History of Charleston south carolina indian trading between 1679 to 1700

Most of the chief planters in those early days
of Charleston were merchants as well ; the Indian trade in Charleston was long the
chief source of wealth. "Charles Town- Charleston trades for 1000
miles into the continent," one old writer says. The Proprietors
tried to restrict the fur trade in Charleston to within one hundred
miles of the town, reserving all beyond to themselves;
but although they appointed Indian agents to enforce
the laAV, it was continually eluded. In troubled times
some of these agents in Charleston became persons of great importance.
Besides the furs, they had for exports, as has been already
said, the products of the forest, lumber of all sorts, tar,
pitch, and turpentine. To these, in defiance of the objections
of the Proprietors of Charleston , there was added salt-beef and
bacon. What was a man whose estate numbered thousands
of acres to do but to graze it ? The cattle throve
and multiplied enormously in a climate where food was
plentiful all the year, and a bracken bush could keep the
cow in the severest weather. Wolves prevented the
increase of sheep as worthless dogs do now, but most
planters protected a small flock, to supply the family with
mutton and with wool for the ever whirling wheels.
Swine could take care of themselves; they fattened on the
acorns of the oak groves, and soon became an important
article of export, while as yet crops were small and
inadequate.
These sources of prosperity had so increased the wellbeing
of the little community in Charleston that when Thomas Ashe,
clerk of the ship Richmond, came out in 1680 with the first
Huguenot colony in Charleston , he declared in the " View of Carolina '
which he published on his return to England, that there
was no longer any suffering or want of food to be apprehended
; that the settlers in Charleston were well established, had all
sorts of European grains and fruits and "
twenty sorts of pulse not known in England, all of them good for food."
It would be interesting to learn what they were. Most
families in Charleston kept an Indian, who for a mere trifle would supply
a household of twenty people with an ample quantity
of game, venison, turkeys, ducks, etc. This custom lasted
down to the Revolution in Charleston , and in some cases still later.