path: root/lb-notes.txt

From Bartram: 

The general surface of the island being low, and generally level, produces a very great variety of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants; particularly the great long-leaved Pitch-Pine, or Broom-Pine

are intersected with plains of the dwarf prickly fan-leaved Palmetto, and lawns of grass variegated with stately trees of the great Broom-Pine, and the spreading ever-green Water-Oak, either disposed in clumps, or scatteringly planted by nature. The upper surface, or vegetative soil of the island, lies on a foundation, or stratum, of tenaceous cinerious coloured clay, which perhaps is the principal support of the vast growth of timber that arises from the surface, which is little more than a mixture of fine white sand and dissolved vegetables, serving as a nursery bed to hatch, or bring into existence, the infant plant, and to supply it with aliment and food, suitable to its delicacy and tender frame, until the roots, acquiring sufficient extent and solidity to lay hold of the clay, soon attain a magnitude and stability sufficient to maintain its station. Probably if this clay were dug out, and cast upon the surface, after being meliorated by the saline or nitrous qualities of the air, it would kindly incorporate with the loose sand, and become a productive and lasting manure


HERE are also a great variety of birds, through out the seasons, inhabiting both sea and land. First I shall name the eagle, of which there are three species: the great grey eagle is the largest, of great strength and high flight; he chiefly preys on fawns and other young quadrupeds.
THE bald eagle is likewise a large, strong, and very active bird, but an execrable tyrant: he supports his assumed dignity and grandeur by rapine and violence, extorting unreasonable tribute and subsidy from all the feathered nations.
THE last of this race I shall mention is the falco piscatorius, or fishing-hawk: this is a large bird, of high and rapid flight; his wings are very long and pointed, and he spreads a vast sail, in proportion to the volume of his body. This princely bird subsists entirely on fish, which he takes himself, scorning to live and grow fat on the dear earned labours of another; he also contributes liberally to the support of the bald eagle.
WATER-FOWL, and the various species of land-birds, also abound, most of which are mentioned by Catesby, in his Hist. Carolina, particularly his painted finch (Emberiza Ceris Linn.) exceeded by none of the feathered tribes, either in variety and splendour of dress, or melody of song.

CATESBY'S ground doves are also here in abundance: they are remarkably beautiful, about the size of a sparrow, and their soft and plaintive cooing perfectly enchanting.
How chaste the dove! “never known to violate the conjugal contract.”
She flees the seats of envy and strife, and seeks the retired paths of peace.
THE sight of this delightful and productive island, placed in front of the rising city of Sunbury, quickly induced me to explore it; which I apprehended, from former visits to this coast, would exhibit a comprehensive epitome of the history of all the sea-coast islands of Carolina and Georgia, as likewise in general of the coast of the main; and as I considered this excursion along the coast of Georgia and northern border of Florida, a deviation from the high road of my intended travels, yet I performed it in order to employ to the most advantage the time on my hands, before the treaty of Augusta came on, where I was to attend, about May or June, by desire of the Superintendant, J. Stewart, Esq; who, when I was in Charleston, proposed, in order to facilitate my travels in the Indian territories, that, if I would be present at the Congress, he would introduce my business to the chiefs of the Cherokees, Creeks, and other nations, and recommend me to their

### Beginnings of Rice

Came from Slave gardens according to many.

Especially:

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=6127:

Judith A. Carney. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. 

---


Rice was beginning, coming from Africans out of Sierra Leon.:

The South Carolina planters were, at first, completely ignorant of rice cultivation, and their
early experiments with this specialized type of tropical agriculture were mostly failures. They
soon recognized the advantage of importing slaves from the traditional rice-growing region of
West Africa, and they generally showed far greater interest in the geographical origins of
African slaves than did planters in other North American colonies. The South Carolina rice
planters were willing to pay higher prices for slaves from the "Rice Coast," the "Windward
Coast," the "Gambia," and "Sierra-Leon"; and slave traders in Africa soon learned that South
Carolina was an especially profitable market for slaves from those areas. When slave traders
arrived in Charlestown with slaves from the rice-growing region, they were careful to advertise
their origin on auction posters or in newspaper announcements, sometimes noting that the
slaves were "accustomed to the planting of rice." Traders who arrived in Charlestown with
slaves from other parts of Africa where rice was not traditionally grown, such as Nigeria, often
found that their slaves fetched lower prices. In some cases, they could sell no slaves at all and
had to sail away to another port.
The South Carolina and Georgia colonists ultimately adopted a system of rice cultivation that
drew heavily on the labor patterns and technical knowledge of their African slaves. During the
growing season the slaves on the rice plantations moved through the fields in a line, hoeing
rhythmically and singing work songs to keep in unison. At harvest time the women processed
the rice by pounding it in large wooden mortars and pestles, virtually identical to those used in
West Africa, and then "fanning" the rice in large round winnowing baskets to separate the grain
and chaff. The slaves may also have contributed to the system of sluices, banks, and ditches
used on the South Carolina and Georgia rice plantations. West African farmers traditionally
cultivated local varieties of wet rice on the flood plains and dry rice on the hillsides.

source: https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/South%20Carolina%20Rice%20Plantations.pdf

