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LIVING Together in a Sacred Place: 
The Role of Silver Bluff, South Carolina, in Our 
Collective Religious Experience 

 Patrick Minges
Human Rights Watch
U. S. A.

Matters of the Heart
The Skin Trade
A "Very Celebrated Place" 
"History Written in the Hearts of Our People"

Matters of the Heart

As she approached the bank of the river, their eyes met for the first time.  She, the Queen of Cofitachiqui, was borne on a royal vessel, seated upon pillows and accompanied in other canoes by her beloved men.  He, a slave of Andre de Vasconcelos, was a follower of Hernando de Soto and the expedition to explore and exploit the natural resources of the American Southeast.  The queen "was a young girl of fine bearing...and she spoke to the governor quite gracefully and at her ease" (Bourne, 1904, p. 100).  She placed pearls upon the neck of de Soto and said, "With sincerest and purest goodwill, I tender you my person, my lands, my people, and make you these small gifts" (Jameson, 1907, p.172). [paragraph 1]

Without a doubt, the Queen understood the import of de Soto's coming. When neighboring villagers refused to show him to her village, he had them burned alive. When a native warrior challenged de Soto in the traditional way to a manly duel of skill, de Soto set his dogs upon him and had him torn to pieces. However, as much as de Soto had attracted the Lady's attention...her eyes continued to fall upon the African slave. There is little doubt that this was not the first time that she had encountered an African, but this one was somehow different. Over the next couple of days, it was an attraction she could not resist. It was one of those chance encounters that is the stuff of which romance novels are made. [paragraph 2]

On the third day, the Queen disappeared; de Soto sent his guards to find her but she was not to be found (Bourne, 1904, p. 110). Taking advantage of her absence, he entered one of the ancient temple mounds that were scattered about the town of Talemico, the religious and political center of the people of Cofitachiqui.  The temple mound was one hundred feet long and forty feet wide with massive doors.  As he entered through the doors, he encountered paired rows of massive wooden statues with diamond-shaped heads bearing first batons, then broadswords, and then bows and arrows (Hudson, 1976, p. 111).  Like the ancient pyramids of Egypt, these temple mounds contained statues of notable persons of antiquity and chests filled with the remains of the elders. Scattered about the temples were bundles of fur, breastplates, and weapons -- tools for the next life -- covered with pearls, colored leather, and "something green like an emerald" (Bourne, p. 100).  [paragraph 3]

De Soto and his men plundered the ancient temple.  Among the booty were items of a European make, "Biscayan axes or iron and rosaries with their crosses" (Bourne, 1904, p. 100).  De Soto and his men determined that these materials were the remnants of an earlier expedition led by Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon.  He and his men had  settled on the coast of the Carolinas near on the Peedee River in 1526. African slaves were members of Ayllon's colony; when there was a crisis over leadership, the colony fell into disarray. In this crisis, there was a slave revolt. When the colony crumbled, many of the African slaves fled to live among the nearby Native Americans (Wright, 1902, pp. 217-228).  According to de Soto, the items found in the temple bore the marks of European craftsmanship; these refugees must have lived among the Cofitachiqui and taught them the ways of the Europeans (Bourne, p. 101). [paragraph 4]

When the Queen of Cofitachiqui finally returned from her absence, de Soto seized her and questioned her as to where there was more wealth to be gained. She said that there were riches further inland. When de Soto and his men set about to find this land, they carried with them the "'woman chief of Cofitachiqui" (Bourne, 1904, p. 105).  After seven days of travel, the party traversed lofty ridges and arrived at the "province of Chalaque" near the Oconnaluftee river in western North Carolina (Jameson, 1907, p. 176).  After staying a few days in Xualla, the party set out for Guaxule where "there were more indications that there were gold mines" (Bourne, p. 104). [paragraph 5]

