian corne, beanes, pease, turnipps, carretts & potatoes for provisions.”[2] The proprietary vessels also carried a number of fishing nets, casting nets, fishing lines, and hooks to draw nourishment from the waters of Carolina.[3] Finally, the Lords Proprietors authorized their agents to procure a significant quantity of trade goods like beads, trinkets, and iron tools to barter with Native Americans for land, labor, and food, if necessary.

The plan developed in London during the spring of 1669 was to depart from England in late summer and arrive at Carolina by late winter, giving the settlers sufficient time to clear some acreage for planting before the dawn of next spring’s growing season. Accordingly, the Carolina, Port Royal, and Albemarle set sail from Gravesend in early August, then spent several weeks at the port of Kinsale on the southern coast of Ireland in a fruitless attempt to recruit Irish servants. Embarking southward in the third week of September, the wind-powered trio reached Barbados in late October. When a severe storm wrecked the Albemarle at anchor in Carlisle Bay, expedition leaders hired another sloop called the Three Brothers from resident members of the Colleton family. By early November, the mission was already behind schedule, over budget, and undersupplied. Future governor Joseph West wrote to inform the Lords Proprietors that he had “used all diligent care imadginable” to conserve the cargo, but lamented that “our stores are eaten very deepe into and wee shall not have att our landinge [in Carolina] above 3 months provisions.”[4]

The trio of vessels carrying more than a hundred adventurers set sail from Barbados in late November, but were soon separated by a storm at sea. The principal ship Carolina arrived at the Caribbean island of Nevis on December 9th and paused there in hope of meeting its companions. Meanwhile, the smaller Port Royal was wrecked and lost on a limestone cay near the Bahamian island of Abaco. The hired sloop Three Brothers wandered northwestwardly and sheltered in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, in January 1670. After several lonely weeks at Nevis, the Carolina sailed to the northwest and was again blown off course, reaching the remote island of Bermuda in mid-February. In short, the trans-Atlantic expedition to Carolina did not proceed according to plan, and the spring equinox passed before the English settlers laid eyes on their destination.

The ship Carolina made landfall within Sewee Bay on 17 March 1670, according to the old Julian Calendar that was eleven days behind the Gregorian Calendar we use today. After exploring that vicinity for several days and conversing with friendly natives, the ship sailed southward to its prescribed destination within Port Royal Sound. There the English settlers encountered Indigenous people with ambiguous intentions who warned of nearby Spanish soldiers affiliated with a hostile tribe of man-eating Indians. After a contentious debate among the expedition’s leaders, the majority agreed to ignore the Proprietors’ order to settle at Port Royal and to follow an invitation from the cassique or chief of the Kiawah people, who directed the ship Carolina northward to the sheltered basin now called Charleston Harbor.

English men and women stepped ashore at the Kiawah settlement on an unrecorded date in April 1670 and renamed it Albemarle Point, on the west side of a river they called Ashley in honor of the most active of the Proprietors, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper. The sloop Three Brothers, which departed from Virginia in early February and sailed too far southward, finally joined them in the Ashley River in May. Their collective efforts to build shelters and to clear land for planting did not commence until mid-spring, by which time the weather was already turning hot and dry. To expedite their work, the initial settlers prepared a communal plot and engaged in “joint planting” shortly after their arrival rather than pursuing separate tracts, as they did in later years.[5]

According to several letters sent to the Lords Proprietors during the summer and early autumn of 1670, the settlers at Albemarle Point planted a limited quantity of peas, pumpkins, potatoes, “corne” (probably meaning wheat, in the contemporary English sense of the term), “and other provisions” that flourished in the fertile soil, especially considering the “lateness of the season.” “Wee came soe late heere,” lamented Stephen Bull, “that wee could nott plante any corne butt little more then to make an experim[en]t.”[6] With little prospect of producing a bountiful harvest in the months ahead, the men forming South Carolina’s first executive Council decided to send both of their vessels back out to sea to procure additional food. In late May, the Carolina sailed northward to Virginia while the Three Brothers turned eastward to Bermuda. They also sent a letter to England apologizing for drawing additional funds on the credit of the Lords Proprietors. “Our necessityes are soe great,” said the Council, “that wee must either doe this or else dessert the settlement.”[7]

At the beginning of June, immediately after the departure of the two vessels, the settlers estimated they had a sufficient quantity of peas, wheat, and oatmeal to supply every mouth with a quart of each per day for ten or eleven weeks. After overhauling the communal stores and revising the inventory in mid-June, however, the estimated daily ration dropped to a pint of each dried provision per person for perhaps as long as seven weeks. In the meantime, the hungry campers at Albemarle Point were busily felling trees to build shelters against the summer heat and rudimentary fortifications to thwart potential raids by Spanish Floridians or hostile natives.

