Photo: North Carolina office of state archaeology.
A rice gate, seen here in 1986. At Eagles Island, North Carolina, in the late 1700s, the enslaved Gullah Geechee people began creating ingenious rice fields.
If the people described in this archaeological report used brilliant rice-growing techniques while enslaved, imagine what they might have done if they had been free! But, alas, slavery destroys lives of the enslaved and their descendants for generations, as Pat Conroy documented in The Water is Wide, his memoir about teaching.
In an in-depth article at the Guardian, Adria R Walker writes about recent archaeological discoveries concerning the Gullah Geechee people of the American South.
“As a former deputy state underwater archaeologist, Mark Wilde-Ramsing can’t help but look down. While rowing around North Carolina’s Eagles Island, at the tip of the Gullah Geechee corridor, he noticed signs of human-made structures, visible at low tide. Though he’d retired, he was still active in the field and knew his former agency hadn’t recorded the structures – which meant he had come across something previously undocumented. …
“Wilde-Ramsing knew the area had once been full of rice fields. His neighbor, Joni ‘Osku’ Backstrom, was an assistant professor in the department of environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington whose specialty was shallow-water sonar, and he had the skills and technology to explore the area. Using a sonar device, the duo detected 45 wooden structures in the river, and the remote sensing tool allowed Backstrom and Wilde-Ramsing to acoustically map the canal beds. …
“Spanning 2,000 acres (809 hectares) of the northern end of Eagles Island, the 45 irrigation devices were developed by enslaved people, who would later come to be known as the Gullah Geechee. The devices were used to control water flow for the rice fields in conjunction with earthen dams and levees, Wilde-Ramsing said.
Their existence provides further evidence of the engineering and technological skills that Gullah Geechee people used for rice cultivation, beginning in the late 1700s at the latest.
“Backstrom and Wilde-Ramsing documented their findings in a study published earlier [in 2024]. ‘The use of the island for this endeavor prior to the Civil War, in large part rested on the shoulders of transplanted and enslaved Africans and their descendant Gullah Geechee tradition,’ the study reads.
“The team’s discoveries, which came after two years of research in and around Eagles Island, have helped further shed light on the ingenious, skilled work of the Gullah Geechee people. Though Gullah Geechee people have been studied for centuries, Backstrom and Wilde-Ramsing’s research is the first to focus on their irrigation systems. The research couldn’t come soon enough: Eagles Island is environmentally vulnerable, both because of climate change and ongoing development. The duo registered their sites with the state, making development more difficult as a means to ensure the protection of cultural artifacts.
“ ‘The whole area was originally swamp. It was cleared mostly in the post-colonial, early 1800s period for tidal rice cultivation because that area was freshwater,’ Wilde-Ramsing said. ‘They were able to actually use, regulate, introduce the water and drain it with the tides.’ …
“The work the Gullah Geechee people did would have been exhaustive. Wilde-Ramsing says it required removing the cypress forests, then building dams and levees. Growing rice necessitated the use of water, so they created long wooden boxes, or ‘trunks,’ with gates on either side, that allowed them to let the water in by opening the gates. …
“The enslaved populations throughout the Gullah Geechee corridor – which spans the coasts of North Carolina to upper Florida – were isolated in such a way that they developed and maintained a culture different from that of most plantations.
“ ‘[They were] from coastal regions of west Africa, an area that had similar environs to those along the southern Atlantic seaboard centering on Georgia and the Carolinas, where rice agriculture was a mainstay of the economy,’ the study reads. …
” ‘I didn’t quite realize the role that rice played. It rivaled cotton during the 1840s and 50s,’ Backstrom said. ‘It was all over Europe and the US and it was all run by African Americans. A lot of it was developed based on their skills. I’m just happy that it’s coming to light and they’re getting their – I won’t say new – but recognition that this was an amazing thing, amazing work.’
“Even though Wilde-Ramsing and Backstrom’s discovery likely won’t permanently stop either development or climate change, not least because the island is owned by multiple private entities, the existence of historic, cultural artifacts can ensure that the Gullah Geechee structures are at least documented instead of simply being razed and forgotten.
“The researchers have been in communication with East Carolina University’s maritime program, and the school plans to send a contingent to the site to study some of the characteristic types. People from the school will be able to work on noting the various structures, trying to figure out how they operated and taking samples. Backstrom said that they’ve also been in contact with researchers at George Mason University in Fairfax county, Virginia, including a professor who had ancestors [from the area].
“In terms of further discovery, a mix of approaches best suits the complicated terrain. ‘We’re thinking about using drone imagery,’ Backstrom said. ‘We have some preliminary drone footage, which gives us access to these areas at dead low tide, areas that we had a lot of difficulty with, even with a very small vessel.’ The area is remote, full of tight nooks and crannies. It’s ‘particularly challenging because of the tides and the timing,’ he said. The different combinations of drone imagery and sonar mean the researchers aren’t limited by turbidity in the water.
“Backstrom hopes to go to west Africa, specifically to Senegal or the Senegambia region, where many Gullah Geechee people were from, to learn about the history of rice farming, including the roles women and children played. Children, for instance, tasted the water to ensure too much saltwater wasn’t being let in, and women helped in the actual cultivation of the rice, using skills from their home countries that were passed down throughout generations.”
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