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This 18th-century engraving depicts a violent conflict between Native Americans and English settlers in Carolina, dated April 19, 1715, and subsequent days, referring to the Yamasee War. The detailed scene shows a chaotic battle, with Native Americans engaging English soldiers, buildings in the background burning, and ships visible in the harbor. The brutality of the scene is emphasized by the fallen figures and the intense struggle portrayed in the foreground.

The engraving is divided by a bilingual caption in Dutch and Latin, explaining the ferocity of the attack and the number of people who perished. The caption in Dutch reads: De gruwelyke aanvallen der Indianen op de Engelsche in Carolina, in West-Indien, op den 19 April 1715, en enige volgende dagen: in welke actie de Barbaren veel Menschen wreedelyk hebben mishandelt, while the Latin version states: Incursus Indorum in Anglos in insula Carolina 19 Aprilis et insequentibus diebus. Quo impetu magnus hominum numerus peremptus est.

This engraving formed the upper left image in a sheet of nine images related to the colonial Indian conflicts, published by the Dutch cartographer and engraver Pieter Schenk in Amsterdam. Such prints were intended to inform European audiences of events in the distant colonies, often dramatizing the violence and peril faced by settlers.

Yamasee War

The Yamassee War was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715–1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee and a number of other allied Native American peoples, including the Muscogee, Cherokee, Catawba, Apalachee, Apalachicola, Yuchi, Savannah River Shawnee, Congaree, Waxhaw, Pee Dee, Cape Fear, Cheraw, and others. Some of the Native American groups played a minor role, while others launched attacks throughout South Carolina in an attempt to destroy the colony.

Native Americans killed hundreds of colonists and destroyed many settlements, and they killed traders throughout the southeastern region. Colonists abandoned the frontiers and fled to Charles Town, where starvation set in as supplies ran low. The survival of the South Carolina colony was in question during 1715. The tide turned in early 1716 when the Cherokee sided with the colonists against the Creek, their traditional enemy. The last Native American fighters withdrew from the conflict in 1717, bringing a fragile peace to the colony.

The Yamasee War was one of the most disruptive and transformational conflicts of colonial America. For more than a year, the colony faced the possibility of annihilation. About seven percent of South Carolina's settlers were killed, making the war one of the bloodiest wars in American history. The Yamasee War and its aftermath shifted the geopolitical situation of both the European colonies and native groups and contributed to the emergence of new Native American confederations, such as the Muscogee Creek and Catawba.

The origin of the war was complex, and reasons for fighting differed among the many Indian groups that participated. Factors included the trading system, trader abuses, the Indian slave trade, the depletion of deer, increasing Indian debts in contrast to increasing wealth among some colonists, the spread of rice plantation agriculture, French power in Louisiana offering an alternative to British trade, long-established Indian links to Spanish Florida, power struggles among Indian groups, and recent experiences in military collaboration among previously distant tribes.