Who am I??? The Gullah/Geechee People Tell him, say… – Tell him One man – A man Me one – Me alone, only me The headway I make – The speed I make He rig a plan – He made a plan He jook a fish – He speared a fish Do, for God’s sake – intensification for any verb One day more than all – One day particularly He does tief – He steals The real Gullah/Geeche culture is found in an area that extends for several hundred miles between Cape Fear in North Carolina, and the St. Johns River in North Florida. It is home to one of America’s most distinctive cultures, the Gullah and Geechee people, and descendants of slaves who have stoutly maintained folkways, crafts, traditions – even a language – whose origins can be traced back over the centuries to their homelands in West Africa. The Gullah people and their traditions are a product of the Atlantic Slave trade. In the seventy-five years from the beginning of the 18th century to the declaration of independence, more than forty percent of the Africans arriving in the British North Americans Colonies were quarantined and processed in coastal islands off Georgia and South Carolina. As they adapted to their new homes in the coastal islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, their culture found expression and expertise in basket weaving, cotton, indigo, and rice cultivation, and the unique cuisine that drew on the rich harvest of the coastal marshlands. She-crab soup, fish and grits, peas and rice, fried mullet and conch are still staples at fine eating establishments in Savannah, Charleston and Beauford, South Carolina. The Gullahs and their mainland cousins, the Geechees, were first brought from Africa to the isolated Sea Islands off the coast of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia and until fairly recently their communities in the coastal region of islands, marshes, placid rivers and expansive wetlands had seen little change. The Gullahs (as they are called by others) are direct descendants of Africans coming mostly from the ethnic groups of West Africa and the Bantu of Central Africa. The word, “Gullah,” is believed to be a shortened form or corruption of N’ gola (Angola). There is no difference in the linguistic structure of Gullah and Sea Island Creole than that spoken in the Caribbean and Africa.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 12:31:25 +0000
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