We find artifacts that show 5000 years of human activity at my home Swash Manor. It has a mystical energy to it.

I consider myself fortunate to own this place. it is a special place.

The Pee Dee 

Alternate spellings: Pedee, Peedee, Peadea, Pidees
Possible meanings: From pi’ri, Catawba for “something good” or pi’here, for “smart, expert, capable”
Language family: Siouan
The Pee Dee were some of the first native people the Europeans met while exploring the Americas. Spanish explorer D’Allyon made contact with the Pee Dee in 1521. Prior to the Spanish explorers, these natives lived along the Pee Dee River from Winyah Bay (near Georgetown, SC) to the Town Creek area of North Carolina.

They raised crops for food and used the river as a trade route with other tribes. A unique tradition of the early Pee Dee was the creation of sacred burial mounds. Some of these mounds can still be found along the Pee Dee River.

The Pee Dee welcomed the English colonists when they began arriving in Charleston in about 1670. Diseases brought by the Europeans killed great numbers of the Pee Dee, yet they traded deer skins and formed alliances with the new colonists. During the Revolutionary War, the Pee Dee helped the colonists fight for independence from Britain.

Most members of the Pee Dee Indian Nation now live near the South Carolina towns of Cheraw and McColl. They continue to show a dedication to their land and the people near it. During Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew, the Pee Dee helped people with food and supplies.

In 1711, South Carolina’s English colonists enlisted the Pee Dee to fight in the Tuscarora War, and they fought alongside the colonists in the Yemassee War of 1715-1716, after which the defeated Yemassee returned to Spanish Florida. When settlers began appearing in what is now Marlboro, Marion, and Dillon Counties of South Carolina around 1730s , they were able to live with the Pee Dee with very little trouble.

Archaeologists and historians say the Pee Dee became extinct by 1808, but the oral stories passed down by the tribe’s elders tell a very different story. Between 1730 and 1800, all of the smaller tribes like the Pee Dee were almost destroyed by disease and attacks by larger tribes, and by white farmers who wanted their farmland. The Pee Dee had no defense under the law, because South Carolina had already changed their status from Indian to Mulatto, Croatan, or free persons of color.

From the late 1790s through the Indian removal acts of the 1830s, the Pee Dee and other small bands were partially assimilated into the white man’s way of life. They abandoned the round type of dwelling, and built log cabins on the land that was available to them.

From the early 1800s until the Civil War of 1861-1865, the descendants of the Original Pee Dee had become small family clans that lived on the rivers. Some were sharecroppers for white farmers who were the descendants of the settlers who the Pee Dee had helped to defeat the Red Coats. Some Pee Dee fought for the South in the Civil War, and there are many tribal members who trace their Indian heritage back to those Soldiers.   

Pee Dee Indian Tribe of South Carolina
445 Williams Street
McColl, SC 29570
Telephone: 843-319-4435
Email: government@peedeetribe.org

Found at Swash Manor in Myrtle Beach South Carolina

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History of Swash Manor c1926 http://swashmanor.com/swash-manors-history/

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