THE INDIAN HEAD, South Carolina's Ancient Meeting Place Is Rediscovered
In 2012, the colonial settlement at Big Pond Branch in Lexington County, South Carolina, once part of the Orangeburgh District, received historic recognition. Michael Jeffcoat, forensic historian, writer and lead researcher on the historic project said that the rediscovery of the colonial settlement was just the "tip of the iceberg" and that more discoveries were yet to come. Recently, he released his documented historical findings which place Lexington County and the state of South Carolina at the center of the discovery of a major Native American site, THE INDIAN HEAD, a place so profoundly unique that it is likely the only known ancient meeting place of its kind in North America. The discovery links explorers from the 16th century and major political figures of the revolutionary period and 19th century to this place at the geographical heart of South Carolina.
Big Pond Branch was not always known as Big Pond Branch. There was a history before the mid to late 1700s when it was a place first inhabited by indigenous people or Native Americans and then later, before the colonial period and during the early part of the colonial period, by a multi-cultural population. It is during the transition periods when the population went from exclusively Native American to a combined culture of European Traders and Native Americans, that Big Pond Branch was known as Indian Head Branch. The aquifer at the head of the branch and that fed the branch was known as The Indian Head and later, just before 1800, it came to be known as Little River.
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The discovery of The Indian Head is significant for many reasons. The most significant reason is that it helps confirm local legend and tradition that told of an ancient meeting place for the heads of various Native American tribes. The Indian Head was the site of an ancient aquifer that breached the surface of the earth for only a short distance before returning to the earth through an opening in the earth. It location was central to the tribes of South Carolina. Early 20th century accounts of The Indian Head describe its waters as extremely cold by locals who were users of well water and springs in the same region. The water from The Indian Head likely came from a deeper place in the earth.
An upcoming book, THE INDIAN HEAD, South Carolina’s Ancient Meeting Place, by Michael J. Jeffcoat offers detailed and documented information about this important historic site from the middle 16th century through the late 19th century. Jeffcoat explains that The Indian Head was a descriptive name given to the place by the English of a place that existed before colonization. The area of Indian Head Branch, a.k.a Big Pond Branch, became profoundly more significant as a community after the township act of 1736 which excluded its large and established multi-cultural population from the government sponsored inhabitants of the townships. The book explains why this place was significant during the period from the American Revolution through to the Civil War. It provides very important information about key genealogies including Martin, Hoover, Williamson, Jackson, McGillivray, Jeffcoat and many others.
Find out what's happening in Lexingtonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The book contains numerous first hand descriptions of The Indian Head from the middle of the 1700s to the 1900s and connects the history of this place and these early families to important historical events and our country's early leaders including George Washington, John Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Pickens, Andrew Williamson, Alexander McGillivray, Benjamin Hawkins and many others.
By the end of the 18th century it became necessary for Native Americans and those partially Native Americans to assimilate into a growing European-American culture as a way to preserve lands and heritage. The use of the term “Indian Head” was replaced with “Big Pond Branch and “Little River” as just one way of protecting and preserving this place and its heritage.
The discovery of THE INDIAN HEAD is of major significance to South Carolina and United States history. The book illuminates for the first time the history and influence of an important multi-cultural community and the challenges it faced to survive during and after the creation of the new government of the United States.
The following is an excerpt from the book, THE INDIAN HEAD, South Carolina's Ancient Meeting Place:
There are known ancient meeting places throughout the world. Many of these are at sites of geographic significance and some, like Stonehenge in England, are manmade, monuments that reflect man’s ingenuity and desire to claim his position in relationship to the earth’s natural wonders. In North America, the indigenous people of these lands known as Native Americans found special meaning in the natural features of the earth. It was at these places they often met, camped or settled given that appropriate resources to sustain life were present or nearby. Evidence of this can be found at basic natural features like Carolina Bays. There were values assigned to these places depending on what the site offered. There were neutral “high ground” meeting places like mesas that allowed leaders or members of different tribes to meet in the open as an added means of security, allowing them to see far distances to avoid surprise attacks. There were also places with natural wonders that symbolized a presence or place of the “Great Spirit”. These “places of the Great Spirit” made excellent neutral meeting places for leaders or members of different tribes. Some of these places provided security through seclusion. In addition, these places of significant natural feature were landmarks to define the location of resources, points of travel and to define territories. Like the Greek agoras and the Roman curias the scale of the meeting place often reflected the number of people who could attend at one time. The smaller meeting places accommodated few people and was a reflection of a place where meetings of higher importance were held.
