The Pee Dee people, also Pedee and Peedee, are American Indians of the Southeast United States. Historically, their population has been concentrated in the Piedmont of present-day South Carolina. In the 17th and 18th centuries, English colonists named the Pee Dee River and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina for the tribe.
Several organizations, including state-recognized tribes, one state-recognized group and unrecognized groups, claim descent from the Pedee.
Name
The meaning of the name Pedee is unknown.
Precontact history
The Pee Dee culture is an archaeological culture spanning 1000 to 1500 CE. It is divided into the Teal phase (1000–1200), Town Creek phase (1200–1400), and Leak phase (1400–1500). The Pee Dee were part of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture that developed in the region as early as 980 CE, extending into present-day North Carolina and Tennessee. They participated in a widespread trade network that stretched from Georgia to South Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and the mountain and Piedmont regions of North Carolina.
The Pee Dee culture had developed as a distinct culture by 980 CE and thrived in the Pee Dee River region of present-day North and South Carolina during the pre-Columbian era. As an example, the Town Creek Indian Mound site in western North Carolina was occupied from about 1150 to 1400 CE.
Town Creek Indian Mound in Montgomery County, North Carolina is a proto-historic Pee Dee culture site. Extensive archeological research for 50 years since 1937 at the Town Creek Indian Mound and village site in western North Carolina near the border with South Carolina has provided insights into their culture. The mound and village site has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.
History
Around 1550, the Pedee migrated from the lower Pee Dee River of the Atlantic Coastal Plain to the upper Pee Dee River of the Piedmont and remained there for about a century. They displaced local hill tribes, such as the Saponi, who resettled the region when the Pedee left. Historian Charles M. Hudson believes their migration may have been an effort to avoid Spanish slave raids along South Carolina's coast. These 16th-century Pedee practiced head flattening, as did the neighboring Waxhaw. In 1567, Spanish explorers encountered the village Vehidi on the Pee Dee River, believed to be a Pedee settlement.
In 1600, the population of Pedee people was estimated to be 600. Europeans, mostly from the British Isles, began settling in South Carolina in large numbers in the 17th and early 18th century. The English established a trading post at Euauenee or Saukey in 1716 to trade with the Pedee and Waccamaw. The Winyaw and Algonquian-speaking Cape Fear Indians migrated from the Atlantic Coast up the Pee Dee River to the trading post.
In 1711, the Tuscarora War broke out in North Carolina, and South Carolina tribes joined in the fighting. In 1712, Pedee warriors, along with the Saraw, Saxapahaw, Winyaw, and Cape Fear Indians, served in British Captain John Bull's company to fight alongside the British against the Tuscarora and helped defeat them. As a result, most of the Tuscarora left the area and migrated north, reaching present-day New York and Ontario to join the related Haudenosaunee Confederacy of Iroquois tribes.
In 1715, English mapmakers recorded a Pedee village on the west band of the Pee Dee River's central course.
The political relationships formed between the Pedee and other tribes in the area at this time carried over into their alliances of the Yamasee War. The Yamasee War of 1715–1717 resulted in major changes among the Southeastern tribes. Historian William James Rivers wrote in 1885 that the Pedee along with many other tribes were "utterly extirpated." However, some survivors may have found refuge with the Siouan-speaking Catawba, who were located near the South and North Carolina border.
In 1737, the Pedee tribe petitioned South Carolina for a parcel of land to live upon. They, along with their Natchez cousins were moved to a parcel provided by James Coachman in 1738. This land was in Berkeley County, along the Edisto River.