Episode 42: Cumberland Island Salt Marshes and African American History cover art

Episode 42: Cumberland Island Salt Marshes and African American History

Episode 42: Cumberland Island Salt Marshes and African American History

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Photo: U.S. Mint Episode 42: Cumberland Island Salt Marshes and African American History Cumberland Island, located about 15 miles southeast of Kingsland, is the largest public barrier island off the coast of Georgia. And, Cumberland Island Salt Marshes and African American History is where located throughout the island. Accessible only by ferry, the Cumberland Island National Seashore (the name given to the area after being acquired by the National Parks Service in 1972). Many groups have occupied the island over its 4000-year history, from the Timucoan tribe that first inhabited the island to the Spanish who built missions there and the British occupied it Spanish Florida By 1860, over 500 enslaved people lived on the island, outnumbering white inhabitants by a ratio of seven to one. At its peak, the largest plantation, Stafford Plantation held 348 subjugated Africans and African Americans working over 4,200 acres of land, spanning one-third of the island. The island had fifteen plantations and small farms involved in its chattel slavery system. Many enslaved Africans were imported from present-day Senegal, Gambia, and Sierra Leone, including people from the Fula, Igbo, Gola, Malinke, Bambara, and Serer tribes who resided on the continent’s Western Coast. They were not randomly chosen as the demand for enslaved African labor with rice-growing expertise increased, over 13,000 Africans arrived from the “Rice Coast” and “Grain Coast” regions, bringing their sophisticated knowledge of rice and grain harvesting in both lowland and upland regions. This matters enormously: these were not people stripped entirely of knowledge and culture. They arrived as experts and the marshes of Cumberland Island looked, ecologically, very much like home. Cumberland Island’s enslaved people worked largely on a task system, which meant that they were responsible to complete a certain task rather than work certain hours. This is crucial to understanding daily life on the island’s marshes and fields. When the assigned task was complete typically around 2 o’clock in the afternoon the enslaved populations had what their enslavers called “free time” to manage their private vegetable and herb gardens behind their cabins, hunt, trap and fish, tend to the sick or infirm, practice private forms of worship, or assist extended family members. The salt marshes were central to this survival economy. The enslaved Africans typically ate corn and sometimes pork rations provided by the plantation owner but often supplemented their meals with fish, wild animals, oysters, and clams for survival. The marsh was not just a workplace, it was a pantry, a pharmacy (marsh plants had medicinal uses rooted in West African herbal knowledge), and a space of relative autonomy. These difficult working conditions sometimes resulted in spinal injuries from rice cultivation, pulmonary illness, rheumatism, foot rot caused by standing in high water levels, and even death. An archaeological dig near the Dungeness slave quarters has yielded a glimpse into daily life. Along with pieces of iron skillets, glass, clay pipe segments and pottery, bones from small mammals, birds, turtles, frogs and fish were uncovered. This tells us that people were fishing, hunting, and cooking their own supplemental food, building a domestic life in the margins the system allowed them. The enslaved Africans on Stafford Plantation lived in eighteen cabin sites, with several chimney ruins still intact today. They routinely used tabby, a durable construction material made from sand, lime, and oyster shells common to the Lowcountry, to construct their chimneys and fireplaces. Even their building materials came from the marsh. The isolation of Cumberland Island, the very thing that made it so brutally efficient as a plantation system, paradoxically preserved something extraordinary. The Gullah-Geechee culture that resulted in enslaved communities on Georgia’s coast was a result of the retention of many aspects of African culture and language. The isolated nature of Georgia’s barrier islands also resulted in distinctive slave management practices. Many traditions of the Gullah and Geechee culture were passed from one generation to the next through language, agriculture, and spirituality. The sweetgrass baskets, the ring shout spiritual songs, the creole Gullah language itself, all of it survived because the islands were isolated enough that the people could hold onto it. Since speaking in their native African tongue was typically forbidden, Gullah Geechee allowed enslaved people at least one small act of freedom, communicating with each other, in words and song, in a way which was accepted yet not understood by their masters. One of the most powerful stories connected to Cumberland Island happened during the War of 1812. In 1815, British troops took over Cumberland Island and all its plantations, offering freedom to the enslaved by joining British forces...
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