Learn more about current South Carolina Tribes. Not all Tribes have yet been included; more information will be added in the future.
The following resources have been recommended by Joshua Shumak, Publicist and Executive Council Member of the Wassamasaw Tribe of Varnertown Indians, and a 2021 graduate of the College of Charleston. Mr. Shumak stated, “All of these resources hold significant relevance to our tribe's story, and we feel their incorporation would contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of our heritage and the history of Native Americans in the State as a whole.” Many thanks to Mr. Shumak for making these recommendations for our Libguide.
This page is broken into the following categories:
"Edisto" entry in The Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes by
The "Edisto" entry by Julie Jersyk is found on pp. 427-31.
Catawba Nation : Treasures in History by 
Catawba Indians: The People of the River by 
Those Who Remain: A Photographer’s Memoir of South Carolina Indians by
An important source documenting experiences of Native SC residents from the 1980s through the early 2000s. Crediford photographed and interviewed many SC residents who are Native. His approach foregrounds the lived experience of Native people, inasmuch as he has been able to witness, understand, and record it. Each chapter focuses on a different tribal group and their attempts to gain federal and/or state recognition. Many elder interviewees had vivid memories of the schools they went to–including some schools exclusively for Indians. The interviews contain many candid exchanges between Crediford and his subjects, who are sometimes reluctant to share their stories with a white man and who believe that their histories have often been misrepresented. Overall, Crediford seems to be well regarded by the Native communities he has documented, yet he is always conscious of his own limitations and the potential for misunderstanding. Crediford’s approach and the perspectives he documents demonstrate both the rewards and the unintended alienation that could occur when outsiders study Native histories and don’t realize what they are misunderstanding or misrepresenting.
Crediford begins the book with a map of the “Estimated Footprint of the Cofitachequi Chiefdom” in South Carolina and parts of NC. This is the area in which contemporary Tribes live who are descendants of the Cofitachequi chiefdom. He explains this more in his introduction. “Centuries after de Soto, this story is told with the photographs and words of those who remain, a book written to bear witness to those who have survived five hundred years of foreign diseases, colonization, enslavement, and a variable purgatory of prejudices and neglect.”
