Combahee

The Combahee is a short blackwater river in South Carolina’s southern Lowcountry. It forms where the Salkehatchie and Little Salkehatchie meet near Islandton in Colleton County, then flows through forest and wetland toward Saint Helena Sound near Beaufort. Its lower basin joins the Ashepoo and Edisto to form the ACE Basin. Slow water, broad floodplain, tide, and dense vegetation made the river a route through territory better suited to boats and small landings than to long overland journeys.

The river is named for the Combahee, an Indigenous people of the Cusabo group. Europeans occupied the area from the 1680s, and land along several rivers was set aside for the Yemassee; skirmishes occurred there during the Yemassee War of 1715–1717. On 27 August 1782, one of the Revolutionary War’s last fights took place when British foragers met Americans under Mordecai Gist and John Laurens, who died in the action. Before the Civil War, the river watered some of the South’s largest and most productive rice plantations. Waterway, timber and plantation therefore meet in the Combahee’s quiet course.