As they were on their journey, the Lady of Cofitachiqui "left the road, with the excuse of going in the thicket, where, deceiving them, she so concealed herself that for all their search she could not be found."  De Soto, frustrated in his quest to find her, moved on to Guaxule (Jameson, 1907, p. 176).  It seems that the Lady had arranged a rendezvous with others in de Soto's party.  These included an "Indian slave boy from Cuba," a "slave belonging to Don Carlos, a Berber, well versed in Spanish," and "Gomez, a negro belonging to Vasco Goncalvez who spoke good Spanish" (Bourne, 1904, p. 104).  A short time later, Alimamos, a horseman of de Soto who "got lost," somehow wandered upon the refugee slaves.  He "labored with the slaves to make leave of their evil designs" but only two of the refugees returned to de Soto.  When Alimamos arrived back at the camp with the refugees who had decided to return, "the Governor wished to hang them" (Jameson, p. 177). [paragraph 6]

However, the horseman also made another report. He stated that "The Cacica remained in Xualla, with a slave of Andre de Vasconcelas, who would not come with him (Alimamos), and that it was very sure that they lived together as man and wife, and were to go together to Cutafichiqui" (Jameson, p. 177). In an effort that would be repeated countless times over the next three hundred years, refugee slaves who fled from their masters to the sanctuary of neighboring Native Americans were thus given shelter and protection. Equally as important to our collective history, the "queen of Cofitichiqui" and the "slave of Andre de Vasconcelas" returned to their "village of the dogwoods" on the banks of the Savannah River. It would be in Silver Bluff, South Carolina where they would begin their life together as "Aframerindians" (Porter, 1933, p. 321).1 [paragraph 7]

The Skin Trade

Some two hundred years later, a gregarious Scotsman by the name of George Galphin settled in Silver Bluff, South Carolina.  He built a trading post and began an extended relationship with the Creek Nation (Williams, 1930, p. 288).  By the time of his death some forty years later, Galphin was to have "at least four wives or mistresses" to whom he left his considerable fortune (Wright, 1986, p. 81). These included Rachel Dupree, the Indian Nitshukey, the Negro Sappho, and the Negro Mina; by these wives Galphin had at least six children.  In 1772 Galphin met with the Yuchi on the Flint river and requested a generous land cession for his Yuchi wife Metawney, daughter of a beloved man of Coweta, and her three mestizo children (Wright, p. 108).  A contemporary of Galphin was to say, "of the five varieties of the human family; he raised children from three, and no doubt would have gone the whole hog," had he the chance (Woodward ,1965, p. 91). [paragraph 8]

George Galphin's business was an immediate success; his alliances with the Creek Nation allowed him to do quite well in the fur and skin trade.  Although he primarily dealt in the stock and trade of deerskins, there was another kind of skin trade that had become quite profitable in areas of the lower South by the time of Galphin's arrival. The trade in Native American slaves was a quintessential element in the Carolina economy.  In fact, the trade in Indian slaves had become so important that it had eclipsed the trade for furs and animal skins and had become the primary source of commerce between the English and the people of South Carolina (Woodward, 1965). [paragraph 9]

With the founding of Charleston in April 1670, England had entered into the commercial slave market in a manner that was to establish the city as a center of the slave trade for two centuries. From the very beginning of the colony in the late seventeenth century, the Carolinians cited Indian "savagery" and "depredations" as justification for "Indian wars" against the Yamasee, the Tuscarora, the Westo and eventually the Cherokee and the Creek (Lauber, 1970; Olexer, 1982). The term "Indian war" was quite often simply a rhetorical exercise to cover not only the seizure of Native American land and crops, but also the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (Washington, 1909, p. 128).  Charleston became the center of this North American commercial slavery enterprise.  Native American nations throughout the South were played one against the other in an orgy of slave dealing that decimated entire peoples.  During the latter half of the seventeenth century, Carolina was more active than any other colony in the exportation of Indian slaves (Wood, 1975, p. 39).  The Indian slave trade in the Carolinas, with Charleston as its center, rapidly took on all of the characteristics of the African slave trade.  The Carolinians formed alliances with coastal native groups, armed them, and encouraged them to make war on weaker tribes deeper in the Carolina interior (Lauber, p. 39).  By the late years of the seventeenth century, caravans of Indian slaves were making their way from the Carolina backcountry to forts on the coast just as caravans of African slaves were doing on the African continent.  Once in Charleston, the captives were loaded on ships for the "middle passage" to the West Indies or other colonies such as New Amsterdam or New England (Washington, p.129). [paragraph 10]

