Gullahs (), also known in some areas as Geechees and alternatively as Gullah–Geechees, are an African American ethnic group rooted in the coastal areas of the U.S. states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida from roughly Pender County, North Carolina to St. Augustine, Florida. Gullahs are descendants of West and Central Africans enslaved on plantations in the islands, waterways and coasts of this area, now designated the Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. They have developed a distinctive culture and creole language, also known as Gullah, which have preserved a high volume of Africanisms as a result of their historical geographic isolation.
The Gullahs of the area of Savannah, Georgia are also known as Geechees (). The name may be derived from the Kissi people of Sierra Leone, which is the common belief among Gullah-Geechee people. The Georgia communities are distinguished by identifying as either "Freshwater Geechee" or "Saltwater Geechee", depending on whether they live on the mainland or the Sea Islands.
Having gone through a period of relative isolation from whites while working on large plantations in rural areas, Gullahs, who came from a variety of Central and West African ethnic groups, developed a creole culture that preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage; in addition, they absorbed new influences from the region. Their language, an English-based creole, contains many African loanwords and has been influenced by African languages in grammar and sentence structure. Gullah crafts, farming and fishing traditions, folk beliefs, music, rice-based cuisine and story-telling traditions all exhibit strong influences from Central and West African cultures.
Etymology The origin of the word Gullah can be traced to the Kikongo language of the Congo River basin, from which many Gullah words spoken by Black Americans today come. Some scholars suggest that it may be cognate with the name Angola, where the ancestors of many of the Gullah people originated. Shipping records from the Port of Charleston revealed that Angolans accounted for 39% of all enslaved Africans shipped to the port. The story of Gullah Jack, an enslaved African man who was trafficked from Angola to the United States, further supports the theory that the word Gullah has an origin in Angola.
Some scholars also have suggested that it may come from the name of the Gola, an ethnic group living in the border area between present-day Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, another area of enslaved ancestors of the Gullah people.
The name Geechee, another common name for the Gullah, may derive from the name of the Kissi people, an ethnic group living in the border area between Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. Another theory derives it from the name of the Ogeechee River in Georgia.
History Origin of the Gullah–Geechee people According to Port of Charleston records, enslaved Africans shipped to the port came from the following areas: Angola (39%), Senegambia (20%), the Windward Coast (17%), the Gold Coast (13%), Sierra Leone (6%), the Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra (5% combined), Madagascar and Mozambique.Low Country Gullah Culture Special Resource Study and Final Environmental Impact Statement, National Park Service, Southeast Regional Office, p. 13
The Gullah people have been able to preserve much of their African cultural heritage because of climate, geography, cultural pride, and patterns of importation of enslaved Africans and Indigenous People. The peoples who contributed to Gullah culture included the Bakongo, Mbundu, Vili, Yombe, Yaka, Pende, Mandinka, Kissi, Fulani, Mende, Wolof, Kpelle, Temne, Limba, Dyula, Susu, Vai, Guale, and the Serer ethnoreligious group and nation from the Senegambia region known for their mixed-farming and fishing expertise.Carter, Cynthia Jacobs, "Freedom in My Heart: Voices from the United States National Slavery Museum." United States National Slavery Museum (2008), p. 54, Sapelo Island, the site of the last Gullah community of Hog Hammock, was also a principal place of refuge for Guale people who fled slavery on the mainland.
In 1670, the first English-speaking community was founded on South Carolina's coast. The colonists had little success for the first thirty years, but during the 1700s, they learned that rice, which was brought from Asia, thrived in the Low Country's interior valley swamps. Rice cultivation had a major role in South Carolina's economy during the 1700s. The colony grew and prospered as a result of this product's steady high pricing in England. One of the wealthiest colonies in North America was South Carolina, and its capital and main port, Charlestown (now Charleston), was one of the most affluent and stylish towns in early America. The rice plantation system was later extended farther south to coastal Georgia, where it also flourished, as a result of South Carolina's remarkable success.