Men like Florence O’Sullivan reported to Lord Ashley that the surrounding wilderness “proves good beyond expectation and abounds in all things as good oake, ash, deare, turkies, partidges, rabbitts, turtle, and fish,” as well as “severall pleasant fruits [such] as peaches, strawberrys, and other sorts.”[8] Nicholas Carteret also reported seeing “a few figg trees” and “oysters in great plenty, all y^e islands being rounded w[i]th banks of [them].”[9] The settlers might have desired to supplement their diet with wild game and fowl, but most of the gunpowder transported from England had been “damnified” months earlier during a storm at sea.[10] “The country affording us nothing,” complained Joseph West, things “goe very hard with us and wee cannot employ our servants as wee would because wee have no victualls for them. Our corne, potatoes, and other things doe thrive very well of late[,] praised be god, but wee cannot have any dependance on it this yeare.”[11]

Frustrated by a paucity of resources and poor food security, the settlers at Albemarle Point turned to their Native American neighbors for assistance. As early as 1663, English visitors to the Carolina coastline reported seeing numerous “fields of maize” or Indian corn near every Indigenous village.[12] When the sloop Three Brothers mistakenly sailed into St. Catherine’s Sound in modern Georgia in May 1670, they were greeted by friendly natives bearing gifts of maize, peas, leeks, onions, live hens, and “bread [made] of Indian corne.”[13] Weeks later, recalled Henry Woodward at Albemarle Point, “our provisions failed us.”[14] By mid-June, if not earlier, the white immigrants began bartering English goods for fresh food supplied by the Kiawah people and perhaps other neighboring tribes.

“The Indians that boarder on them being soe friendly,” reported a Barbadian advertisement, “for a[n] inconsiderable vallue they supplye them with deer fish and fowle in a great abundance as likewise in assisting them to cleare and plant their land.”[15] “Wee cheered up ourselves,” recalled Stephen Bull, and “found very great assistance from the Indians who shewed them selves very kind & sould vs provisions att very reasonable rates.” The local natives initiated this exchange, said Bull, after “takeinge notice of our necessitys,” and “did almost daylie bringe one thinge or another[,] otherwise wee must vndoubtedly have binn putt to extreame hardshipps.” For their part, the Indigenous people assisted the newcomers as a means to an end. “They doe seeme to bee very well pleased att our settlinge heere,” noted Stephen Bull, “expectinge protecon vnder vs[,] wch wee have promised them[,] agt another sorte of Indians that live backwards in an intier body & warr agt all Indians[;] they are called Westoes.”[16]

Regardless of their motivations, the Native Americans fed the English settlers well. Nicholas Carteret particularly enjoyed the “wilde turke which ye Indian brought,” though he noted the bird was “not soe pleasant to eate as ye tame, but very fleshy & farr bigger.”[17] Although the immigrants were grateful for the sustenance received, their collective appetites outstripped the resources of the hospitable natives. The First People of South Carolina delivered provisions “in such small parcells,” complained the settlers, “as we could hardly get another supply before the former was gone.”[18] Nevertheless, industrious men like Henry Woodward congratulated himself and the Indigenous people for their collaborative efforts. Had the two parties not endeavored to foster interdependence, wrote Woodward, “it had gone very hard w[i]th us.”[19]

The situation very nearly disintegrated during the late summer of 1670. Unfriendly spies hiding in the Carolina wilderness informed Spanish authorities in Florida that the starving English could not complete their defensive works until the ship Carolina returned from Virginia with fresh supplies. Hoping to capitalize on the weakness of the English trespassers, the Floridians assembled a flotilla of Hispanic colonists and allied Native Americans in early August and sailed northward from St. Augustine to the mouth of the Stono River. From this sheltered coastal inlet, twelve miles due south of Albemarle Point, the Spaniards planned to waylay the returning ship Carolina and then sack the nascent settlement on the Ashley River.