In the United States at the “heart” of the state of South Carolina, in the state’s oldest geological region was a small and ancient meeting place. It was known in the 18th century by its English name as THE INDIAN HEAD. It was located at a unique water feature where leaders of Native American tribes came to meet. This water feature was a place where water breached the surface of the earth and ran across the surface a short distance before returning to the earth. While what it exactly symbolized to the Native Americans may never be known, it is possible that it symbolized a “circle of life” where all things coming from the earth, return to the earth.
Analysis of the existing tribes within the state of South Carolina in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries shows that The Indian Head was in an area that was central to many of the tribes and at a center point between the Congaree and Savannah Rivers slightly above the north fork of the Edisto River. It was located approximately center point, between the Fall Line/ Sand Hills region of the Upper Coastal Plain and the Orangeburgh Scarp. It was near the crossing point of ancient main paths that ran east from the South Carolina coast to Mississippi and points further west and, that ran from the north to the south. These paths were used for travel and for trade for many centuries. By most definitions and at many levels, The Indian Head was at the center of a regional “super culture” of tribes.
”The Indian Head”, is an English name that appears on government and private documents in the 18th century. The origin of the name in English suggests that the name is descriptive of a particular place significant to Native American activity as would have been chronicled by early British inhabitants or visitors of this region. It is likely that the place became of diminishing importance to these tribes after 1683/4 when the Caciques of the Native American tribes conveyed the land comprising most of the state to the British. It is not known when The Indian Head was no longer used as a meeting place by the tribes but it is likely that it was at some point after the conveyance and before the middle of the 18th century.
A map by Mouzon, dated 1775, showing the location of the townships formed by the townships acts of 1736 provides that The Indian Head existed in a “cone-shaped” region between the townships of Orangeburgh, Amelia, and Saxe Gotha and, between the Congaree River and the north fork of the Edisto River. The “cone” is very narrow along the Congaree River and much wider along the north fork of the Edisto River, as defined by the boundaries of the townships of Saxe Gotha and and Orangeburgh at point where they meet the river. The orientation of the “cone” suggest an area of controlled passage from the north approach at the Congaree. The Indian Head rested in the larger Orangeburgh District which rested mostly in a larger area known as Bull Swamp, an early and informal tribute to the members of the Bull family who for generations demonstrated a concern for the welfare of these indigenous people. Later, in the 19th century “The Indian Head” would eventually rest in a much smaller region and perhaps as a final tribute and act of preservation of the place and the legacy of the Bull family, in a newly formed township named Bull Swamp Township which is present day Swansea, South Carolina.
Perhaps, The Indian Head’s greatest legacy is shrouded in an intriguing and, until the writing of the book, unsolved mystery about the colonial settlement at Big Pond Branch. At the time of the Civil War, the settlement was of significant industry and development. It has been described as a “self-contained community and economy”. Today, a couple of colonial structures and structures of the early to middle 19th century still exist. One central question has been asked by scholars, historians and others interested in its history. The question most people ask when knowing the history is why the settlement was not destroyed by Sherman’s troops despite the presence of these troops at the edge of the settlement. The settlement was left untouched by Sherman’s “scorched- earth” campaign while the surrounding towns of Orangeburg, Lexington and Columbia were destroyed. The answer to this mystery and this central question are found in the significance of The Indian Head’s centuries-long history prior to the Civil War.
