“The Yamasee or Jamassi, was one of a small number of isolated tribes, dark complexion found widely scattered among the inhabitants of North and South America. Supposed to have been immigrants from Africa prior to the European discovery of America (see Human Species, by A. De Quatrefages). If this is so, it explains why D’Alyon persisted in slave hunting about Beaufort (1520), these negroes being valuable as laborers, while Indians were worthless. It was strange too if negroes first occupied this section where they now predominate.”
Source: Indians: the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory: The Cherokee …By the United States. Census Office. 11th Census, 1890
“Armond de Quartrefages, an anthropologist at the Museum of National History in Paris, in his book The Human Species, wrote that black inhabitants were found in small numbers and isolated areas in America. Some examples were the Jamassi (Yamassee) of Florida, the Harruas of Brazil (Uruguay), the black Caribs of Saint Vincent on the Gulf of Mexico and the black Zuni of present Arizona and Mexico. In Columbus Journal of the Third Voyage, he said he wanted to find out about the black people the Indians told him about. Indians were found farming yams and taro, an African food, while the Portuguese explorers in Africa saw natives cultivating maize, an Indian product. The Pima Indian tribe, Arizona members of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages of the Southwestern area of the United States, now living in Southern Arizona, have been identified as speaking a Semitic language. Analysis of the language of the Pima Indians revealed that it may be derived from Phonecian Iberian Punic colonist who settled in America from the Basque area of Spain between 800 and 600 B.C. Inscriptions in the Zuni language of Mimbres pottery as well as certain mystic symbols have been discovered to bear a close resemblance to the North African group of languages used in the ancient kingdom of Libya.“
“A most peculiar thing is this Quatrelages in his book on the human race asserts the fact that the African lived on these islands long before the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. He is of high authority, and he says that the Yamasee Indians were Negroes, what was known afterward as the fiercest of the Indian tribes of the South–the well known Yamasee Indians were “Africans“. ” (By Mr. Phillips.) Is it a fact that they were much darker than the other Indians? Yes; it is a fact. Q. And the hair was different, too?–A. So it is stated by one of the most distinguished ethnologists in the world.Another corroborative proof is that the Spaniards found that 1 negro was equal to 10 Indians for work, and they, therefore, imported these Indian Negroes and carried them to the West Indies to experiment with.”
