How Dugouts (and Digging) Transformed the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1720

Summary

This is an abstract from the "What’s Canoe? Recent Research on Dugouts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Long before colonization, coastal inhabitants in Carolina’s Lowcountry used dugout canoes for trading, fishing, and gathering oysters. When the English intruded into this watery environment in 1670, many settlers migrated from Barbados, bringing captive Africans and hopes for establishing a profitable system of slave-based, staple-crop agriculture. After experimentation, rice became their export of choice, but success depended upon moving this bulky product from dispersed plantations to a central shipping point. Swamps made overland travel difficult, so separate tidal rivers provided the best pathways for transporting people and goods. Indigenous neighbors, despite dwindling numbers, provided useful boats and paddlers, but ferrying backcountry furs and casks of rice through the open ocean to reach the port of Charlestown proved dangerous and inefficient. Solving this dilemma would make some in Carolina’s white minority extremely rich. The game-changing but little-known solution came in three parts. Native Americans shared knowledge of useful small streams and “haulovers” that joined adjacent rivers, offering shorter and safer routes to Charlestown harbor. Enslaved Africans provided the forced manpower to dig connecting canals and widen them to accommodate rowing oars. And European craftsmen modified dugouts, using several logs to create wider boats (called pettiaguers) that could transport heavier loads.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• What’s Canoe? Recent Research on Dugouts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39458.0