For The Indian Head, her existence and the facts of her history were fleeting like her life sustaining waters which were brought to the surface for only a short time before returning to the depths of the earth. Through forensic research across many disciplines her history like her once significant waters surge up for the first time to reveal a history spanning thousands of years and involving influential men of each modern period including our greatest Native American leaders, Lachlan McGillivray and Alexander McGillivray, fathers of our colonial backcountry like Andrew Pickens and Benjamin Hawkins and, four United States Presidents. The influence of these men is woven around the everyday lives of the earliest indigenous people of the backcountry and the earliest European settlers to provide a history that has been as unknown yet significant as The Indian Head.
The implications created by the known existence of The Indian Head are vast and far reaching across many types of studies. It was a physical place but today it is an information crossroads connecting the past, the present and the future through knowledge that can be gathered. There is a diversity of significant information across multiple cultures to be gleaned, studied and utilized. There are anthropological, archeological, geographical, geological, genealogical, ethnological, economical, political and theological data to be harvested. From understanding ancient civilizations that once occupied the lands of the United States to the shaping of a Euro-American culture that became the dominant force of the present day “America”, The Indian Head, its known purpose and its course to obscurity, provide valuable and inexhaustible information from the perspective of each beholder.
All who ever touched the waters of “The Indian Head” described it in astonishment as “ICE COLD!” These local individuals were very familiar with the cold spring and well waters of the region in which they lived.
“The Indian Head” known today as Little River (now extinct) was a unique water feature where water surged from the ground and ran about five times as long as it was wide before returning to the earth. It rests on private lands. This place and surrounding lands are largely owned in 2013 by the descendants of the earliest known land holders of the 18th century. The region remains obscure and private as it has for centuries.
The book, THE INDIAN HEAD, South Carolina’s Ancient Meeting Place is scheduled for publication by summer of 2014.
Questions or comments can be emailed to michaeljjeffcoat@gmail.com
or call 704.451.0480
THE INDIAN HEAD, South Carolina's Ancient Meeting Place Is Rediscovered
In 2012, the colonial settlement at Big Pond Branch in Lexington County, South Carolina, once part of the Orangeburgh District, received historic recognition. Michael Jeffcoat, forensic historian, writer and lead researcher on the historic project said that the rediscovery of the colonial settlement was just the "tip of the iceberg" and that more discoveries were yet to come. Recently, he released his documented historical findings which place Lexington County and the state of South Carolina at the center of the discovery of a major Native American site, THE INDIAN HEAD, a place so profoundly unique that it is likely the only known ancient meeting place of its kind in North America. The discovery links explorers from the 16th century and major political figures of the revolutionary period and 19th century to this place at the geographical heart of South Carolina.
Big Pond Branch was not always known as Big Pond Branch. There was a history before the mid to late 1700s when it was a place first inhabited by indigenous people or Native Americans and then later, before the colonial period and during the early part of the colonial period, by a multi-cultural population. It is during the transition periods when the population went from exclusively Native American to a combined culture of European Traders and Native Americans, that Big Pond Branch was known as Indian Head Branch. The aquifer at the head of the branch and that fed the branch was known as The Indian Head and later, just before 1800, it came to be known as Little River.
The discovery of The Indian Head is significant for many reasons. The most significant reason is that it helps confirm local legend and tradition that told of an ancient meeting place for the heads of various Native American tribes. The Indian Head was the site of an ancient aquifer that breached the surface of the earth for only a short distance before returning to the earth through an opening in the earth. It location was central to the tribes of South Carolina. Early 20th century accounts of The Indian Head describe its waters as extremely cold by locals who were users of well water and springs in the same region. The water from The Indian Head likely came from a deeper place in the earth.