From the point of arrival of some twenty Africans aboard a Dutch sailing vessel in Virginia in 1619, the face of American slavery began to change from the "tawny" Indian to the "blackamoor" African.  There was a period of transition lasting some one hundred years between 1650 and 1750. Though the issue is complex, the unsuitability of the Native American for the labor-intensive agricultural practices, their susceptibility to European diseases, the proximity of avenues of escape, and the lucrative nature of the African slave trade led to a transition to an African-based institution of slavery.2 In spite of a later tendency in the Southern United States to differentiate the African slave from the Indian, African slavery was in actuality imposed on top of a pre-existing system of Indian slavery (Williams, 1882). In North America, the two never diverged as distinctive institutions (Davis, 1966, p. 176). [paragraph 11]

During this transitional period, Africans and Native Americans shared the common experience of enslavement.3 In addition to working together in the fields, they lived together in communal living quarters, began to produce collective recipes for food and herbal remedies, shared myths and legends, and ultimately lived "as man and wife." The intermarriage of Africans and Native Americans was facilitated by the disproportionate numbers of African male slaves to females (2 to 1) and the decimation of Native American males by disease, enslavement, and prolonged war against the colonists (Wright, 1981, p. 258),  During the intertribal wars encouraged by the English in order to produce slaves, the largest majority of those enslaved were women and children, in accordance with historic patterns of warfare among Native Americans (Wood, 1975, p. 39). Therefore, the largest numbers of Native American slaves in the early Southeast were women; there were as much as three to five times more Native women than men enslaved (Perdue, 1998, p. 68).  Slave owners often desired African men paired with Native American women to work the fields and to help around the house. Many of the Indian slaves were kept at home and worked on the plantations of South Carolina.  By 1708 the number of Indian slaves in the Carolinas was nearly half that of African slaves (Nash, 1974, p. 130).  Wright (1986) suggests that the presence of so many women slaves from the Southeastern Indian nations where matrilineal kinship was the norm helps to explain the prominent role of women in slave culture (pp. 248-278). [paragraph 12]

As Native American societies in the Southeast were primarily matrilineal, African males who married Native American women often became members of the wife's clan and citizens of the respective nation.  As relationships grew, the lines of racial distinction began to blur, and the evolution of red-black people began to pursue its own course. Many of the people known as slaves, free persons of color, Africans, or Indians were most often the product of integrating cultures (Herskovits, 1964, 13-15). Many aspects of African American culture, including handicrafts, music, and folklore, may be equally Native American as well as African in origin. The cultures of Africans and Natives intertwined in complex ways in the early Southeast (Ferguson, 1992).  In and around Silver Bluff, this was especially so. [paragraph 13]

A "Very Celebrated Place"

About the same time that George Galphin moved to Silver Bluff, S.C., a young man by the name of William Bartram was born on the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, John Bartram, was a famous botanist who had founded the Botanical Gardens and William, more than any of his six brothers, followed in his father's footsteps (Bartram, 1998, p. xvii).  In 1761 William Bartram went to Cape Fear, North Carolina to live with his uncle; in 1765, he joined his father, now appointed botanist to His Majesty George II, and traveled from North Carolina to Florida. On the way, he and his father stopped at the home of George Galphin, who was, according to Francis Harper, an "influential trader of Silver Bluff, S.C." ( Bartram, p. xviii). [paragraph 14]

Over the next ten years, the friendship between William Bartram and George Galphin was to blossom and Galphin was to be of invaluable assistance in Bartram's travels throughout the Southeast. The chronicles of his journals and his observations of the Indians of the Southeast are, along with James Adair's, some of the most valuable resources we have on the Five Nations of the Southeastern United States. In late April of 1776, William Bartram again found occasion to visit his friend George Galphin at Silver Bluff,  

...a pleasant villa, and the property and seat of G. Galphin, Esq., a gentleman of very distinguished talents and great liberality, who possessed the most extensive trade, connections and influence amongst the South and Southwest Indian tribes, particularly with the Creeks and the Chactaws [sic], of whom I frequently obtained letters of recommendation and credit with the principal traders residing in the Indian towns. (Bartram, 1998, p. 199) [paragraph 15] 

