The Santee National Wildlife Refuge includes a site on the Santee River that was once a major Native American ceremonial center, centered on a pyramidal, flat-topped mound used as an earthen platform for a temple of upright posts, woven sticks, mud plaster, and thatched straw roofing, and also used for burials. Historical documents and archaeological investigations indicate that such centers served as major religious and political hubs, with villages and farmsteads spreading many miles outward, and archaeologists suspect this center was begun sometime between 1200 A.D. and 1400 A.D. as part of the eastern extension of mound-building culture; the mound complex, the largest ceremonial center yet discovered on the coastal plain, represents a hub of late prehistoric activity in the area. Built atop this Indian mound, Fort Watson was a small British outpost strategically placed near the Santee River and overland roads linking the coast to the interior, protecting supply routes from Charleston to Camden. Constructed by British Colonel John W.T. Watson and occupied from December 1780 to April 1781, the fort was besieged after American forces under General Francis Marion and Colonel "Light Horse" Harry Lee arrived on April 15, 1781, cut off supplies, and trapped more than one hundred twenty British troops without provisions. After several days of stalemate, Major Hezekiah Maham proposed a log tower from which riflemen could fire down into the fort; begun on April 21 and completed in two days, "Maham's Tower" made the fort vulnerable, and Lieutenant James McKay surrendered on the afternoon of April 23, ending the eight-day siege and contributing to the weakening of British supply lines and their abandonment of South Carolina's backcountry. Established in 1942 in Clarendon County, South Carolina, the refuge covers 15,000 acres within the Atlantic Coastal Plain and includes mixed hardwoods, mixed pine-hardwoods, pine plantations, marsh, croplands, old fields, ponds, and open water. Its four management units extend more than 18 miles along the northern side of Lake Marion and support a wide variety of wildlife, including bald eagles, occasional peregrine falcons, migrating waterfowl such as mallards, pintails, teal, wood ducks, and Canada geese, as well as hawks, songbirds, white-tailed deer, raccoons, squirrels, bobcats, alligators, and other reptiles and amphibians. The refuge is part of the National Wildlife Refuge System, a national network of lands and waters managed for the conservation of fish, wildlife, and plant resources of the United States for present and future generations.