Plantation slavery in the Lowcountry, South Carolina’s coastal area, first emerged in the late 1600s as English colonizers stole the territory of Native peoples like the Etiwan, Kiawah and others, whose names still mark locations in the region. By the mid-1700s, enslaved workers of African descent cultivated crops such as rice, sea island cotton and indigo. In 1770, the 80,000 enslaved Africans then living in the colony had made their enslavers among the richest men in Colonial North America. For enslaved people, though, child mortality was high, and life expectancy low due to the pace and danger of their work.