And upon his arrival he described Silver Bluff as follows:

Silver Bluff is a very celebrated place; [one can] discover various monuments and vestiges of the residence of the ancients, as Indian conical mounts, terraces, areas, &c. [sic] as well as remains or traces of fortresses of regular formation, as if constructed after the modes of European military architects, and are supposed to be ancient camps of the Spaniards who formerly fixed themselves at this place in hopes of finding silver. (Bartram, p. 199) [paragraph 16]

In his analysis of de Soto's travels among the Cherokee, ethnologist James Mooney relied upon Bartram's description of Silver Bluff to identify it as the place where de Soto encountered the queen of Cofitichiqui. We rely on his words:  

The town was probably the ancient capital of the Uchee Indians, who, before their absorption by the Creeks, held or claimed most of the territory on both banks of the Savannah river from the Cherokee border to within about forty miles of Savannah and westward to the Ogeechee and Cannouchee rivers. The country was already on the decline in 1540 from a recent fatal epidemic, but was yet populous and wealthy, and was ruled by a woman chief whose authority extended for a considerable distance. (Mooney, 1972, pp. 192-193). [paragraph 17]

However, in his concluding description of Silver Bluff, William Bartram makes the following truly unique observation: "But perhaps Mr. Galphin's buildings and improvements will prove to be the foundation of monuments of infinitely greater celebrity and permanency than either of the preceding establishments" (Bartram, p. 199).  It seems that Bartram was correct; indeed, one of the founding institutions of the black church was established on this site.  Lincoln and Mamiya (1990), in their study of the history of the black church in the United States, made the following notation: "The oldest church in the study was the Silver Bluff Baptist Church of Beech Island, South Carolina, which on its cornerstone claimed a founding date of 1750. It is generally regarded as the first known black church" (p. 192).  Raboteau (1978) also makes the following assertion: "The distinction of being the first separate black church in the South (and North), however, belonged to the Baptist church founded between 1773 and 1775 in Silver Bluff, S.C. across the Savannah River from Georgia. The importance of the Silver Bluff Church lies not only in its chronological priority but in its role as mother church of several far-flung Baptist missions" (p. 139). [paragraph 18]

Silver Bluff Baptist Church was organized and pastored by David George, a slave who inherited the small congregation from a white Baptist preacher by the name of (Wait) Palmer (Pitts, 1993, p. 46). The members of this congregation were eight slaves of George Galphin converted and baptized by Palmer at Galphin's mill; these were David George, George's wife, Jesse Galphin and five other slaves. David George and Jesse Galphin were encouraged to assume the pastoral leadership of the tiny slave congregation by George Liele, a slave of Henry Sharpe, a deacon at the Buckhead Creek Church. Henry Sharpe freed Liele to preach and the Buckhead Creek Church ordained him in accord with the practice of Baptists to invest congregations with such power (Washington, 1986, p. 9). [paragraph 19]

David George, older than George Liele, had befriended Liele as a child when both were slaves in Essex County, Virginia known to have a very strong "Aframerindian" community.4  David George's parents were born in Africa and were enslaved by Mr. Chapel whose brutality was such that George fled the plantation and began traveling throughout the South.  Sobel (1988) describes what happened next:

Extraordinary adventures took him to the Creek and 'Nautchee' Indian peoples, where he was a well-treated chattel servant. He eventually became the possession of George Galphin, a "very kind" man who owned a plantation and trading station at Silver Bluff, South Carolina, some twelve miles from Augusta Georgia. (p. 105) [paragraph 20]

In the years leading up to the revolutionary war, Liele and George preached to the congregation at Silver Bluff Baptist Church "till the church...encreased [sic]to thirty or more, and till the British came to the city of Savannah and took it" (Brooks, 1922, pp. 172-183).  When the Revolutionary War started, it was very disruptive to life at Silver Bluff. George Galphin was tied to the colonists and in 1775 he was appointed the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Southern District.  When the "Troubles" came to the Carolina frontier in 1776, they came with a vengeance; the Southern campaign was very important to the British and they put considerable resources into destabilizing life along the Southern coastline.  The Cherokee, in a move that would be quite disastrous for them, sided with the British and attacked homesteads and forts in the Appalachian highlands.  Though the Creek Nation remained neutral (much to the credit of George Galphin), some of its brightest young stars such as Alexander McGillivray chose to espouse the British party line (Braund, 1993, p. 46).  When the British seized Savannah in 1778 and then shortly afterward seized Galphin's trading post, George Galphin fled for shelter (Raboteau, 1978, p. 139; Washington, 1986, p. 9). [paragraph 21]

