(Updated February 7, 2022)
In response to an article about Northern Datha Island, a resident who has lived here thirty years (!) commented, “I have always questioned why ALCOA did not call the Island by its real name: Datha?”
Researching this question took me on a fascinating journey from a Muskogean Indian Chief to the King of Spain to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. In the end, I can provide this answer,
Dataw Island is the name of our development on a sea island in South Carolina called Datha Island.
What’s left for this journey is to explain why our sea island is called Datha Island and our development is called Dataw Island.
The Story Behind “Datha Island”
From the earliest days of European exploration of the Americas, a sea island in the Carolinas was associated with a legendary Native American named King Datha, thanks to an enslaved indigenous native called Francesco de Chicora and an Italian historian named Peter Martyr of Anghiera (Angleria in English). With the blessing of the Catholic Church, Martyr worked as the chaplain to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. He documented Spain’s discoveries in the Age of Exploration (15th to 17th century) while serving Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and the King of Spain (Spanish refer to him as Charles I). One of those discoveries included Chicora, the Spanish name for today’s Carolinas coast.
The year was 1521. Lucas Vasquez de Ayllón was a colonial official working for Spain’s government in Hispaniola, an island in the West Indies. He commissioned Spanish explorer Francisco Gordillo to explore the southeastern coast of North America. On his journey north, he met slave trader Pedro de Quexos who joined the expedition. At the PeeDee River’s mouth, near Georgetown, S.C., they met indigenous natives and tricked several into joining them on their ships. Seventy natives were kidnapped and returned to work as enslaved people in Hispaniola. One of these enslaved became known as Francisco de Chicora.
Chicora, the person learned Spanish and was baptized Catholic. A few years later, Chicora accompanied Ayllón to Spain, where Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón presented him to the royal court. The royals were fascinated by tales of his homeland in the Carolinas. The court chronicler, an Italian historian Peter Martyr of Angleria (1457 – 1526), interviewed Francisco de Chicora and documented what he heard about the people’s customs and legends back in Chicora.
The good news is Peter Martyr wrote prolifically about what he learned from Francisco de Chicora and other Spanish explorers of the time. His original documents survive to this day. But to correctly interpret them takes a lifetime of scholarship.
You would read a set of Latin documents written by an Italian using a 16th-century vocabulary, describing people, places, flora, and fauna he’d never seen firsthand. However, Martyr’s writings are priceless to historians. His De Orbe Novo (On the New World, 1530) describes the first contact between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of eastern North America. Scholars quickly rose to the challenge and translated De Orbe Novo into English in 1555 and ultimately translated the De Orbe Novo again in 1912. From an analysis of the account recorded by Peter Martyr, the Smithsonian ethnographer John R. Swanton believed in 1912 that Francisco de Chicora was from the now-extinct Catawban people.
Here’s a bit of what Chicora told Martyr, verbatim from the 1912 translation of On the New World, Chapter 7 (i.e., Seventh Decade) published in 1530. Initially published in Latin, this excerpt is the first time in history the word Datha appears in print.
Ayllón says the natives are white men, and his testimony is confirmed by Francisco Chicorana. Their hair is brown and hangs to their heels. They are governed by a king of gigantic size, called Datha, whose wife is as large as himself. They have five children. In place of horses, the king is carried on the shoulders of strong young men, who run with him to the different places he wishes to visit.
How much of what Chicora told Ayllón, Martyr, and others is a fact, and how much is fiction is a debate that continues. It is probably true that an enslaved person was taken from the Carolina shores to Spain in the early 16th century. The etymological analysis of “Datha” is consistent with the indigenous people who lived in our South Carolina region. As for Francisco de Chicora, he returned with Lucas Vasquez de Ayllón to the Caribbean in 1526 and soon escaped. We assume he fled to rejoin his people, but in any case, he disappeared from the historical record.
We have to look at records about two hundred years later in the developing British Colonies to see the connection between King Datha and our island.
The Story Continues with DATHA & DATAW
To add some context to these facts, note that in 1530 an Italian, writing in Latin, spells it DATHA. The name was a Muskogean Indian word, and they were all perforce, phonetic. In addition, it was being spoken by someone we believe was from the now-extinct Catawban people to an Italian recorder. What could go wrong?
During subsequent years of discovery and colonization of the New World, the Spanish and English used many different phonetic spellings of the name, including DATA, DATHA, DAWTHAW, and DATAW, to name a few.
The first association of the name DATHA with our island under British rule was in November 1702 when Charles Odingsell transferred the title to Joseph Boone; street names may come to mind. The Spanish used the name for our particular island, and the French and British explorers carried it on as the proper indigenous people’s name for our sea island. In their Wills, William Sams, his wife Elizabeth Hext Sams, and their son Lewis Reeve Sams all referred to the island as DATHA Island.
However, DATAW was adopted by the U.S. Govt. during the Civil War and used officially from 1866 to 1926.
