The Waccamaw Indian People

History & community · 300 years at Dog Bluff — and a culture kept by law

The Waccamaw Indian People are South Carolina’s first state-recognized tribe, recognized by the State of South Carolina in 2005. In the tribe’s own words:

The Waccamaw Indian People are South Carolina’s first state-recognized tribe (2005), with over 300 years of continuous presence in the Dog Bluff community near Aynor. We preserve our cultural heritage, maintain tribal sovereignty, and support our community through educational programs, cultural events, and traditional practices.

More than 300 years at Dog Bluff

For over 300 years, the Waccamaw people have called the Dog Bluff community near Aynor, South Carolina, home. The tribal grounds are located at 591 Bluewater Rd, Aynor, SC. The tribe describes itself as a people with “a proud civil rights tradition we intend to carry forward.”

A living culture

The Waccamaw Indian People work to preserve their cultural heritage and maintain tribal sovereignty, supporting the community through educational programs, cultural events, and traditional practices. As the tribe puts it, their annual gathering “celebrates our living culture and welcomes visitors to experience authentic indigenous traditions.”

Community efforts described on the tribe’s site include cultural programs and classes, tribal meetings, youth education and Youth Days, school days, and community support services such as food bank and mobile pantry distributions.

The Annual Pauwau & Cultural Arts Festival

Each year the tribe hosts the Waccamaw Pauwau & Cultural Arts Festival on the Waccamaw Tribal Grounds in Aynor. The 34th Annual Pauwau is scheduled for November 7–8, 2026. The Pauwau is an open celebration of the tribe’s living culture and a welcome to visitors.

Culture, kept by law

Between the budgets and the bylaws, the tribe’s own resolutions keep writing its culture into law: a storyteller designated by resolution (2006) — an oral-tradition office created by written instrument; Waccamaw Day, established 2009, the tribe’s own holiday on its own calendar; the Pauwau committee made a standing, year-round body with its own tribal sub-account (2006–07); a committee for the Woccon language of the ancestors; even a policy for memorial tree plantings. Culture is what a people does — the record is where a people commits in writing to keep doing it.

The old ways, remembered

From the chief’s 2014 oral history, a register of tradition as lived practice:

“Making meat.” “We didn’t have a word that meant hunt. Our word meant making meat, and we felt like the only reason to take a life was to sustain life.”
The potato bank. His father preserved winter food the traditional way — holes lined with broom straw, dug in several places “because if you got an animal in there you didn’t want to lose everything you had… The dirt would insulate it from freezing. The straw would keep it from growing roots.”
Seashell graves. Fourteen miles from the ocean: “whenever you see a grave out and it’s got a bunch of seashells on it, that’s generally an Indian grave” — a southeastern tradition the Waccamaw keep.
The turtle pipe. The tribe’s catlinite pipe, carved by John Cox, carries a turtle; bowl and stem are “the blood of the ancestors and… the bones of the ancestors… you can’t allow them to touch because if they ever touch it has to be smoked.”
The marble. The chief’s theology, in one image: “everything that is alive is rolled into a big ball or marble… it doesn’t matter how small of a piece it is, and it doesn’t matter how far away from the anvil it flies. It’s always a piece of God, nature.”

Among the nations

The Waccamaw do not stand alone. The tribe is a party to a Treaty Alliance of South Carolina Native nations, and it acts in solidarity with other tribes — in 2026, for instance, Chief Hatcher composed a letter of support for the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation. Recognition, and the long fight for it, is a burden the region’s Native nations carry together.

Where they come from

The modern Waccamaw grew from the Dimery Settlement — 300 acres near Dog Bluff, bought back in 1813 by John and Elizabeth Dimery, and held for a century by a handful of families who were, in the era’s cruel phrase, “neither Black nor White.” → The Dimery Settlement

“We Are Still Here”

The tribe continues to pursue federal recognition and to share its story publicly. A phrase the community uses to sum up its spirit: #WeAreStillHere.

This exhibit draws on the Waccamaw Indian People’s own public website, waccamaw.org, and on Coastal Carolina University’s Waccamaw: Past, Present, Future project. A fuller history is being assembled in partnership with the tribe. See also The Dimery Settlement and The Long Fight.