An upcoming book, THE INDIAN HEAD, South Carolina’s Ancient Meeting Place, by Michael J. Jeffcoat offers detailed and documented information about this important historic site from the middle 16th century through the late 19th century. Jeffcoat explains that The Indian Head was a descriptive name given to the place by the English of a place that existed before colonization. The area of Indian Head Branch, a.k.a Big Pond Branch, became profoundly more significant as a community after the township act of 1736 which excluded its large and established multi-cultural population from the government sponsored inhabitants of the townships. The book explains why this place was significant during the period from the American Revolution through to the Civil War. It provides very important information about key genealogies including Martin, Hoover, Williamson, Jackson, McGillivray, Jeffcoat and many others.
The book contains numerous first hand descriptions of The Indian Head from the middle of the 1700s to the 1900s and connects the history of this place and these early families to important historical events and our country's early leaders including George Washington, John Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Pickens, Andrew Williamson, Alexander McGillivray, Benjamin Hawkins and many others.
By the end of the 18th century it became necessary for Native Americans and those partially Native Americans to assimilate into a growing European-American culture as a way to preserve lands and heritage. The use of the term “Indian Head” was replaced with “Big Pond Branch and “Little River” as just one way of protecting and preserving this place and its heritage.
The discovery of THE INDIAN HEAD is of major significance to South Carolina and United States history. The book illuminates for the first time the history and influence of an important multi-cultural community and the challenges it faced to survive during and after the creation of the new government of the United States.
The following is an excerpt from the book, THE INDIAN HEAD, South Carolina's Ancient Meeting Place:
There are known ancient meeting places throughout the world. Many of these are at sites of geographic significance and some, like Stonehenge in England, are manmade, monuments that reflect man’s ingenuity and desire to claim his position in relationship to the earth’s natural wonders. In North America, the indigenous people of these lands known as Native Americans found special meaning in the natural features of the earth. It was at these places they often met, camped or settled given that appropriate resources to sustain life were present or nearby. Evidence of this can be found at basic natural features like Carolina Bays. There were values assigned to these places depending on what the site offered. There were neutral “high ground” meeting places like mesas that allowed leaders or members of different tribes to meet in the open as an added means of security, allowing them to see far distances to avoid surprise attacks. There were also places with natural wonders that symbolized a presence or place of the “Great Spirit”. These “places of the Great Spirit” made excellent neutral meeting places for leaders or members of different tribes. Some of these places provided security through seclusion. In addition, these places of significant natural feature were landmarks to define the location of resources, points of travel and to define territories. Like the Greek agoras and the Roman curias the scale of the meeting place often reflected the number of people who could attend at one time. The smaller meeting places accommodated few people and was a reflection of a place where meetings of higher importance were held.
In the United States at the “heart” of the state of South Carolina, in the state’s oldest geological region was a small and ancient meeting place. It was known in the 18th century by its English name as THE INDIAN HEAD. It was located at a unique water feature where leaders of Native American tribes came to meet. This water feature was a place where water breached the surface of the earth and ran across the surface a short distance before returning to the earth. While what it exactly symbolized to the Native Americans may never be known, it is possible that it symbolized a “circle of life” where all things coming from the earth, return to the earth.
Analysis of the existing tribes within the state of South Carolina in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries shows that The Indian Head was in an area that was central to many of the tribes and at a center point between the Congaree and Savannah Rivers slightly above the north fork of the Edisto River. It was located approximately center point, between the Fall Line/ Sand Hills region of the Upper Coastal Plain and the Orangeburgh Scarp. It was near the crossing point of ancient main paths that ran east from the South Carolina coast to Mississippi and points further west and, that ran from the north to the south. These paths were used for travel and for trade for many centuries. By most definitions and at many levels, The Indian Head was at the center of a regional “super culture” of tribes.
”The Indian Head”, is an English name that appears on government and private documents in the 18th century. The origin of the name in English suggests that the name is descriptive of a particular place significant to Native American activity as would have been chronicled by early British inhabitants or visitors of this region. It is likely that the place became of diminishing importance to these tribes after 1683/4 when the Caciques of the Native American tribes conveyed the land comprising most of the state to the British. It is not known when The Indian Head was no longer used as a meeting place by the tribes but it is likely that it was at some point after the conveyance and before the middle of the 18th century.
