Page 83 - American Stories, A History of the United States

PENNSYLVANIA
2.1 MD. N.J.
Ohio R. Baltimore
DEL.
CLAIMED BY Shenandoah R.
VIRGINIA
APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS
2.2 VIRGINIA
James R. Williamsburg
Bay
Carolina Grant, 1663 Tuscarora Chesapeake
Tennessee R. Cherokee Catawba Cape Fear R. New Bern
Albemarle
2.3 NORTH Roanoke R. Sound
CAROLINA
Coosa R. Savannah R. SOUTH Georgetown
2.4 GEORGIA Broad R. Wilmington
Pee Dee R.
Cape Fear
Chattahoochee R. Ocmulgee R. Yamasee Savannah
CAROLINA
Charles Town
Creek
Added to
OCEAN
Georgia, 1763 Altamaha R. ATLANTIC
St. Augustine
St. Marks
Timucua
Carolina Grant, 1663
Gulf of Mexico S P A NI SH F L OR I DA

Lake Boundary lines of
Okeechobee colonies, 1740
0 100 200 miles
0 100 200 kilometers

map 2.4 thE CaRoLinaS and GEoRGia Caribbean sugar planters migrated to the Goose Creek area,
where they eventually mastered rice cultivation. Poor harbors in North Carolina retarded the spread of European
settlement there.

Barbados had become overpopulated. Wealthy families could not provide their sons
and daughters with sufficient land to maintain social status, and as the crisis intensi-
fied, Barbadians looked to Carolina for relief.
These migrants, many of whom were rich, traveled to Carolina both as individuals
and as family groups. Some even brought gangs of slaves with them to the American
mainland. The Barbadians carved out plantations on the tributaries of the Cooper
River and established themselves immediately as the colony’s most powerful political
faction. “So it was,” wrote historian Richard Dunn, “that these Caribbean pioneers
helped to create on the North American coast a slave-based plantation society closer
in temper to the islands they fled from than to any other mainland English settlement.”
Much of the planters’ time was taken up with the search for a profitable crop.
The early settlers experimented with several plants: tobacco, cotton, mulberry trees
for silk, and grapes. The most successful items turned out to be beef, animal skins,
and naval stores (especially tar used to maintain ocean vessels). By the 1680s, some
Carolinians had built up great herds of cattle—700 or 800 head in some cases. Trad-
ers who dealt with Indians brought back thousands of deerskins from the interior.
They also often returned with Indian slaves. These commercial resources, together
with tar and turpentine, enjoyed a good market. The planters did not fully appreci-
ate the value of rice until the 1690s, but once they did, it quickly became the colony’s
main staple.
Proprietary Carolina was in a constant political uproar. Factions vied for special
privilege. The Barbadian settlers, known locally as the Goose Creek Men, resisted the
proprietors’ policies at every turn. A large community of French Protestant Huguenots
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