Despite their initial lack of knowledge about rice farming, the South Carolina planters quickly realised the benefits of bringing in slaves from West African regions known for producing rice. As a result, compared to planters in other North American colonies, they were generally significantly more interested in the geographic origins of African slaves. Slave dealers in Africa quickly discovered that South Carolina was a particularly lucrative market for slaves from the "Rice Coast," "Windward Coast," "Gambia," and "Sierra Leone" because the South Carolina rice planters were ready to pay higher rates for these captives. Slave dealers were particular about promoting their own auction posters or newspaper ads when they brought slaves from the rice-growing region to Charlestown. When traders brought slaves from other parts of Africa, such as Nigeria, where rice was not usually farmed, to Charlestown, they frequently discovered that their slaves sold for less. They occasionally had to sail away to a different port since they were unable to sell any slaves at all.Opala, Joseph A. The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection. Freetown, Sierra Leone: Sierra Leone National Museum, 1990.
In the end, the colonists from Georgia and South Carolina devised a rice-growing system that heavily relied on the technical know-how and work habits of their African slaves. Slaves on rice farms worked in a line through the fields throughout the growing season, hoeing in time and chanting work songs to stay in sync. In order to separate the grain and chaff, the women "fanned" the rice in big round winnowing baskets after processing it with large wooden mortars and pestles that were nearly comparable to those used in West Africa. It's also possible that the slaves helped build the ditches, banks, and sluices that were utilized on the rice plantations in Georgia and South Carolina. Traditionally, West African farmers have grown dry rice on the slopes and wet rice on the flood plains. Travelers in the 1700s observed that West African farmers, particularly the Temne of Sierra Leone, were building complex irrigation systems for rice farming with the Portuguese introduction of superior varieties of paddy rice from Asia in the 1500s. Enslaved people in South Carolina and Georgia merely carried on using many of the rice-growing techniques they were used to in Africa.
By the middle of the 18th century, thousands of acres in the Georgia and South Carolina Lowcountry, and the Sea Islands were developed as African rice fields. African farmers from the "Rice Coast" brought the skills for cultivation and tidal irrigation that made slaveholders wealthy in the Sea Islands. The majority of rice produced in the Lowcountry came from Georgetown County, South Carolina.
Georgia and coastal South Carolina have ideal climates for growing rice, but they also proved to be ideal for the spread of tropical diseases. Yellow fever and malaria were introduced by African slaves, and they flourished on the marshy coastal plain, particularly near the flooded rice plantations. Slaves possessed a certain amount of innate resistance to these tropical illnesses, but their owners were at great risk. When fever broke out in the rainy summer and fall, the white planters abandoned their plantations entirely and shifted their homes away from the rice fields. On a daily basis, a small number of white managers oversaw the plantations with the help of several gifted and reliable slaves who served as foremen or "drivers." Although there were still not many white people in the area, as the rice plantation system grew and produced more and more revenue, more African slaves were imported. South Carolina was unique among the North American colonies in that it had a black majority by 1708. In the 1730s, a European visitor to Charlestown made the observation that "Carolina looks more like a negro country than a country settled by white people."
Compared to slaves in other North American colonies, Gullah slaves in coastal Georgia and South Carolina had radically different living conditions. White people and Gullahs did not interact much. On the rice plantations, they lived in a mainly secluded community, and because of their numbers and isolation, they were able to preserve a wide variety of African traditional customs.
These had hundreds of laborers, with African traditions reinforced by new imports from the same regions. Over time, the Gullah people developed a creole culture in which elements of African languages, cultures, and community life were preserved to a high degree. Their culture developed in a distinct way, different from that of the enslaved African Americans in states such as North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, where the enslaved lived in smaller groups, and had more sustained and frequent interactions with whites and British American culture.
In late 2024 underwater sonar was used to map 45 previously unknown irrigation devices used to control water flow for rice fields in conjunction with earthen dams and levees, developed by the Gullah–Geechee over an area of 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of the northern end of Eagles Island, North Carolina, US. This provided evidence of the Gullah–Geechee engineering and technological skills used for rice cultivation.
Origins of the Gullah language