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The Knot and the Coil: African Reaffirmations in Sea Island Baskets
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17974 |
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CULTURE
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5 / 1990 |
4,231 Words |
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Mary Arnold Twining
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Located along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, the Sea Islands extend almost four hundred miles from the southern border of North Carolina to the northern borer of Florida. The islands themselves, actually part of the coastal plain, are readily accessible by sea through the streams and the riverine, brackish marshes that separate them from the mainland. Some of the islands are located far enough out to be accessible only by boat, while others have been connected to the mainland since the 1930s by bridges or causeways. The continuing inaccessibility of such rural islands as Sapelo and Daufuskie perpetuates the isolation that has so significantly operated to preserve the folklore and culture of the Sea Island area.
Accounts written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tended to stress the exotic nature of the islanders' custom, and these attitudes survive today. This is not entirely surprising to Sea Islanders, who, although native to the United States, actually manifest - in their speech, customs, and general manner of life - features that show greater affinities to the Afro-Caribbean populations and to indigenous African peoples than do other Americans of African origin.
The region has a long history of exploration and appreciation. Spanish explorers such as Lucas Vasquez came to Florida and Saint Helena Island in the 1520s. French Huguenots were not far behind the Spanish adventurers; they arrived in Port Royal in the 1560s, seeking to escape persecution at home, much as the English did in the following century.
Like the Caribbean, the Sea Islands became the site of large plantations worked by gangs of enslaved Africans who were directed by overseers, drivers, or owners (whenever they were in residence). Population statistics reflected a majority of enslaved Africans and a minority of Euroamericans. Most enslaved Africans worked in field gangs, but a select few, often of mixed parentage, were house servants. African field hands existed in greater numbers than either the house servants or the Euroamericans and were thus more often left to their own devices than those Africans whose duties involved them more directly with the Euroamerican population. As a result, they were more able to preserve the remembered and transmitted culture from their lost homes in Africa.
The previous isolative constraints and the slavery-imposed restrictions in the South were only somewhat relieved in the post-World War I era by boat travel to the mainland. Only after the Work Projects Administration (WPA) built roads and bridges was some pattern of geographic integration imposed. But the civil rights movement of the 1960s helped to raise the islanders' social awareness and brought increased economic opportunity. But some peonage conditions still remain among the farming population in spite of efforts toward ameliorating social and economic inequities.
Increased mobility between the mainland and the islands, together with socioeconomic progress, has tended to mitigate the islands' isolation. But contact with the mainland has not yet completely extinguished distinctions in such cultural modes as language, oral lore, social and economic organization, and some aspects of material production, such as basketry.
Gullah is the usual vehicle for communication and expression in the Sea Islands. It is a Creole language
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