Aside from a few oystermen and forty-some-odd island dwellers, there’s not one South Carolinian in ten-thousand who has ever been to Daufuskie, a remoter barrier island lying southwest of Hilton Head. Beaufort townsmen remember back to the early 1970s when Pat Conroy moved over to the inaccessible island to teach twenty poor children who lived there amidst the moss-draped oaks that time had forgotten. Years later the delicious prospect of several hundred acres of island highland situated above the historic flood level was too much for real estate developers to resist. That’s when Savannah entrepreneur Ted Turner put forth his controversial plan to buy most of the island and forever maintain it as a wildlife preserve.

Conroy got a book, The River is Wide, and a movie, Conrack, from his experience on Daufuskie. All Turner got was a huge legal bill and a nightmarish lesson is the tangled rights of heirs property in coastal South Carolina. As Hilton Head prepares to receive the world’s greatest golfer at the Heritage Tournament, a small cannon will boom a shot across Harbour Town’s Calibogue Sound and a smoke ring will drift lazily across to Bloody Point on Daufuskie Island. As the golfers tee it up, at least one spectator will daydream back to the desperate days of spring 1715 when the largest Indian coalition ever to strike a lethal blow rained down fire and destruction upon our colony.

In the Creek Indian language, daufuskie translates to “land point.” From the marina at Harbour Towne you can see across Calibogue Sound to the land point that Indians knew as a rendezvous point for 4000 years. Archaeological evidence reveals that native Americans feasted and worshipped there at a barrier cove sheltered by dense forests.

David Mongin was the first settler history associates with Daufuskie. However, the high land cut by numerous freshwater creeks lured Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, English, and renegade pirate ships seeking fresh water. Mongin Creek is the southern geographic feature of Daufukie. Seven miles of sandy beach can be seen at a sweep from the air on this island shaped curiously like a hog’s tooth. And the sharp tip of that hog’s tooth known as Bloody Point, conceals some of the most colorful history of our coastal region.

Mongin was a Calvinist Switzer to use the language of the 18th century. He was a follower of Jean Pierre Purry, a Swiss protestant of Neufchatel, and with 500 other religious refugees. Morrat, Brabant, Fraur, Winkler, and Robart are a few of the other surnames associated with this Swiss settlement that reached to the Savannah River.

At least three bloody skirmishes were fought against the Indians on the southeastern tip of Daufuskie before the American Revolution.

The first industry around Daufuskie and Hilton Head was the Indian trade for deer, beaver, and otter skins. The Indians had no concept of numbers; they lived happily with but two concepts -- scarcity and plenty. The traders made out like the bandits they were, obtaining hundreds of skins for a few yards of dyed cloth. Before long the natives grew distrustful, and the traders violated colonial rules by adding cheap rum and firearms to the one-sided deals.

On Good Friday, April 15, 1715 all torment broke loose, beginning with a ghoulish massacre around Pocotaligo and spreading compass-like in every direction for 75 miles. The licensed traders of the 1715 era were Samuel Hilden, Nicholas Day, Thomas Nairne, James Cockran, and John Wright. Ribbons, threads, beads, glass, blankets, rum, and baskets were the inexpensive stock from which these men made huge fortunes as they shipped fur pelts to England. The Indians were kept in debt and then manipulated into even worse financial disadvantage, and often their squaws became part of the bargain.

Thomas Nairne and John Cockran met several chiefs at Pocotaligo for a routine parley and a peace pipe. That night, April 14, 1715 all parties turned in for a good night’s sleep. But before dawn the piercing screams of men being scalped alive could be heard, and then columns of smoke could be seen from settler’s homes as the ten-thousand warriors systematically destroyed everything the colonists had built.

Cockran was tortured for several days before he was burned alive by Pocotaligo Creek. The Indians preferred to club their victims to death rather than waste precious gunpowder in their newfangled firearms. On Huspa Creek the home of John Bull was burned and all of his family was slaughtered while he was away on business in Charleston. The communion silver used at St. Helena’s Episcopal Church in Beaufort is Bull’s bequest given in memory of his family.

Colonial homes in Beaufort still retain the musket gun ports where settlers blazed away at vermillion-painted savages intent upon eradicating them. Over on Daufuskie a Yemassee war party heading back to St. Augustine with their loot decided to celebrate their grand fortune a bit too early.

Captain John Palmer and his heavily-armed rangers stalked this fleeing band of marauding Indians to Dauuskie and slipped up on them just as the warriors prepared a grand victory feast. The official report to Governor Craven in Charleston says in crisp military style that every Indian was slain by Palmer and his men firing large-caliber swivel guns. There were two more Indian skirmishes at Bloody Point, and the Indians avenged their earlier losses by annihilating the white men. During the Revolution Daufuskie was Tory base that carried on a lively Indigo trade with Britain despite Carolina’s association with the Patriot cause. Frequent assassinations of tories and patriots occurred there.

Today, as our great men swing clubs and whoop over Calibogue Sound and shoot birdies and eagles, they can recall that hundreds of years ago the Yemassee’s great men also swung clubs and whooped as they shot birdies, eagles, and colonists nearby!

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