Career
There he volunteered to remain among the Indians to learn their language, and was given "formall possession of the whole Country to hold as Tennant att Will" of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina (Collections, post, p. 79), but the Spaniards shortly appeared and carried him off to Florida.
In 1668 he escaped with the buccaneer Robert Searles when the latter raided St. Augustine.
Woodward's unique services in exploration and Indian diplomacy began in 1670 with his journey inland to "Chufytachyqj" (Cofitachique?)
on the Santee.
He was early instructed by Lord Ashley, later Earl of Shaftesbury, to make private searches for gold and silver; and in 1671 he undertook a secret mission by land to Virginia.
In the fall of 1674 Woodward traveled alone to the town of the warlike Westo on the Savannah River, subsequently describing his journey in "A Faithful Relation of My Westoe Voiage" (Salley, post).
The alliance he then formed was for several years the cornerstone of Carolina Indian relations; with arms supplied by Woodward the Westo began their destructive raids against the Spanish missions in Guale (coastal Georgia).
In 1682 he went to England and secured pardon and reinstatement.
There he also obtained from the Proprietors an extraordinary commission to explore the interior beyond the Savannah River.
It would seem that Woodward had already established some sort of relations with the Lower Creeks, perhaps as early as 1675.
He now pressed the trading frontier of Carolina rapidly westward to their towns on the middle Chattahoochee.
There he precipitated a sharp conflict with Franciscan missionaries and Spanish soldiers from Apalache.
Woodward apparently never returned to the West, and probably died shortly after his greatest adventure.
Among his numerous distinguished descendants were Robert Y. Hayne and the poet Paul Hamilton Hayne [qq. v. ]
.
[J. W. Barnwell, "Dr. Henry Woodward, the First English Settler in S. C. , and Some of His Descendants, " S. C. Hist.
and Geneal.
Mag. , Jan. , July 1907; S. C. Hist.
Soc.
Colls. , vol.
V (1897); Woodward's "Faithfull Relation" in Narratives of Early Carolina (1911), ed.
by A. S. Salley, Jr. ; Cal.
of State Papers, Colonial Ser. , America and West Indies, 1669-88 (1889 - 99); H. E. Bolton and Mary Ross, The Debatable Land (1925); V. W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732 (1928), with references therein. ]