When Henry Sharpe, George Liele's former master, was killed in the Revolutionary War, Sharpe's heirs called into question Liele's status as a freedman (Frazier, 1963, pp. 29-30).  Liele fled Savannah with the British withdrawal and settled in Jamaica where he was the founding father of the Baptist faith in Jamaica (Washington, 1986, p. 10).  David George and several of George Galphin's slaves had fled to Yamacraw, South Carolina and worked with George Liele in his Baptist Church until his departure (Sobel, p. 106; Washington, 1986, p. 10).  In 1782 David George fled slavery with the British and settled in Nova Scotia where he was a highly successful missionary (Sobel, p. 106).  In 1792 David George and his friend and fellow Nova Scotian by the name of John Marrant migrated to Sierra Leone as part of a recolonization effort first envisioned by Prince Hall, prominent minister and founder of Black Freemasonry (Schomburg, 1936, p. 400).  The legacy of Prince Hall's vision would be the African-American colonization movement to be led in the nineteenth century by pan-Africanist and Freemason Martin R. Delaney. At a later point, the movement was led by another Caribbean by the name of Marcus Mosiah Garvey. [paragraph 22]

Jesse Galphin fled across the river from Silver Bluff to Augusta where he and some forty-eight other members of the Silver Bluff Baptist Church formed First African Baptist Church. Andrew Bryan, ordained to the ministry by George Liele and licensed to preach by Jesse Galphin founded a new congregation in Savannah, Georgia. By 1790, Bryan's congregation numbered nearly 225 full communicants and about 350 converts; by 1800 it was the First African Baptist Church of Savannah. Baptist congregations as a body obey the laws of single cell organisms; they multiply by dividing. In 1803 a second congregation was formed in Savannah as Second African Baptist Church (Raboteau, 1978, pp. 139-140). [paragraph 23]

"History Written in the Hearts of Our People"

It is important at this point to make simple observation. Most of the research done upon "slave religion" and the growth of the early black church engages in an oversimplification; "slave" and thus "slave religion" is understood to mean "African" or "black." This ignores the historical reality that the first "black churches" arose in areas such as Southeastern Virginia, the low country of the Carolinas, and near Savannah, Georgia which were regions in the eighteenth century where the three races of colonial America converged. Most of the early records of the missionaries note that among these mixed peoples of the low country areas, their earliest converts were the enslaved African Americans who lived within Native American communities. The records also state that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (1893) had no qualms about baptizing "the heathen slaves also (Indians and Negroes)" (p. 12). [paragraph 24]

Thus, there exists the probability, and if not at least the possibility, that many of those churches historically cited as the earliest "historical Black Baptist churches" were in actuality "Aframerindian" churches. Throughout the Old South, mixed congregations of black and red people worshipped together in ways that were at once both African and Indian. Whether in the churches or in the "stomp grounds"5, people recognized the solidarity that only comes in response to an overarching culture of oppression that attempted to define and divided black and red people. By learning to overcome that which separated them as a people, they learned to conquer that "double consciousness" which created estrangement within themselves. In so doing, they laid the foundation for a common history, one "written in the hearts of our people": 

In truth, sacred bonds between blacks and Native Americans, bonds of blood and metaphysical kinship, cannot be documented solely by factual evidence confirming extensive interaction and intermingling -- they are also matters of the heart. These ties are best addressed by those who are not simply concerned with the cold data of history, but who have "history written in the hearts of our people" who then feel for history, not just because it offers facts but because it awakens and sustains connections, renews and nourishes current relations. Before the [sic] that is in our hearts can be spoken, remembered with passion and love, we must discuss the myriad ways white supremacy works to impose forgetfulness, creating estrangement between red and black peoples, who though different lived as One. (hooks, 1992, p. 183) [paragraph 25]

