South Carolina in Credo: Native Americans

The original inhabitants of the American continent, who arrived during the last glacial period (according to some estimates, 14–40 000 years ago). Collectively, these original peoples have been called Native Americans, American Indians, or Amerindians. These terms are European American inventions that obscure the diversity of peoples indigenous to the Americas.

From Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America
The Catawba are Native American people who first occupied the land along the Catawba River in what are now parts of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.

A Native North American Nation whose lands once stretched from Alabama to West Virginia. They called themselves Ani‘-Yun’wiya , meaning ‘the real people’. Sedentary farmers, hunters, gatherers and fishers, they spoke an Iroquoian language.

Member of an American Indian people who lived in the southeastern USA (parts of Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Tennessee); they are thought to be descendants of the prehistoric Moundbuilders.

From Cassell's Peoples, Nations and Cultures
A Native North American nation of South Carolina, named after the river in their territory.

Member of an American Indian people who inhabited Georgia until moving to Florida. The Seminole Indians, an offshoot of the Creeks, emigrated into northern Florida beginning in the early 1700s and established full autonomy by 1800.

From Atlas of Indian Nations
Although the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma has only about 2,500 citizens today, as recently as 1800 they were one of the largest and most powerful tribes in the southern Great Lakes. Two major bands flourished on both sides of the Appalachians from Tennessee to South Carolina when British settlers first encountered them in the 1600s.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Member of an American Indian people who inhabited Georgia before migrating to South Carolina in the late 17th century.

From Bridgeman Images: The Bridgeman Art Library

Osceola or 'Rising Sun', a Seminole Leader, 1838, illustration from 'The Indian Tribes of North America, Vol.2', by Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall, pub. by John Grant (colour litho)

A portrait of Anna Speakswell, a Catawba in Rock Hill, South Carolina. CATHERINE BAUKNIGHT / ZUMAPRESS / NEWSCOM