The “Gullah” connection

by Bernadette Cole - West Africa magazine | May 19, 1986

Joseph Opala is an American anthropologist who has been conducting research in Sierra Leone for the past ten years.  Mr. Opala’s research on the slave trade has recently attracted a great deal of popular attention in Sierra Leone.  He claims to have found a link between Sierra Leoneans and a group of people called ‘Gullahs’ now living in South Carolina in the United States.  Our Freetown correspondent interviewed him about his research.

What exactly have you discovered?  

 I have found that during the second half of the eighteenth century, there was a significant slave trade connection between Sierra Leone and South Carolina. During that period, South Carolina’s prosperous economy was based largely on rice agriculture, and local planters were willing to pay higher prices for slaves from the rice-growing region of West Africa – what they called the “Rice Coast” – and particularly from Sierra Leone. Since the English colonists had no experience with rice farming methods, it was really the African slaves who developed rice cultivation in America.  In museums in South Carolina, you find wooden mortars and pestles and rice “fanners” that look exactly like the ones farmers use in Sierra Leone today.

Do you mean that historians didn’t know this before?

 Historians have known that South Carolina planters preferred slaves from this part of West Africa, but they have not placed enough specific emphasis on Sierra Leone. I began research ten years ago on Bunce Island, a British slave trading base located about 20 miles upriver from modern Freetown.  Between about 1750 and 1800 Bunce Island was probably the largest single slave trading operation between Senegambia and the Gold Coast, exporting as many as 7,000 slaves per year. During that period the British merchants at Bunce Island virtually specialized in shipping slaves from Sierra Leone to American rice planters in South Carolina.  I have examined the correspondence between Richard Oswald, the wealthy London owner of Bunce Island, and Henry Laurens, his equally wealthy business associate in Charleston, South Carolina.  Laurens sold Sierra Leonean slaves to Carolina rice planters for a ten percent commission, then used the balance of the earnings to purchase locally produced Carolina rice which was sent on to Oswald in London, often in the same ships that brought the slaves from Sierra Leone.  It seems that Laurens made more money by advertising the slaves as coming from rice-growing areas in Africa.  In the Black History Collection of the New York Public Library, I found an auction poster dated 1769 announcing a sale of slaves arriving on the ship Bunce Island bound from the “Rice Coast”.  The poster was signed at the bottom by Henry Laurens.  

You have said that the Sierra Leone-South Carolina slave trade connection affected the course of American history. How?

 That’s correct.  During the American Revolution Henry Laurens, the agent for Sierra Leonean slaves in South Carolina became president of the Continental Congress.  He was later appointed American envoy to Holland but was captured by the British Navy and imprisoned in the Tower of London.  He was the highest-ranking American official captured during the Revolutionary War. Richard Oswald, the owner of Bunce Island, posted bail for his old business associate – and after the Revolution ended, Henry Laurens was named one of the four American peace commissioners who negotiated US independence under the Treaty of Paris. But, amazingly enough, it was Richard Oswald who was named the head of the British negotiating team – no doubt, because of his friendship with Laurens and American business contacts through the slave trade.  In other words, United States independence was negotiated, in part, between the British owner of a slave trading operation in Sierra Leone and his agent for rice-growing slaves in South Carolina.  To me, this reflects the very great economic importance of this slave trade connection.                                                                         

What have you learned about the slave trade as it operated at Bunce Island?       

Bunce Island is located in the Sierra Leone River, about 20 miles upriver from Freetown.  It is very small -- only about 1700 feet and 400 feet wide -- and no one lives there today, although you can still see ruins of the old English fort.  But in the eighteenth century, it was at the limit of navigability for sailing ships and was thus the logical meeting place for slave traders coming upriver and African merchants coming down from the interior.  In the dry season, slave ships congregated at Bunce Island, while Fula and Susu merchants brought down large caravans of slaves to sell to British traders.  The slaves were often carrying goods for sale -- such as ivory, hides, wax & country cloth.  The slave traders purchased slaves and goods with liquor, cloth, metal goods, trinkets, guns, and ammunition.  The ships going to South Carolina usually carried about 300 slaves packed together in nightmarish conditions below deck, and typically about 50 died on the voyage to America.

You have said that a great many Sierra Leonean slaves were sent to South Carolinas.  What happened to their descendants? 

Today, there is a distinctive group of Black Americans called “Gullahs” who live along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia and on the neighbouring chain of “Sea Islands”.  The Gullah people are the direct descendants of slaves originally taken to that area to plant rice, and they still preserve a great many linguistic and cultural traits from Sierra Leone. The Gullah still speak an English-based creole language very much like Sierra Leone Krio and with very much similar expressions as doklin (“dawn”), bigyai (“greedy”), yeri (“hear”), and pantap (“on top of”).  During the 1940’s the Black American linguist Lorenzo Turner found that the Gullah have retained thousands of African loan words and proper names, and a subsequent study showed that about 25 per cent of these are from just two African languages – Mende and Vai,  both spoken in Sierra Leone.  Turner also found Gullah people who could recall songs and fragments of stories in Mende and Vai and numbers in the Sierra Leone and Guinea dialect of Fula.  The Gullah still have such typical Sierra Leonean masculine names as Sorie, Sanie and Salifu and such typical feminine names as Kadiatu, Isatu and Fatu.  And they use as first names such common local clan names as Bangura, Sesay, Kabba, Kanu and Sankoh. Some Gullah even have Sierra Leonean tribal names as their first names -- Limba, Loko, Soso, Fula, Kono, Kisi, etc.  In the light of my historical research on the slave trade, this linguistic data now makes a great deal of sense.