Let us end this story in a way that is similar to how we began. Their eyes met across a crowded chapel. He was an Indian and the slave of Revolutionary War hero Colonel Leroy Hammond. She was hardly royalty. Together, they had a son; his name was Henry Francis. Though born into slavery, he was freed because of his remarkable gifts as a minister. Andrew Bryan, pioneer Black Baptist and founder of the First African Baptist Church of Savannah, spoke of the importance of Henry Francis' ministry among his congregations in a letter to authorities in 1800: 

He is a strong man about forty-nine years of age, whose mother was white and whose father was an Indian. His wife and only son are slaves. Brother Francis has been in the ministry fifteen years, and will soon receive ordination, and will probably become the pastor of a branch of my large church...it will take the rank and title of the 3rd Baptist Church of Savannah. (Bryan in Sernett, 1985, p. 45) [paragraph 26]

Though a slave and considered a "black pastor" of the Third African Baptist Church, Henry Francis was an Indian. According to Wright (1986) this "so-called Negro minister had no known African ancestry" (p. 81). One of the founding members of the Black Baptist church was not black at all. What was he? Well ... he was just from Silver Bluff! [paragraph 27]

Endnotes

1. Porter (1933) coined the term "Aframerindian": 

   Thus we observe that relations between Negroes and Indians have been of significance historically, through influencing on occasion the Indian relations of the United States government, and to a much larger extent biologically, through modifying the racial make-up of both the races and even, as some believe, creating a new race which might, perhaps, for want of better term, be called "Aframerindian." (p. 321) 

2. Indian slaves were considered to be "sullen, insubordinate, and short lived" (Hart quoted in Sanford Wilson, 1935, p. 440). The article further describes Native American slaves as "not of such robust and strong bodies, as to lift great burdens, and endure labor and slavish work." Native Americans were not without some commercial value. They were often seized throughout the South and taken to the slave markets and traded at an exchange rate of two for one for African Americans. An interesting spin on the story comes from Washington and Dubois (1907) who, even in agreement with the positions stated above, stated: 

The Indian refused to submit to bondage and to learn the white man's ways. The result is that the greater portion of the American Indians have disappeared, the greater portion of those who remain are not civilized. The Negro, wiser and more enduring than the Indian, patiently endured slavery; and contact with the white man has given him a civilization vastly superior to that of the Indian.  (p. 14)

 Washington reiterates this point by quoting Spencer who, in discussing the collapse of indentured servitude and Indian slavery, stated, "In each case it was survival of the fittest. Both Indian slavery and white servitude were to go down before the black man's superior endurance, docility, and labour capacity" (Spencer quoted in Washington, 1909, p. 113).

3. Washington (1909) describes the common experience of enslavement as such: 

   During all this time, for a hundred years or maybe more, the Indian and the Negro worked side by side as slaves. In all the laws and regulations of the Colonial days, the same rule which applied to the Indian was also applied to the Negro slaves...In all other regulations that were made in the earlier days for the control of the slaves, mention is invariably made of the Indian as well as the Negro. (p. 130) 

4. Among the Native Americans of Southeastern Virginia from whence David George fled, there was a very strong Aframerindian community. Thomas Jefferson noted that among the Mattaponies there was "more negro than Indian blood in them." The Gingaskin, Nottoway, and Pamunkeys were often asserted to be more Black than Indian (Porter, 1933, p. 314).  In a later period, many of the Powhatans were suspected of being in league with Nat Turner and supporting his runaways following the insurrection of 1831. Many of the Powhatan Indians served the Union forces of the Civil War during guerilla activities in Southeastern Virginia (Hauptman, 1995, pp. 66-73).

5. "Stomp Ground" is the place where Southeastern Indians held their "stomp dances." It is a religious site. 

References

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Patrick Minges, Ph. D., is the Director of Publications for Human Rights Watch. He received his doctorate in American Religious History from Union Theological Seminary in New York. His present interests include historical perspectives of African American/ Native American relations, the nature of identity formation, and multicutural expressions of religious community (He may be reached at pm47@columbia.edu).