The school year has ended. Whew! And a new chapter begins, however temporary. It’s time to pull out the camera and the notebooks and dust off the blog. It’s time to work on this blog space and get back into the habit of regular creativity.

In Kim Manley Ort’s class, Place, the focus for May is on the indigenous story. I began researching the Native Peoples of South Carolina, and what I’m learning makes me sad. There were at least twenty-nine tribes in South Carolina at one time, but many of those tribes are now extinct, meaning that there are no known descendents living. The only nationally recognized tribe in South Carolina is the Catawba nation, which has a reservation near Rock Hill, SC. Interestingly, it did not receive national recognition as a tribe until the 1990s. There are two or three other tribes currently seeking national recognition. There are quite a few state-recognized tribes, though, but none have reservations.

The Native American presence is South Carolina is mainly in some place nations–towns, rivers, bays/sounds. In Newberry County, the Enoree River is one such example. The word “enoree” means “river of muscadines” for the abundant growth of muscadine (wild grapes) along its banks. it is, therefore, entirely appropriate that the only vineyard and winery in Newberry County is the Enoree River Vineyard!

The closest indigenous tribe I could find for my neck of the woods is the Congaree tribe. These people lived along the Congaree River in Richland and Lexington Counties. They gave the name to the river and to the Congaree National National Park. There was a village across the river from Columbia, the state capital, at one time.

It is sad, in a way, that so much of the history of the Native peoples has been los over the years, and there is no way to recover it (without perhaps digging up the entire state!) What I do know, is that there is still so much to learn.