Gullah Culture

Gullah Music

http://www.knowitall.org/gullahmusic/

http://www.knowitall.org/gullahmusic/journey/index.html

Gullah Story Teller

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zN4OCHyHFQ

 Gullah Tales

http://www.knowitall.org/gullahtales/

Meet Aunt Pearlie Sue

http://www.knowitall.org/gullahnet/auntpearliesue/index.html

 How It All Began:
Sweetgrass Basket Making in the South

Sweetgrass basket making has been part of the Charleston and Mt. Pleasant communities for more than 300 years. Brought to the area by slaves who came from West Africa, basket making is a traditional art form which has been passed on from generation to generation. Today, it is one of the oldest art forms of African origin in the United States. Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, an old village and modern suburb on the north side of Charleston Harbor, enjoys the distinction of being the only place where this particular type of basketry is practiced. Here, the descendents of slaves from West Africa continue the tradition.

During the days of slavery, rice cultivation, and the flourishing plantations of the Old South, these baskets were in great demand for agricultural purposes. They also brought extra income to slave owners, who often sold baskets to other plantation owners.

During this era, large work baskets were popular. For the most part, they were used to collect and store vegetables, staples, etc. Men made these large baskets from marsh grasses called bulrush. A common form which evolved during this era was the winnowing basket (rice basket) called the “fanner.” Other agricultural baskets were for grain storage, cotton, fish and shellfish. Functional baskets for everyday living in the home were made by women. Some of these were made for bread, fruits, sewing, clothes, storage, etc. They were made from the softer, pliable grass commonly called sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia filipes), because of its pleasant fragrance, similar to the smell of fresh hay.

With the decline of the plantation system, black families acquired land and started a new way of life. Because they felt that this basket making tradition was an important part of their cultural heritage, and that future generations would be able to retain an identity with Africa through the baskets, they kept the tradition alive. The tradition remains very much alive today. For generations, it has been passed from mother to daughter to granddaughter. Around the beginning of the 20th century, the Lowcountry nearly lost this valuable art. However, in the 1930’s, basket makers saw a new surge of interest from gift shop owners, museums, and hand-craft collectors. The paving of Highway 17 North and the construction of the Cooper River Bridge made the route through Mt. Pleasant a major north-south artery. Basket makers then started marketing their wares from roadside basket stands, which were directly accessible to tourists.

Today most basket stands are still built along the shoulder of Highway 17 North. Once a small residential community and fishing village outside of Charleston, Mt. Pleasant has become the sixth largest city in South Carolina. This, for the most part, is due to large-scale planned development. With this extensive growth, the roadside basket stands– a part of the community for over half a century– have dwindled tremendously in number. Within the past 10 years, development has forced many basket stands to relocate farther north. Others have been totally displaced, as there was no other space in which to relocate. This is a grave problem which basket makers face today.

Another serious problem confronting the basket makers of Mt. Pleasant is the dramatic decline in sweetgrass materials due to private development of coastal islands and marshlands. Constant search for these materials has taken basket makers to other areas outside the community from North Carolina to Florida. Mt. Pleasant basket makers depend on open access to these materials if their art is to continue. Increased public interest is needed to ensure the future of this Lowcountry tradition.

Basket making has always involved the entire family. As was the custom, men and boys gathered the materials while women and girls “sewed” the baskets. This custom continues today; however, in some instances, all members of the family are engaged in both the gathering of the materials and the making of the baskets Rigorous craftsmanship and long hours of work are involved in making these baskets. Even for the most experienced basket maker, a simple design can take as long as twelve hours. A larger more complex design can take as long as two to three months. Family members have always enjoyed close cooperation in marketing their work. It is quite common to find work belonging to several members of a family on the same basket stand. It is usually these stands that display a wide selection of baskets.

In continuous production since the 18th century, Lowcountry coil basketry is one of the oldest crafts of African origin in America. Today baskets are purchased by museums and art collectors throughout the world, such as the Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. Each basket reflects the artist’s skill as both designer and technician A basket’s value increases with age and with proper care will last indefinitely. Examples of Lowcountry coil basketry exist that are well over a century old. Because the grasses used in these baskets are from wetlands and marsh areas, water will not hurt them. With a soft brush or cloth, they can be carefully washed in soapy water and rinsed thoroughly in cold water. They should then be air dried. This is the only care they require.

The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone – American Connection

The Gullah are a distinctive group of Black Americans from South Carolina and Georgia in the southeastern United States. They live in small farming and fishing communities along the Atlantic coastal plain and on the chain of Sea Islands which runs parallel to the coast. Because of their geographical isolation and strong community life, the Gullah have been able to preserve more of their African cultural heritage than any other group of Black Americans. They speak a creole language similar to Sierra Leone Krio, use African names, tell African folktales, make African-style handicrafts such as baskets and carved walking sticks, and enjoy a rich cuisine based primarily on rice.

