Westo

The Westo were an Iroquoian Native American (Indian) tribe encountered in what became the Southeastern U.S. by Europeans in the 17th century. They probably spoke an Iroquoian language. The Spanish called these people Chichimeco (not to be confused with Chichimeca in Mexico), and Virginia colonists may have called the same people Richahecrian. Their first appearance in the historical record is as a powerful tribe in colonial Virginia who had migrated from the north into the region around present-day Richmond. Their population had a force of 700–900 warriors. Early academic analysis of the origin of the Westo posited that the so-called Rechahecrian/Rickohakan of Virginia were perhaps Cherokee or Yuchi, and that the Westo were a band of Yuchi. Anthropologist Marvin T. Smith (1987:131–32) was the first to suggest that the Westo were a group of Erie, who had lived south of Lake Erie until forced to migrate further south to Virginia in the 1650s during the 17th-century Beaver Wars. The powerful nations of the Iroquois League extended their control into a wider area to gain hunting grounds. Smith theorizes that as the colonial settlements expanded in Virginia, the Westo migrated south to Georgia and the Savannah River in 1659, a decade before the founding of South Carolina in 1670. Subsequent work by John Worth (1995:17) and Eric Bowne (2006) supports Smith's hypothesis. From 1660 to 1680, the Westo, resident along the Savannah River near what became Augusta, Georgia, were slave raiders and middlemen in the slave trade in South Carolina. They menaced other Indian tribes in the region and the Spanish colony in Florida. In 1680, their power was destroyed by the Shawnee and other tribes allied with the colonists of South Carolina. The survivors became slaves themselves or took refuge among the Muscogee Creeks and the Seneca.