Fortunately for the English camped nearby, recalled Henry Woodward, “wee receeved an allarum from ye southward by the Indians of St. Helens yt Spanish vessells & 30 peeryaugoes of Spaniards & Indians intendinge to worke us what mischeife they could.” A combination of fear and exhaustion appears to have swept across Albemarle Point in the ensuing days. While settlers rushed to strengthen their rude fortifications and mount a few iron cannons, their meagre crops of planted provisions and prospective commodities withered in the sunbaked soil. They were now totally dependent on the Kiawah and other neighboring natives for sustenance, praying for the speedy return of the good ship Carolina from Virginia.[20]

Through a suite of unrecorded circumstances, the tardy English ship slipped past the Spanish ambush and sailed safely into Charleston Harbor on August 22nd. “But before y^t time,” recalled the colony’s executive Council in September, “we had put ourselves in a reasonable good posture of receiueing [the Spanish,] . . . hauing mounted our great guns, & fortifyed ourselues as well as time & the abilityes of our people would giue leaue.”[21] The hostile Indians were “terrifyd at ye scaleing of some of our great guns” and quickly departed, said Henry Woodward, “and ye Spaniard as wee suppose being frustrated of his expectation of starving us, cowardly retreated to St. Augustine.”[22]

The ship Carolina anchored in the Ashley River on 23 August 1670, laden with bulk provisions and a small stock of domesticated cattle, hogs, and poultry. The vessel’s safe return “very much incouraged our people,” reported the provincial Council, “the more for yt she has brought us provisions of Indian corne, pease, & [wheat] meale for eight months.” Relieved by the advent of relative food security, the Council informed the Lords Proprietors “we make noe questions but (by God’s assistance) throughly to defend & maintaine yor Honors interests & our rights in this place till we receiuve a further aid[,] which we very much stand [in] need of.”[23]

Florence O’Sullivan, surveyor general of the nascent colony, also expressed his personal thanks to Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper in early September: “We humbly thank your honor for your care in ordering us provisions, att Virginia[,] the shipp returned to us in good time[,] for all our provision was gone[,] soe that we were forced to live upon the Indians who are very kind to us[.] We hope your Honor will continue your care over us till we are in a condition to help ourselves.” The ship Carolina was preparing to sail for Barbados at that moment, said O’Sullivan, “from whence we expect more people and fresh supplys. . . . We hope now the worst is past if you please to stand by us.”[24]

Fortified by a robust supply of dry provisions and bartered truck with hospitable Native Americans, the English camp at Albemarle Point survived the winter of 1670 and matured into a settlement called Charles Town, now Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site. In mid-March 1671, coincident with the spring equinox, Governor Joseph West informed the Lords Proprietors “wee intend to plant most of our ground this yeare with provisions, it being the life of a new settlement to provide in the first place for the belly. Wee haue already sowed pease and planted some Indian corne—and although I think it something too soon yet[,] the pease doe thrive very well and some English wheat wch I sowed about 2 months before Christmas, and I believe yt English graine will agree very well with this soyle. Wee haue also planted ginger and severall other things, and doe hope to make a full experimt this yeare of what comodities the country will best produce.”[25]

The first year of English settlement at Albemarle Point was a tenuous moment in the founding of modern South Carolina, but its privations paled in comparison to the horrific winter of 1609 at Jamestown, Virginia—a period known as the Starving Time, during which nearly ninety percent of the immigrant population perished. Nevertheless, the Carolina hunger of 1670 represents an important chapter in the long history of the Palmetto State. “The first 5 or 6 years I cannot readily say we liked,” recalled Maurice Mathews in 1680, “for wee wer in continuall want, few in number, few cattle, and what is worst of all, ignorant what to doe[,] but these four last years wee have had such plenty of provisions that it is to be admired rather than beleeved.”[26]

Well-fed settlers shifted the Carolina capital across the Ashley River from Albemarle Point to Oyster Point in the spring of 1680, but the European immigrants of that era did not suffer the same food anxieties as the pioneers who sailed across the Atlantic a decade earlier. Thanks to the efforts of the men and women comprising the first English fleet of 1669, and thanks to the hospitality of Native Americans who befriended the hungry immigrants, the increasingly diverse population of South Carolina persevered into the twenty-first century. When we pause to give thanks for another year of survival in this post-colonial community, let’s remember to give thanks for the natives and immigrants whose interdependence planted the seeds of the bounty we now enjoy.

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