The Gullah/Geechee Nation:
A Hidden Culture Revealed
Hunnah mus tek cyare de root fa heal de tree. (Queen Quet)
Elizabeth Hines
Geography & Geology
UNC Wilmington, 2011
Gullah Geechee Highlights
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Gullah Geechee people are the descendants of slaves who
were brought from West Africa to the Low Country Sea
Islands of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.
They had cultivated upland, alluvial, and tidal rice in West
Africa for centuries
Their contributions to rice agriculture and, thus, the
economy of the old plantation South has only recently been
acknowledged outside of their culture
Gullah is thought to be derived from Gola, people of the
Sierra Leone/Liberian border, one of the hearths of rice
domestication in Africa
Geechee likely refers to the Kissi people (whose name is
pronounced “Geezee”), also from the West African grain
coast
Atlas of Antebellum Agriculture
Sam Bowers Hilliard
The Gullah Museum,
Pawley’s Island, SC
Queen Quet, Marquetta Goodwine, the elected
Sovereign of the Gullah/Geechee Nation
The Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor
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Gullah/Geechee Commission was established by Congress
in 2006
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S.C. U.S. Representative Jim Clyburn, the first African
American congressman in S.C. since Reconstruction,
introduced and supported the bill
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The mission is to preserve the culture, which is vanishing
in the face of development and modernity.
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The project is administered by the National Parks Service
and expected to be funded with $10 million.
Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage
Corridor Planning Area
of the NPS.
2006
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21 public meetings in each state established the corridor
from Wilmington, NC to Jacksonville, FL
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Stretching over 340 miles and reaching 30 miles inland
(12,000 square miles), including all or part of 30 counties in
four states
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1,000 sites catalogued by 2010
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250,000 Gullah estimated in the four states
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10,000 estimated still speaking Gullah, a Creole language
2010
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The Commission took comments from the public until
October 26, 2010
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Then it will determine the next phase of action, which
could include over the ten years of the project:
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Taking no action and maintaining the status quo
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Archiving the history of the culture
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Enhancing economic opportunities, protecting natural
resources, and preserving traditional skills
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OR something entirely different
Rice and Slaves
Africa
People of the Guinea Coast
Daniel Littlefield
Sierra
Leone
Freetown
Bunce Island Slave “Castle,”
Sierra Leone
African Rice (Oryza Glaberrima)
The African species of rice (Oryza glaberrima) was
cultivated long before Europeans arrived in the continent.
Small numbers of grains from the Mid-Niger
Delta (MND)
1
have been radio carbon dated to 800 BC.
Later dates for O. glaberrima grains on Africa’s Grain or
Rice Coast suggest that rice cultivation moved from the
MND to the coastal areas.
At present, O. glaberrima is being replaced by the
introduced Asian species of rice, Oryza sativa. Some West
African farmers, including the Jola of southern Senegal,
still grow African rice for use in ritual contexts. The two
species of rice have recently been crossed, producing a
promising hybrid.
Judith Carney’s
rice map,
Gullah Museum
Pawley’s Island
Carolina Gold
The heirloom variety was one of the first grown in the
early American colonies, and it made many plantation
owners rich from the late 1600s.
New gene studies of the historic rice suggest that it was
brought to the U.S. from West Africa and likely arrived
with incoming slaves.
West African Rice Coast
Judith Carney,
Black Rice
African Rice Source Regions
J. Carney
Oryza glaberrima in the MND in Mali
Shawn S. Murray
Mopti, Mali Lakes area, Mid-Niger Delta (MND)
Oryza glaberrima is drought tolerant with a nutty flavor that
is favored by West Africans.
Modern rice field in Gambia.
Tidal river plain with
canals upstream from
Freetown, Sierra Leone
500 ft.
Baga system of
wet rice field
cultivation.
1793 drawing of
slave ship captain
Samuel Gamble
J. Carney, Black Rice.
Tidal rice, Gambia
J. Carney, Black Rice
Tidal rice was grown in the
American Southeastern estuarine
regions by the 1730s
2010
South
Carolina
Marsh, tidal creeks,
and rice fields of
SC & GA, 1750s
Georgia
Georgia
South Georgia rice field harvest was men’s work;
Women planted and tended the plants (19th century)
Tidal rice fields
of Birdsong
Plantation,
South Georgia
1
2
3
4
5
6
Good (top) & poor (bottom)
tidal scenarios for estuarine
rice agriculture.
A swing gate is held open at
high tide, allowing the field
to flood (left). The inner
gate closes automatically,
keeping the fresh water in.
The reverse drains the
field.
Sandy Island, SC
is a private island with
a small population of
“Freshwater Gullah”
in Annie Village. The
only access is by boat.
Sandy Island, SC
Google Earth
image of
abandoned
rice fields
near Sandy
Island on the
Waccamaw
River.
Cape Fear River Valley,
Brunswick County, NC
Orton Plantation,
Brunswick Co., NC
Orton Plantation &
tidal rice fields,
Brunswick County,
NC
Cape Fear River
canal
Rice field & Canals, Orton Plantation, west bank
of the Cape Fear River, Brunswick County, NC
Sweet Grass (l) and Palmetto (r) baskets,
St. Helena Island, SC,
Photo Patricia Frazier
Hilton Head, SC Harbor
Hilton Head Island,
SC
Wexford Green #16, Hilton Head
Conclusions
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Gullah people brought rice agriculture expertise to the Low
Country when they were enslaved.
Without them the European rice plantation “aristocracy”
would not have existed.
As marginalized people, their culture seemed to be
disappearing through assimilation and denigration by the
larger culture.
Gullah has endured because of their long-lived isolation on
coastal islands and inland enclaves.
AND because of their determination to preserve it.
References
Bailey, Cornelia and Christena Bledsoe. 2000, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man : A Saltwater Geechee Talks
about Life on Sapelo Island ( New York: Doubleday, 2000).
Carney, Judith, 2001, Black Rice; The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press).
Cross, Wilbur, 2008, Gullah Culture in America (Westport, CT.: Praeger).
Earle, Carville, 1992, Geographical Inquiry and American Historical Problems (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press).
Fields, Edda L. “Farmers in Pre-Colonial Coastal Guinea: Their Local Knowledge and Its Global Implications”.
Black Scholar, Fall/Winter2000, Vol. 30 Issue 3/4, p23, 2p;
Gilbert, Erik Coastal Rice Farming Systems In Guinea And Sierra Leone.
Goodwine, Marquetta, The Legend of Ibo Landing
Hawthorne, Walter, 2003, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations Along the Guinea-Bissau Coast,
1400-1900 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, A Division of Reed Elsevier, Inc.).
Herskovits, Melville, 1941, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Hill Press).
Littlefield, Daniel, 1981, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (Baton Rouge:
LSU Press).
Mack, Angela, “Historians look to preserve the nearly extinct Gullah culture,” Star News, September 2, 2007.
McFeely, William S., 1994, Sapelo’s People: A Long Walk Into Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton & Company).
Mintz, Sidney and Richard Price, 1976, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective
(Boston: Beacon Press).
Murray, Shawn Sabrina, “Searching for the origins of African rice domestication,” Antiquity, 78(300), June 2004.
Nash, Gary B., 1974, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall,
Inc.).
Pollitzer, William S., 1999, The Gullah People and Their African Heritage (Athens: University of Georgia Press).
Pyatt, Thomas, 2005, The Gullah People of Sandy Island (Self Published).
Rediker, Marcus, 2007, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Penguin Books).
Wood, Peter H., 1974, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
Abraham, a
“Black Seminole”