The Gullah People and Their Link to West Africa

The Gullah or the Geechee people are an African fishing community that is located on the sea islands off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. These people were brought to the United States during the slave trade, but still have a very close tie to Africa and its way of life. The Gullah were specifically taken from the West Coast of Africa. Most of the ties and information link the majority of the Gullah with Sierra Leone. The people of Sierra Leone were rice farmers. The climate of the sea i slands is much like that of Africa, and the slave owners wanted rice to be grown there. Usually when slaves were captured and brought to the Western World, groups were separated so that all ties to their past would be broken and the idea of a rebellion w as lessened. It was different with the Gullah people. The were kept together because of their ability to farm rice. Off the coast of Sierra Leone is an island called Bunce Island. This island contained a huge slave trading fortress, which is where all the slaves from Sierra Leone were brought before being shipped to Charleston. In Charleston they were bought by slave masters who owned land on the sea islands. 

The climate of the sea islands was semitropical, and the slave owners weren't used to it. It didn't bother the slaves because they were used to the tropical climate of their homeland. There was also a high incidence of malaria on the sea islands, bu t this didn't hurt the Gullah because they were resistant to it. The slave owners found the climate disagreeable and the malaria deadly. There was no eminent threat of the slaves escaping because they were on an islands, so the slave masters pretty much left the Gullah people to themselves. This laissez faire attitude allowed the slaves to retain their traditional ways of life and beliefs. 

Today the Gullah still share many similarities with the people of Sierra Leone and the West coast of Africa. Their language is a type of Pidgin that is a combination of English and the traditional language spoken by the Wolof and Fula people of West Africa. The two groups of people separated by an ocean both: fish, grow rice, have the same folk tales, make the same baskets, have similar languages, and have similar belief systems. These ties to Africa are stronger than any other group of African Ame rican people because the Gullah people were allowed to stay together and to retain their traditional way of life. 

Dr. Amadou H. Diop works at the Center for Research on Language and Linguistics at the Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal. Dr. Diop is currently doing a study that will tie the Gullah people to Senegal as well as Sierra Leone. All the curr ent evidence is about Sierra Leone, but Dr. Diop believes they are also strongly linked to Senegal. He says that the language spoken by the Gullah is a combination of English, Wolof, and Fula. Wolof and Fula are the two main groups of people that live i n Senegal. 

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