A map by Mouzon, dated 1775, showing the location of the townships formed by the townships acts of 1736 provides that The Indian Head existed in a “cone-shaped” region between the townships of Orangeburgh, Amelia, and Saxe Gotha and, between the Congaree River and the north fork of the Edisto River. The “cone” is very narrow along the Congaree River and much wider along the north fork of the Edisto River, as defined by the boundaries of the townships of Saxe Gotha and and Orangeburgh at point where they meet the river. The orientation of the “cone” suggest an area of controlled passage from the north approach at the Congaree. The Indian Head rested in the larger Orangeburgh District which rested mostly in a larger area known as Bull Swamp, an early and informal tribute to the members of the Bull family who for generations demonstrated a concern for the welfare of these indigenous people. Later, in the 19th century “The Indian Head” would eventually rest in a much smaller region and perhaps as a final tribute and act of preservation of the place and the legacy of the Bull family, in a newly formed township named Bull Swamp Township which is present day Swansea, South Carolina.
Perhaps, The Indian Head’s greatest legacy is shrouded in an intriguing and, until the writing of the book, unsolved mystery about the colonial settlement at Big Pond Branch. At the time of the Civil War, the settlement was of significant industry and development. It has been described as a “self-contained community and economy”. Today, a couple of colonial structures and structures of the early to middle 19th century still exist. One central question has been asked by scholars, historians and others interested in its history. The question most people ask when knowing the history is why the settlement was not destroyed by Sherman’s troops despite the presence of these troops at the edge of the settlement. The settlement was left untouched by Sherman’s “scorched- earth” campaign while the surrounding towns of Orangeburg, Lexington and Columbia were destroyed. The answer to this mystery and this central question are found in the significance of The Indian Head’s centuries-long history prior to the Civil War.
For The Indian Head, her existence and the facts of her history were fleeting like her life sustaining waters which were brought to the surface for only a short time before returning to the depths of the earth. Through forensic research across many disciplines her history like her once significant waters surge up for the first time to reveal a history spanning thousands of years and involving influential men of each modern period including our greatest Native American leaders, Lachlan McGillivray and Alexander McGillivray, fathers of our colonial backcountry like Andrew Pickens and Benjamin Hawkins and, four United States Presidents. The influence of these men is woven around the everyday lives of the earliest indigenous people of the backcountry and the earliest European settlers to provide a history that has been as unknown yet significant as The Indian Head.
The implications created by the known existence of The Indian Head are vast and far reaching across many types of studies. It was a physical place but today it is an information crossroads connecting the past, the present and the future through knowledge that can be gathered. There is a diversity of significant information across multiple cultures to be gleaned, studied and utilized. There are anthropological, archeological, geographical, geological, genealogical, ethnological, economical, political and theological data to be harvested. From understanding ancient civilizations that once occupied the lands of the United States to the shaping of a Euro-American culture that became the dominant force of the present day “America”, The Indian Head, its known purpose and its course to obscurity, provide valuable and inexhaustible information from the perspective of each beholder.
All who ever touched the waters of “The Indian Head” described it in astonishment as “ICE COLD!” These local individuals were very familiar with the cold spring and well waters of the region in which they lived.
“The Indian Head” known today as Little River (now extinct) was a unique water feature where water surged from the ground and ran about five times as long as it was wide before returning to the earth. It rests on private lands. This place and surrounding lands are largely owned in 2013 by the descendants of the earliest known land holders of the 18th century. The region remains obscure and private as it has for centuries.
The book, THE INDIAN HEAD, South Carolina’s Ancient Meeting Place is scheduled for publication in 2014.
Questions or comments can be emailed to bpbhrs@gmail.com