Indeed, rice is what forms the special link between the Gullah and the people of Sierra Leone. During the 1700s the American colonists in South Carolina and Georgia discovered that rice would grow well in the moist, semitropical country bordering their coastline. But the American colonists had no experience with the cultivation of rice, and they needed African slaves who knew how to plant, harvest, and process this difficult crop. The white plantation owners purchased slaves from various parts of Africa, but they greatly preferred slaves from what they called the “Rice Coast” or “Windward Coast”—the traditional rice-growing region of West Africa, stretching from Senegal down to Sierra Leone and Liberia. The plantation owners were willing to pay higher prices for slaves from this area, and Africans from the Rice Coast were almost certainly the largest group of slaves imported into South Carolina and Georgia during the 18^th century.

The Gullah people are directly descended from the slaves who labored on the rice plantations, and their language reflects significant influences from Sierra Leone and the surrounding area. The Gullahs’ English-based creole language is strikingly similar to Sierra Leone Krio and contains such identical expressions as bigyai (greedy), pantap (on top of), ohltu (both), tif (steal), yeys (ear), and swit (delicious). But, in addition to words derived from English, the Gullah creole also contains several thousand words and personal names derived from African languages—and a large proportion of these (about 25%) are from languages spoken in Sierra Leone. The Gullah use such masculine names as Sorie, Tamba, Sanie, Vandi, and Ndapi, and such feminine names as Kadiatu, Fatimata, Hawa, and Isata—all common in Sierra Leone. As late as the 1940s, a Black American linguist found Gullahs in rural South Carolina and Georgia who could recite songs and fragments of stories in Mende and Vai, and who could do simple counting in the Guinea/Sierra Leone dialect of Fula. In fact, all of the African texts that Gullah people have preserved are in languages spoken within Sierra Leone and along its borders.

The connection between the Gullah and the people of Sierra Leone is a very special one. Sierra Leone has always had a small population, and Sierra Leonean slaves were always greatly outnumbered on the plantations by slaves from more populous parts of Africa—except in South Carolina and Georgia. The rice plantation zone of coastal South Carolina and Georgia was the only place in the Americas where Sierra Leonean slaves came together in large enough numbers and over a long enough period of time to leave a significant linguistic and cultural impact. While Nigerians may point to Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti as places where Nigerian culture is still evident, Sierra Leoneans can look to the Gullah of South Carolina and Georgia as a kindred people sharing many common elements of speech, custom, culture, and cuisine.

American historians now recognize that the Gullah people of South Carolina and Georgia have come in large measure from the rice-growing region of West Africa—but they have not placed enough specific emphasis on Sierra Leone. Scholars have looked at shipping records on the American side which refer only very generally to the “Rice Coast” or “Windward Coast” as the origins of the slave cargoes, but they have not yet examined the histories of specific slave trading bases in West Africa, like Bance Island. They have also failed to look beyond documentary evidence, to the language and culture of the Gullah people. They have ignored the remarkable similarities between Gullah and Sierra Leone Krio, the high percentage of Gullah names and loanwords from Sierra Leonean languages; and the fact that all of the African texts remembered by modern Gullahs are in languages spoken in Sierra Leone, especially Mende. It is now up to students of Sierra Leone to review the record of slave trading on both sides of the Atlantic for more evidence of the connection with South Carolina and Georgia. They must also examine the language and culture of the Gullah people against their own detailed knowledge of the languages and cultures of Sierra Leone. Studies of this sort will, no doubt, reveal even more evidence of significant historical and cultural connections.

The Black Seminoles are another subject requiring serious attention. We must recognize that 18th century Florida was, in many ways, an African frontier. The Gullah runaways were the only people capable of taming the Florida wilderness at that time. They possessed resistance to tropical diseases, knowledge of tropical agriculture, and a way of life remarkably unchanged from Africa. While the white American frontier was expanding west and south into a temperate climate suited to Europeans, an African frontier was developing in the swamps and jungles of Florida. When the two finally collided, there was a series of conflicts resulting in a full-scale “Negro War” lasting for six years and claiming hundreds of American lives. Scholars must examine the whole chain of events leading from the Rice Coast of Africa; to the rice plantations of South Carolina and Georgia; to the Florida wilderness, where rice agriculture and resistance to tropical diseases made possible a successful and independent life. Many U.S. soldiers died of malaria and yellow fever in the Florida Wars, but an American medical doctor of the period remarked that the Black Seminoles were “the finest looking people I have ever seen.” In a land deadly to whites, the Gullah frontiersmen not only survived, but prospered.

There is an enduring kinship between the Gullah people and the people of Sierra Leone. The modern Gullahs and Black Seminoles are especially interested in their African origins and proud of their African cultural heritage. Sierra Leoneans, on their part, have every reason to feel proud that a Black American community has been able to preserve so much Sierra Leonean cultural heritage, and that a portion of them waged the longest and fiercest struggle against slavery in United States history. It would be fitting for exchanges to take place between Sierra Leoneans and the Gullahs or Black Seminoles, and it seems certain that the two sides would have much to say to one another. A Sierra Leonean woman, doing graduate study at the University of South Carolina several years ago, chanced to meet some Gullah people on a brief holiday to the South Carolina sea shore. Recalling the experience much later, she remarked with amazement: “They speak our language!”

Acknowledgements
Text by Marguerite S. Middleton and Mary A. Jackson.
Adapted from a brochure funded by The Mount Pleasant Town Council and the S. C. Dept. of Parks, Recreation & Tourism.