The Yamasee were a tribe of the Muskogean linguistic group. Their homelands, like the Tuscarora, were in the Carolinas. And like the Tuscarora, the Yamasee lands were encroached upon by the Euro-American immigrants who felt the land was theirs for the taking.
The Yamasee had been allies with the Euro-Americans for many years, but the white settlers continually took advantage of them and corrupted them with liquor. The Yamasee became more and more alienated from the white men as their families were taken captive and sold into slavery to pay for debts incurred from rum handouts.
On Good Friday, 15 April 1715, the Yamasee tribe, along with other local tribes, including the Catawba and the Lower Creeks, launched a war against the Euro-American settlements in the vicinity of present-day Savannah, Georgia. Over one hundred of the settlers were killed, and a large number of those who escaped death were driven northward to Charleston. It is believed that the Yamasee War was instigated by the Spanish.
At Charleston, Charles Craven, the governor of the South Carolina colony, organized a force of militia to repel the Indians. During the next few months the South Carolina militia campaigned against the Yamasee and the other local Indian tribes. As a result of the militia's actions, the Yamasee were almost completely annihilated.
In January 1716, a combined South Carolina militia and Cherokee force routed the last remaining Yamasee from the region northwest of Port Royal.
The surviving Yamasee moved southward into Florida, where they became integrated with the Seminole tribe.
A brief war between England and Spain, that lasted from February 1727 to March 1728, provided a motive for a unit of South Carolina militia to march southward into Florida to destroy a Yamasee village near St. Augustine on 09 March 1728.
