How the Reedy River got its name: Field Notes with Dennis Chastain

Reedy River Falls is the wildly popular, naturally beautiful centerpiece of the modern city of Greenville, but the story of how the river got its name goes back to the time when South Carolina was a British colony, and the Cherokee still occupied the entire upcountry of the Palmetto State.

In 1766, the Cherokee War had finally come to an end, and both the Cherokee and the colonial government sought to establish a line that separated the area open to settlement by European immigrants from that reserved for the Cherokee. That line, which is still the boundary between Anderson and Abbeville counties, ran from a point on the Savannah River to a tree on the “Reedy” river in southern Greenville County. The word “reedy” referred, then as it does now, to our native bamboo, the Southern canebrake cane (Arundinaria gigantea), also known as river cane. There are two other species (A. tecta and A. appalachiana), known as switch cane or hill cane, respectively.

If you look around, you will see the words “cane” and “reed” used interchangeably in place names all around the Southeast. In our area, there is Reedy Fork in southern Greenville County, the Long Canes area of Abbeville County, and the Caney Fork community in western North Carolina, for example. Anytime you see the words “reed,” “cane” or “canebrake” in a place name in our area, it typically refers to the Southern canebrake cane.

A canebrake was an area occupied almost exclusively by dense stands of cane. Now a largely extinct habitat type, canebrakes historically dominated the fertile floodplains along rivers and streams throughout the South. Wade Hampton III was an avid deer and bear hunter, and he described the canebrakes along the upper Savannah River as being a half-mile wide on both sides of the river.

Canebrakes began disappearing when the Cherokee ceded their former territory in the Carolinas. For centuries, they had actively managed the riverine habitats by burning the woods annually, suppressing the hardwoods that would have overshadowed and displaced the canes.

The word “canebrake” is also sometimes used as a place name. The Revolutionary War battle of the Great Canebrake took place in southern Greenville County. At the point where the state line crosses Lake Jocassee, a storied community known as the Canebrake dated back to the very early 1900s.

One of the most important plants in daily Cherokee life was river cane. They used it to make furniture, sleeping mats, arrows, spears, flutes, pipe stems and blow guns. It was also used for baskets, including the elongated fish baskets used to harvest shad that once migrated each spring from the Atlantic Ocean up all our major rivers.

Canebrakes were an important habitat type, but the role they played as a food source for wildlife is often greatly exaggerated. I have seen numerous documents proclaiming that the Carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon went extinct because they relied heavily on the seeds from cane — a ridiculous proposition. Canebrake canes do, in fact, produce inconspicuous flowers and seeds, but only about every 30 to 40 years.

Now you know the answer the next time someone asks, “I wonder how the Reedy River got its name?”

Dennis Chastain is a Pickens County naturalist, historian and former tour guide. He has been writing feature articles for South Carolina Wildlife magazine and other outdoor publications since 1989.