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Welcome to the Gullah Chronicles
-- a series of internet pages developed and organized to inform, educate,
and entertain. While there are conflicting views on the origins of
Gullah and its alternate name, "Geechee", this initiative seeks to help
the users acquire settling definitions of the appropriate terms.
The Gullah Culture appears to have had its beginnings in the Coastal Southeastern United States -- generally, from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida -- with the arrival of the slaves from Africa. The communication and interaction of the African slaves with each other in their new environment, gave rise to what is commonly called Gullah.
As you will read in this document, most of the historians featured here agree that the common point of debarkation for the slaves was West Africa. Some argue that the word, Gullah, is an outgrowth of the West African country, Angola, which was pronounced by many as nGola. Others advance the theory that the Gullah-speaking African Americans who reside on the mid-eastern Atlantic coast have direct links to the people of the African nation of Sierra Leone.
The second group compares favorably the similarities in the culture, climate, and diets of the two clusters of people (Gullah-speaking African Americans and the people of Sierra Leone). The facts that the Sierra Leonese were good rice and indigo farmers are matched with the popular staples of the region of the U.S. where the Gullah speakers first came to live.
Some archaeologists and other scientists have conducted studies of Gullah words including the sentence structure and patterns and have found them to be consistent with language in West Africa. One example of a word found in both West African and Gullah nomenclatures is "cuddah" [pronounced as "kuud ah"]. The word means, turtle, in both cultures.
Another term used to identify the culture and people that are subject of this initiative is the word, "Geechee." While many are puzzled about the origin of that expression, it could have a perfectly logical explanation. The region of the country where many of the African slaves resided and their descendents still live is near Savannah, Georgia's Ogeechee River. That river is close enough to the target group -- from Charleston and Beaufort in South Carolina, Savannah and the Golden Isles in Georgia, and Jacksonville, Florida — to have given the language or dialect of English spoken by the inhabitants a slang derivative of the name, Ogeechee River, "Geechee."
If indeed, "Geechee" does label
correctly a group of African Americans who had their origins in the Savannah,
Georgia area, the term, "Gullah" would refer to the overall group from
North Carolina to Florida.
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