Horse Creek Valley

Horse Creek Valley is a geographic area along Horse Creek, a tributary of the Savannah River. It lies within present-day Aiken County, South Carolina (prior to 1872, in Edgefield District / Edgefield County). The area is alternately referred to as "Midland Valley". Rising near Vaucluse, South Carolina, Horse Creek enters the Savannah two miles downstream of downtown Augusta, Georgia. Other communities along Horse Creek include Graniteville, Warrenville, Gloverville, Langley, Burnettown, Bath, and Clearwater. While Horse Creek itself is rather insignificant, its potential for water power led to early examples of Southern industrialization, including a textile mill at Vaucluse (1830) and William Gregg's Graniteville Mill (1845). The textile industry continued to play a primary role until the Graniteville Train Derailment and final closure of the Graniteville Mill in 2006.

Henry Woodward recorded Westo Indians in the area during his pioneering travels from Charleston in 1674. The Westoes were already well connected with slaveholders in Virginia and terrorized neighboring tribes by their slave raids. The South Carolinians eventually foresaw more profit in trade than in these slave raids, and engineered an overthrow of the Westos in a 1690 trade war, after which the area was briefly occupied by Shawnee (Savannahs) (Bowne 2005). In 1723 the South Carolina Assembly invited the Chickasaw to occupy the area. Located in northern Mississippi, the Chickasaw relied on South Carolina as a source of guns, and agreed to send a colony under the so-called Squirrel King. In 1737 they were allocated a 21,774-acre (8,812 ha) tract along the northern/western bank of Horse Creek, extending from the Savannah River up to Vaucluse. These Chickasaws actively collaborated with the English in the defense of this area, especially during the Cherokee War in 1760. The Chickasaw returned to their homeland shortly before the American Revolutionary War (Cashin 2009: 11-36, 107-123).

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