The ancient Waccamaw were river dwellers and inhabited the riverbanks from Lake Waccamaw, North Carolina all the way to Winyah Bay near Georgetown, South Carolina. They may have even been one of the first mainland Natives introduced to Europeans, demonstrating their journey began long before they were officially recognized. The Europeans nearly wiped out the Waccamaw natives when they brought over unfamiliar diseases; the rest were forced into slavery. After the Emancipation Proclamation, in which President Abraham Lincoln ordered all slaves to be freed, thousands of Indians left the cotton fields alongside African Americans.
The South Carolina Waccamaw descended from a community known as the Dimery Settlement and have long inhabited northeastern South Carolina. The Waccamaw Indians of Conway, South Carolina are descendants of people who lived and farmed in the area now known as Dog Bluff. The Dimery settlement existed as a separate community for many years until October 1992 when a formal non-profit organization to protect their history and traditions was created. They became officially recognized as South Carolina’s first Indian tribe in 2005.
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