The Sewee language is a poorly attested and unclassified language once spoken by the Sewee, a historical Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands from present-day South Carolina.
Vocabulary Some Sewee words were recorded in 1670Waddell, Gene. 1980. Indians of the South Carolina lowcountry 1562–1751. Columbia, SC: Southern Studies Program, University of South Carolina. by Nicholas Carteret and William Owen.Cheves, Langdon (ed.). 1897. The Shaftesbury papers and other records relating to Carolina and the first settlement on Ashley River prior to the year 1676. (Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society 5). Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society.
appada ‘friend’ (?) (recorded by Carteret) hiddie dod ‘a word of great kindness among them’ (recorded by Owen) hiddeskeh ‘sickly’ (recorded by Owen) ‘English very good friends, Westoes are nought’ (recorded by Carteret) ( is a Spanish loanword, from 'comrade')
Based on the geographical location of the Sewee people, Zamponi (2024) hypothesizes that the Sewee language may have been a Siouan-Catawban language, although he could not find any evidence of Siouan-Catawban morphemes in any attested Sewee words and phrases.
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