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Gullah Culture
by Cecile
McHardy Independent Scholar

It is Dalby's thesis that a Black Portuguese developed as a lingua franca in West Africa in the 15th century and spread around the globe as a maritime creole. That it was an African construct for communication not only between black and white but a trade language between indigeneous coastal people who spoke different languages. It set a pattern. Even today for every European or American able to speak an African language, millions of Africans are able to speak a European language. [Also even today a great number of people in West Africa are multi-lingual] Black Portuguese had a full century of development before the Dutch displaced the Portuguese in the slave trade. A similar phenomenon - Black Dutch = Afrikaans characterised speech communities in the Dutch Islands in the Caribbean and Surinam, it is the mother tongue of Cape Coloureds, not only of Afrikaners of SA. [ consult Dalby for linguistic arguments re phonological, grammatical and semantic structure reminiscent of many African languages though vocabulary derived from European language]. So too Black French which developed by the middle of the 17th C around the French bases and colonies on both sides of the Atlantic. Goodman points out the African features of Creole French dialects in the Caribbean - Guadeloupe, Martinique, Trinidad, Haiti, etc & Louisiana in N.America, [Gumbo], Cayenne in S.America but also half a world away, in Mauritius, Reunion and the Seychelles. Black French survives in West Africa, the Wolof of Senegal has left an imprint on the creole of Mauritius.

LINGUISTICS | GULLAH

First recorded English voyage to WA, Capt. Towerson in 1554 took 5 Africans from Gold Coast/Ghana to England to learn English & to become Interpreters.The English West African companies became active at the end of the l6th C - first English fort was built in Gambia in 1618 , 1631 in the Gold Coast and by the end of the 17th C English privateers settled on off shore islands around Sierra Leone, their Afro-English descendants played important role in maritime trade/communication [Liberia - Kru = Crew]. By the 18th C Black English was spoken along the whole Guinea coast, from Gambia to the Bight of Biafra. An African/Efik trader of Calabar/Nigeria kept a diary - extracts survive c 1780. Black English was carried around the Cape to the Indian Ocean and beyond and helped set the pattern for a further chain of oriental English [China coast pidgin and Neo-Melanesian are examples]

The most distinctive forms of Black English survive among the Maroons of Surinam and the Djuka achieved renown in developing the Afaka script an original syllabic form of Black English. [I have examples of this as well as tapes of speech made in 1964]. Bridges, branches, roots & braids its a rich tapestry!

LINGUISTICS | GULLAH GEECHEE BLACK ENGLISH

Creolized forms of Black English found in Jamaica, Guiana, coastal areas of Georgia and South Carolina, etc carried back to West Africa - Sierra Leone Colony by 1800, middle of l9th C - Afro-American colony of Liberia; removal of Jamaican Maroons to S.Leone, the extraordinary role of fugitive slaves/Maroons incorporated into British military establishments as garrison troops in West Africa, the role of Blacks as mariners.etc.
Hancock's work tells us a great deal about the historical development of these creoles but also the physical contacts between different points of Africans in diaspora. He demonstrates for eg the close link between Sranan [black English of Surinam], West African Krio=creole of Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cameroons and Gullah [Geechee]. A detailed investigation of the movement of people of African descent in both directions across the atlantic and within the caribbean. Former captives settled Sierra Leone by 1800, and there was continued forced migration of Africans in the reverse direction to the southern states of the USA until 1850's. Monica Schuler's Alas Alas Poor Congo gives account of captures as contraband aboard slaving vessels, settled in refugee camps in Sierra Leone recruited as 'apprentices [a species of indenture] to meet the labor demands in the Br. Caribbean after emancipation in 1833 when freed slaves refused to work without wages`. A great problem arose - what to do with contrabands at the end of their apprenticeship.

These were CHILDREN/YOUTH including young women some 8,000 absorbed into British Military establishment - the West Indian Regiments - [a sobering fact considering contemporary events of RUF use of children soldiers - we need to unearth/propagate these facts of history]  Linguistic history - Akan for eg. exerted important influence in creole of the Caribbean, as did Ewe-Fon in the l7th/19th C and a parallel for Bantu as result of large scale captive labor from Congo Angola. [NB the l3 American colonies secured captive labor mainly via the Caribbean before the revolutionary war, before the disposession of Creek/Cherokee lands for establishment of Tennessee. extension of Georgia, Indian genocide and removal [ethnic cleansing] the Florida acquisition [Seminole wars] and the Louisiana purchase]. All these events resulted in population displacement, refugees, marronnage. Yoruba is a late impact -19th C. Dalby argues the creole spoken by the freed population of Sierra Leone has influences from Mandingo and Mende loan words in the Gullah results from transportation of captives from Sierra Leone to the US in the period immediately before the Civil War. [The subsequent emancipation and physical isolation of the Gullah preserved its distinctive character]

Historical circumstances led to transportation of captives from particular areas of Africa to the new world. e.g Louisiana /lower Mississippi where a large part of labor force brought by the French from Senegambia beginning of l8th C - Wolof, Mandingo, Bambara - famous for rice cultivation in the Casamance used on rice plantations in the delta.
Loan words from this source have a big influence in American English generally, jive, juke, honkey nup, OK, boogie woogie, rap, hep, cat, whup all are Wolof derivations.
[[ Karen Ellis: The Etymology of “jazz, jism, jive, juke, honky, boogie woogie, hep, cat, are Irish American Vernacular English derivations.]]

More importantly they posessed a rich minstrel tradition, including a professional caste of bards or 'griots' who have much influenced the development of 'jazz'. A much neglected area of enquiry in this regard is religion [the provenance of these people Islamized by the 9th century with traditions of both scholarship and literacy] worthy of serious exploration.

Reprinted with permission from Cecile McHardy May 23, 2000