Reviewed by L. H. Roper | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.3

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Reviewed by L. H. Roper | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.3 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

L. H. Roper, State University of New York at New Paltz

A Colonial Complex: South Carolina's Frontiers in the Era of the Yamasee War, 1680–1730. By Steven J. Oatis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. 399 pages. $65.00 (cloth).
Steven J. Oatis situates the colonial Southeast within a "frontier complex" (7) of engagements between Indian and European societies. Here, the frontier generated mixed results for "South Carolina imperialists" (43) and the Indians, Africans, and Europeans with whom they came into contact on their quest "to expand their influence over the unsettled areas of their perceived domain" (11). These consequences included the Yamasee War, the region's counterpart to King Philip's War.	1
Oatis bookends his account with the collapse of the Spanish mission system north of Saint Augustine and the appointment of Robert Johnson as governor of South Carolina. During this half century, harried officials in Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia labored to block the expansion efforts of their Carolina neighbors. At the same time, the Carolinians used their indigenous connections, especially with the Yamasee, to create a defensive "buffer zone" (83) for their province. Elsewhere in the region, factions within Lower Creek, Cherokee, Catawba, Chickasaw, and other Indian communities played the Europeans against each other to gain political and economic advantage.	2
After 1713 the situation of the Yamasee became critical. Oatis cites well-known contributions to their decline, including the trade deficit they created with South Carolina traders, alcohol consumption, and the "abusive" behavior of the "arrogant" (116) Carolinians. These phenomena, though, constituted "the tip of the proverbial iceberg" (116). The southerly push of low-country settlement after Queen Anne's War severely disrupted the Yamasee economy and compelled the Indians either to turn to slave catching as the chief means of repaying their debts or to face the prospect of enslavement themselves. Anticipating no satisfaction from the South Carolina government, they attacked the colony in April 1715. Ultimately involving the Creek and other Indians, backed by whatever support the Spanish could offer, the war devastated South Carolina, driving the beleaguered survivors to Charles Town.	3
By 1717, thanks largely to intervention by the Cherokee, most of South Carolina's enemies had withdrawn south, though they kept the province on edge for another decade. During this period the colony's government sought to rebuild its relationships with its Indian neighbors. It also made repeated efforts to restore the "pax Caroliniana" (252) that purportedly existed before the outbreak of the war.	4
The carrot-and-stick methods that these missions employed reflected the deeper changes that had occurred on South Carolina's frontiers as a consequence of the war. The uprising shocked white Carolinians out of their arrogance and compelled them to seek relief, first from their colonial neighbors and, later, from the Crown after they rebelled against the colony's lords proprietors in 1719. They also had to resolve anxieties created by the necessity of arming blacks during the emergency. These concerns combined to shift the South Carolinians from "their old brand of semiautonomous imperialism" to a position "closer to the mainstream of the British Empire between 1715 and 1720" (166).	5
On the other hand, the Cherokee found themselves having to endure the insolence of their Carolina allies after Virginia traders shifted their attentions northward and as they suffered continuing pressure from their old enemies, the Lower Creek, who had sided against them in the war. Even so, these peoples, as well as the Chickasaws and others, remained able to keep the Carolinians at arm's length.	. . .

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