When Kate Gleason bought the island in 1928, she tried to return the spelling to the earliest form in the colonial 17th-century record, DATHA. Note, though, in her Will, it is spelled DAWTAW. Larry Rowland’s family owned the island from 1933 until it was sold to ALCOA in the early 1980s. He tells me they always knew it as DATHA Island. But to emphasize the point of variations in the written word, the Rowland Brothers conveyed the property to ALCOA South Carolina, Inc. on 14 Jan 1983. The deed book says, “Datha Island or Dathaw Island.” Oh well.
At this point, you might realize our island’s geographic name was more consistent when spoken than written. Enter ALCOA…
ALCOA South Carolina, Inc.
With the purchase of the island by ALCOA to build a residential planned community, marketing forces drove a possible name change. Fortunately, Larry Rowland was good friends with William Cochrane, the ALCOA VP responsible for the island’s development. Larry was instrumental in getting Mr. Cochrane to support a historically appropriate name for our community.
As a developer, ALCOA was focused on marketing this new development to buyers. But, unfortunately, the corporate office up north did not like using an unusual name that also was hard to pronounce correctly. Larry Rowland tells me Mr. Cochrane and another ALCOA executive, Dick Plowman, carried the day by pressing “.. the marketing value of our ancient and alluring history.”
Larry gave Bill Cochrane a list of candidates, and Bill chose DATAW, the name used for 50 years after the Civil War.
While cleaning out our DHF files last year, we found an interesting internal ALCOA memo dated 12 Nov 1984. It’s a memo from Arthur Levin to William Cochrane. You can see from the logo that ALCOA was calling this development DATAW Island at that point. However, you can also see many other variations of that name. (The pages attached to the memo below were from Waddell’s book.) This sentence caught my eye, “I have revised my letter to Dr. Orth, Geographic Names Division, Reston Virginia, to link Dataw with the correct pronunciation as opposed to one of the historical spellings of Dataw Island.” This led me to the USGS’s Board on Geographic Names. They are responsible for approving geographic names used on U.S. Maps.
US Board on Geographic Names
After ALCOA picked DATAW ISLAND for the development’s name, they tried to get the U.S. Government to change the geographic name of the sea island itself to match. The USGS’s Board on Geographic Names turned them down! The BGN’s official records say,
In 1986, The Developers Of The Community Proposed To The US Board On Geographic Names That The Name Of The Island Be Changed To Dataw Island, Citing At Least One Similar Historic Name (Dawtaw Island, Which Most Closely Approximates The Local Pronunciation), And The Confusion Concerning The Official Spelling Datha With Regard To The Pronunciation. The US Board Denied The Change Based Upon The Recommendation Of The South Carolina Historical Society And State Names Authority.
However, the BGN has a softer side to their official records. When I searched the USGS records online, I found they officially recognized variations on the name DATHA. They are DATAW and DAWTAW.
The U.S. Postal Service Weighs In
This evidence explains why modern maps use the USGS-approved geographic name Datha Island for our sea island. And why, depending on the context, you usually won’t get in trouble using Dataw Island. Here’s another reason why I feel comfortable saying this. The USPS recognizes our official geographic name (DATHA Island) and USGS variants. When I did a ZIP code search for DATAW Island 29920, these alternate names popped up: DATHA Island, DATAW Island, DAWTAW Island, and DATA Island.
Summary
Back to the comment that inspired this article, “I have always questioned why ALCOA did not call the island by its real name: Datha.”
The reason is pronunciation and marketing. ALCOA, in the person of William Cochrane, chose a different but still historically significant name, which he felt was easier to pronounce. Other ALCOA executives finally agreed with DATAW ISLAND.
They got what they wanted in the form of a recognized variant and something the Postal Service also recognizes. However, depending on your context, there is a subtle difference between DATHA and DATAW. From a geographic perspective, DATHA is the proper name of our sea island in South Carolina. From a community management perspective, DATAW Island is the name of our development.
DATAW Island is on DATHA Island
Historical context can play a factor in usage also. Therefore, I use “Datha Island” to describe people, places, or events when set here in the antebellum era. For instance, Dr. BB Sams might have written about his plantation, “DATHA Inlet is on DATHA Island.” He would never have written “DATAW Inlet on DATHA Island.”
The federal USGS record also says, “Datha Island – Named For A Muskogean Indian Chief; The Name Reportedly Means ‘Green Wood.’ The name for the Dataw Conservancy’s publication is more meaningful than you realized!
Remember when I told you Larry Rowland provided a list of historically significant names as possible candidates for our development’s name? One of those was SOMERSET, the Duke of Beaufort’s family name. Our development could have been SOMERSET on DATHA Island.
Sources
Martyr, Peter – On the New World, published 1530
https://archive.org/stream/deorbenovoeightd02angh/deorbenovoeightd02angh_djvu.txt
Rowland, Lawrence S., Moore, Alexander, Rogers Jr., George C. – The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, Volume I, 1514 – 1861, 1996. Chapter 2
Rowland to Riski – Name of Dataw, emails from Nov 2020 and Jan 2022.
U.S. Geological Survey’s Board on Geographic Names, an organization within the Department of Interior.
U.S. Postal Service
Wikipedia
Francisco de Chicora
Peter Martyr Anghiera
Duke of Beaufort
#52Sams Week 46 – Dataw Island on Datha Island