Did all of the Gullahs’ ancestors come from Sierra Leone?

No, certainly not.  The rice planters in South Carolina purchased slaves from all along the west coast of Africa, right down to Angola – but they preferred slaves from the rice-growing areas between Senegambia and Liberia.  What I am arguing is that the role of Sierra Leone, in particular, in the South Carolina slave trade was much greater than historians have realized.  It is interesting to note that the only African texts that the Gullahs are known to have retained are in Mende, Vai and Fula.  Mende is spoken almost exclusively in Sierra Leone; Vai is spoken in Sierra Leone and Liberia; and Fula, in Sierra Leone and Guinea.  Mende also seems to account for more of the African loan words in the Gullah dialect than any other single African language -- about 20 per cent.  The evidence thus points strongly toward Sierra Leone and the surrounding areas. 

How have the Gullah people been able to preserve so much of their African culture?

To put it very simply -- geography and climate.   Coastal South Carolina and Georgia is a swampy, semi-tropical area good for growing rice, but equally good for tropical diseases.  The African slaves introduced malaria and yellow fever, for which they had some inherited resistance -- but the white colonists soon found the region almost too dangerous to endure.  The rice plantations were run by a small core group of white managers, and many of the overseers were, by necessity, black slaves themselves.  South Carolina was, in fact, the only North American colony where, during certain periods, the majority of the inhabitants were blacks. The relatively small contact with whites and geographical isolation in the swampy coastal country are what really account for the Gullahs’ ability over the years to preserve so much of their African culture.  And, I might add, that the Gullah are still very much a viable ethnic group.  A survey conducted in 1978 revealed 100,000 people who could speak the Gullah dialect, of whom 10,000 spoke only Gullah -- no English at all.  A missionary organization is now translating the New Testament into Gullah.

You have mentioned language -- what other Sierra Leone traits do the Gullah possess?                                        

The Gullahs still eat rice as a staple food, and they even have a leaf sauce similar to Sierra Leone’s “plassas”. They make baskets almost identical to the common Sierra Leone “shukubly” and carved walking sticks very similar to those made here.  Gullah women sew quilts organized in long strips like African “country cloth”.  Most of these traits are not exclusively Sierra Leonean, but certainly reminiscent of this part of West Africa.

Tell me about the history of the Gullah people in the United States.                                                                          

Most of the Gullah people live in coastal South Carolina and Georgia where their ancestors were taken as slaves to grow rice.  But I have been very interested in a historically important offshoot of the Gullah who escaped from the rice plantations.  Between about 1750 and 1830 large numbers of Gullah slaves fled south into the Florida peninsula which in those days was a nearly impenetrable jungle.  They set up their own independent villages based on rice agriculture and raised several generations of children in freedom.  They established a kind of African frontier.  But American settlers began pushing into the area, and this ultimately resulted in a full-scale war between 1835 and 1842.  The Gullahs allied with the Florida Indians, called Seminoles, but they were really more adept at living and fighting in the jungle than their Indian comrades.  The American army commander wrote that it was “a Negro and not an Indian war”, and a Congressman of the period stated that the escaped Gullahs “were in contention against the whole military power of the United States”.

What happened to those Gullahs who escaped from the rice plantations?                                                                

The U.S. Army ultimately captured them, but the American officers were afraid to send them back into slavery.  The military was certain that these seasoned fighters would lead revolts on the Southern plantations, so they shipped them along with the captured Indians to the unsettled West, what is now Oklahoma.  From there, some escaped into Mexico, and others joined the US Cavalry in Texas after emancipation.  Their descendants still live in small communities in Oklahoma, Texas and Mexico; and, amazing enough, older people in these communities still speak Gullah –150 years after their ancestors escaped from the Carolina rice plantations!

Have you met the descendants of these Gullah freedom fighters?                                                                               

Yes, indeed.  I did research for over a year with the Oklahoma “Seminole Freedmen” who, though blacks, are still official members of the Seminole Indian Tribe.  At first, I spoke to older people in Sierra Leone Krio and was answered with a similar expression in Gullah.  The Freedmen still eat rice at almost every meal and when I was asked to give a talk on their history at one of their local churches, I began by showing a picture of Bunce Island and saying that “your history really begins with rice”. To my surprise, everyone instantly nodded in agreement.  They all recognize that their diet of rice distinguishes them from whites and other blacks in the area, and they were all interested to know more about Sierra Leone.

Why have you been so active in spreading this information in Sierra Leone?                                                             

I think the time will come when Sierra Leoneans will be quite proud that slaves coming largely from this country were able to preserve so much of their African culture in the US.  I think they will also be proud that a group of people with Sierra Leonean connections – however partial – waged the greatest slave rebellion in American history.  I predict there will be more travel and exchanges in the future, and at Fourah Bay College scholars have recently set up a “Gullah Research Committee” and are making plans for more intensive research and publication.  Finally, I feel strongly that American historians have failed to take sufficient notice of the Gullahs’ gallant six-year war for freedom in the jungles of Florida -- a full-scale war between escaped slaves and the U.S. Army.   If Sierra Leonean scholars and the Sierra Leonean public pursue these issues, this might ultimately generate some much-needed interest on the American side. 

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Blog Post Title Three

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Four

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.