a wordPee Dee

The river and the region. The Pee Dee rises in the North Carolina mountains as the Yadkin, takes the name Pee Dee below the mouth of the Uwharrie, crosses into South Carolina and reaches the sea at Winyah Bay. The region is the state's north-east corner — Chesterfield, Darlington, Dillon, Florence, Marlboro and Marion counties always, Horry, Georgetown and Williamsburg usually. Its barbecue is whole hog over hardwood coals, sometimes skinned first with the skin fried, and a sauce of vinegar, salt and pepper that Wikipedia calls virtually identical to eastern North Carolina's.

The people gave the river its name and the river gave it to the land. The Pedee were a Southeastern Woodlands people of the South Carolina Piedmont and the river valley, part of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture — the mound-building culture of the Southeast, about 1000 to 1500 — and numbered about 600 in 1600; their language was never written down, and the name's meaning is a guess. Four state-recognized tribes claim their descent. Its barbecue is the whole hog. The South Carolina Encyclopedia gives the Pee Dee sauce as 'watery thin and fiery hot pepper and vinegar concoctions'; the Wikipedia article on South Carolina barbecue calls the vinegar sauce heavily based on Native American basting sauces, a claim it makes without a document behind it. Scott's Variety Store and Bar-B-Q opened in Hemingway in 1972 and became known for whole-hog platters; Rodney Scott grew up at its pit and took the Pee Dee hog to Charleston in 2017. Kingstree holds a Pig Pickin' festival every fall for Williamsburg County's vinegar barbecue. Inference — the Pee Dee and Down East are one barbecue country cut by a state line.