---

South Carolina’s first great agricultural staple, rice dominated the lowcountry’s economy for almost two hundred years, influencing almost every aspect of life in the region from the early eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. Rice was responsible for the area’s rise to prominence in the colonial era. But the commercial rice industry collapsed in the late nineteenth century, leaving much of the lowcountry with few viable economic options for a half-century or more. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that the economic and social legacy of rice began to recede into history.Domestication of rice began in Asia between seven thousand and ten thousand years ago and spread gradually to other parts of Eurasia and Africa. The cereal arrived in the Western Hemisphere along with Europeans and Africans as part of the “Columbian exchange” of plants, animals, and germs that began in the late fifteenth century. Although rice accompanied Europeans and Africans to the Western Hemisphere, the cereal did not become an important cash crop in the Americas until the South Carolina rice complex was developed in the eighteenth century. Carolinians, both Europeans and Africans, had likely grown small amounts of rice to eat, but not until the 1710s or 1720s were local capital, labor, and entrepreneurship sufficient to support significant commercial production.The origin of the South Carolina rice industry is complex and controversial. Until relatively recently historians accorded Europeans primary credit for originating rice production in South Carolina. During the past few decades, however, some scholars have amassed evidence suggesting instead that Africans were the prime movers in the earliest days of rice cultivation in South Carolina. In a technical (and technological) sense, the “black rice” view of the origins of rice cultivation may be correct. It is important to note, however, that there were several other plausible routes of transmission, and that there is a big difference between rice production and a rice industry. Regardless of the origins of rice cultivation in the colony, the South Carolina rice industry was informed by European and Euro-American aspirations and entrepreneurship along with African technology and labor.Despite considerable research, little is known about early rice production techniques or even sites. Some “wet” rice may have been grown from the start, but scholars generally agree that the first rice crops were produced “dry,” that is, without irrigation and on relatively “high” ground. Throughout its history in South Carolina, most rice cultivation took place in the lowcountry, but production was distributed quite unevenly within this region. 

source: http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/rice/

---

### Hurricane

Hurricane of 1713

Carolina Hurricane of 1713. Charleston town was once again inundated by the sea (see 1700). The death toll was reportedly significant and resulted from the high storm surge that washed in with the storm. On Sullivan's Island, "The new lookout made of wood, built eight square and eighty feet high, was blown down." In Charleston's harbor, all but one of the vessels were driven ashore and "all the front wall and mud parapet before Charlestown [were] undermined and washed away." The two rivers on both sides of the town were connected for a period of unknown time during the storm. The storm was reportedly more violent in the north of Charleston, suggesting that landfall was made north of the town. The effects were most prominent in Currituck County, North Carolina near the Virginia-North Carolina border, where the storm surge breached the Outer Banks and opened several inlets into the Currituck Sound. William Byrd, one of the commissioners who established the Virginia-North Carolina boundary, stated, "There was no tide in Currituck until 1713, when a violent storm opened a new inlet five miles south of the old one. One of the new inlets carved out by the storm became the location where the Virginia-North Carolina line begins on the Atlantic coast."[18]

from Early American hurricanes 1492-1870, David Ludlum, https://www.amazon.com/Early-American-Hurricanes-1492-1870-Ludlum/dp/B000RB6C4A 

## Gullah

The origin of the word \"Gullah\" is unclear. Some scholars suggest that it may be cognate with the word \"Angola\",[1][10] where the ancestors of some of the Gullah people likely originated. They created a new culture synthesized from that of the various African peoples brought into Charleston and South Carolina. Some scholars 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.[11][1] British colonists in the Caribbean and the Southern colonies of North America referred to this area as the \"Grain Coast\" or \"Rice Coast\"; many of the tribes are of Mandé or Manding origins. The name \"Geechee\", another common name for the Gullah people, may derive from the name of the Kissi people, an ethnic group living in the border area between Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.[1]",
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah"

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.\n\nThe 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. ",
-https://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection
         ### Ring Shout

Shout Because You're Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition By Art Rosenbaum  UGA Press

Shout may have come from saut, an afro-aribic word meaning fervernt dance.

Tended to happen in cold weather, took a lot of energy \r

### Gullah words

* FANNUH	a wide, shallow basket used for winnowing beaten
rice or separating the corn husks from grist after
grinding.

### Twins

##### Imagining the pain and peril of 17th century childbirth
"It pleased God, in much mercy, to restore me to strength to goe to my full time, my labour begining three daies; but upon the Wednesday, the ninth of December, I fell into
exceeding sharpe travill in great extreamity, so that the midwife did beleive I should be delivered soone. But loe! it fell out contrary, for the childe staied in the birth, and came crosse with his feete first, and in this condition contineued till Thursday morning betweene two and three a clocke, at which time I was upon the racke in bearing my childe with such exquisitt torment, as if each lime weare divided from other, for the space of two houers; when att length, beeing speechlesse and breathlesse, I was, by the infinitt providence of God, in great mercy delivered",

-http://sharonhoward.org/archive/pain-peril.pdf


The birth of twins in the literary art of the Middle Ages frequently marks an opportunity for one woman to accuse another of adultery and thus the twins as illegitimate. Erik Kooper has analysed twenty European stories, many of which were translated, redacted and adapted, and he divided these according to the way in which twinship is represented.[27] ‘If one thing becomes clear from this kind of classification,’ Kooper concludes, ‘is that multiple births do indeed lead to numerous kinds of disaster, both for the mother and for the children.’[28] Of the twenty or so he lists, only four of these stories leave mother or child protagonists untainted by accusations of adultery or monstrous birth.",
-https://thewonderoftwins.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/the-significance-of-twins-in-medieval-and-early-modern-europe/