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Coosa Tribe

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Coosa Indians. A small tribe, now extinct, which lived about the mouth of Edisto or Combahee River, South Carolina. Its name is preserved in Coosaw and Coosaw-hatchee rivers. According to Rivers1 they lived northeast of Combahee River, which separated them from the Combahee tribe. They appear to be identical with the Couexi of the Huguenot colonists (1562) and with the Coçao of Juan de la Vandera s narrative of 1569. They were hostile to the English in 1671; in 1675 the “great and lesser Casor” sold to the colonists a tract lying on Kiawah, Stono, and Edisto rivers; there is also record of a sale by the chief of Kissah” in 1684. They are mentioned as Kussoes in the South Carolina trade regulations of 1707, and last appear in 1743, under the name Coosah, as one of the tribes incorporated with the Catawba but still preserving their own language. It is possible that, like their neighbors the Yamasi, they were of Muskhogean stock. If not, they may have been Uchean rather than cognate with Catawba.


  1. Rivers, Hist. South Carolina, 94, 1874