Cassique Explained

Cassiques (junior) and landgraves (senior) were intended to be a fresh new system of titles of specifically American lesser nobility, created for hereditary representatives in a proposed upper house of a bicameral Carolina assembly.

Carolina Assembly

They were proposed in the late 17th century and set out in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. The Fundamental Constitutions were never ratified by the assembly, and were largely abandoned by 1700.

The upper house, consisting of the Landgraves and Casiques..are..a middle state between Lords and Commons. (1702) [1]
They are there by Patent, under the Great Seal of the Provinces, call'd Landgraves and Cassocks, in lieu of Earls and Lords. (1707)

Cacique, a native chief or ‘prince’ of the aborigines in the West Indies and adjacent parts of America. (1555)

Native American leaders

The title Cassique was bestowed upon the Chief (Chieftain) or leader of the Native American tribes (mainly the Kiawah Indians) which originally settled the low-country of South Carolina,[2] near modern day Charleston, South Carolina. The Kiawah Indians referred to the area where the peninsula of the city of Charleston, SC located between the modern day Ashley River (then known as the Kiawah River) and the Cooper River (called the Wando River) as "Chicora". The Cassique of Kiawah, who had traded with the Cape Fear Barbadian colony and sent his nephew as an emissary to England with explorer Captain Robert Sandford in 1666, was a friend to the English and urged the English to settle the area known as "Chicora". The Cassique's motivating factors were both financial and the Intrinsic motivation of Tranquility as the Kiawah Indians would gain an established trading partner with the English as well as protection from the Spanish in Florida and the neighboring Westoe tribe who were known cannibals and had attacked the Kiawah Indians on several occasions. [3]

The Cassique and his Kiawah tribes were quite persuasive and the English established the settlement Charles Towne, named for the Lord Proprietors' benefactor King Charles II of England, on the West bank of the Ashley (Kiawah) River at Albemarle Point in 1670. Thus, the Kiawah Indians became comrades with the English as perhaps was predetermined when the Kiawah originally greeted the colonists upon arrival at Bull's Bay with the phrase "Bony Conraro Angles!" (meaning "Good English Comrades") in poorly spoken Spanish.[4]

Identified landgraves, landgravines and cassiques

This is a list of identified South Carolina landgraves, landgravines (female version) and cassiques (female term unknown). Their "baronies" often had Native American names. Seemingly, only about half of this colonial South Carolina nobility ever reached its soil. One man was both Cassique and Landgrave. In some cases, the title seems to have been inherited.

Notes

  1. Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1989
  2. The South Carolina term lowlands or low country would, in the state of Virginia, be called tidewater
  3. Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina Under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719; New York, 1897, reprint 1969
  4. Isabella G. Leland, Charleston, Crossroads of History

Further reading

External links

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