This story is excerpted from an interview conducted in Bennettsville in October 2026

Speaker 1: It’s it’s a very sad story, and and one of the things, and one of the reasons I jumped into that the history of settlement Indians is because there’s a lot of discrimination towards a lot of the tribes on the East Coast. Because a lot of people, especially in the West and Western communities, they look at our tribes and kind of view us as being imposters in some ways. Yeah, because many of us are very mixed. We were we were some of the most the first contact tribes, and there was a paper genocide that had occurred because of our changing legal status as settlement Indians, and you know it’s such a complex history that often gets overlooked, even within the Native history world. Yeah, and being descended from the Native communities from the PD River and the Edisto River, I find that to be very paramount that we tell this story, because it’s it’s been forgotten and not told for for so long. 

Savannah Turgal: Yeah, well, that was really beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you. Is there anything else that you want to say? The floor is yours. 

Speaker 1: Thank you. I just wanted to share that here in South Carolina, we have multiple state recognized tribes. I would try to list all of them off the top of my head, but we’re scattered throughout the state. Many of us have a shared kinship between 

Savannah Turgal: us, 

Speaker 1: but we’re still here. We’re still fighting for visibility. We’re still fighting to show our history. 

Savannah Turgal: Yeah, 

Speaker 1:  and you know, no matter what tribe you go to, you’ll always have someone who’d be happy to talk about tribal history and share because that’s one of the most important things: is to be able to tell our stories and and show our history. So thank you so much.