204 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentbaskets to carry goods in a style reminiscent of African
peddlers and produced coiled pottery and household items
identical to those produced in West Africa. With respect
to religion, the Gullah, who are primarily Christian, also
incorporated elements of African song and dance into re-
ligious practices, such as the “ring shout.” In the Gullah’s
understanding of magic, conjuring, and mysticism, Gullah
practices were similarly derived from African and Afro-
Caribbean rituals.
Despite continued isolation in the decades following
the Civil War, by the 1920s and 1930s, anthropologists and
folklorists recognized the potential impacts of economic
and social transformation on the Gullah. In recent years,
these transformations—particularly the infl ux of tourists
in the region—have led to the gradual decline of Gullah
ways. Today, less than 25,000 Gullah speakers remain in
Lowcountry enclaves, and 10,000 outside of the region, pri-
marily in the New York City area. Yet, even as the number
of Gullah ebb, their lasting impact on culture and history
of the region is clear. Th eir language and culture provide
a rare window into the transplantation and recreation of
African folkways among peoples of African descent in the
Americas.
See also: Black English; Pritchard, Gullah Jack; Ring Shout;
Sierra Leone; Slave Culture; Sweetgrass Baskets; Task Sys-
tem; Turner, Lorenzo DowErica Ann BruchkoBibliography
Bennet, John. “Gullah: A Negro Patois.” South Atlantic Quarterly
7: (1908) 332–47.
Crum, Mason. Gullah: Negro Life in the Carolina Sea Islands. Dur-
ham, NC: Duke University Press, 1940.
Gordon, Raymond G. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th
ed. Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2005.
Higginson, Th omas Wentworth. Army Life in a Black Regiment.
New York: Houghton, Miffl in, 1900.
Joyner, Charles W. Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave
Community. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
Littlefi eld, Daniel C. Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade
in Colonial South Carolina. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1981.
Rose, Willie Lee. Rehearsal for Reconstruction: Th e Port Royal Ex-
periment. New York: Vintage Books, 1964.
Smith, Reed. Gullah. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1926.
Tindall, George Brown. South Carolina Negroes, 1 877– 19 00. Co-
lumbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
Turner, Lorenzo D. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. New York:
Arno Press, 1969.forming plurals and negations diff erently than in English,
Gullah retained grammatical elements of African dialects
that facilitated communication between speakers of various
African languages.
Pronoun tenses and numbers are equally fl uid in Gul-
lah. According to Reed Smith, one early observer of the
language, the following Gullah phrase—“Uh yeddy ’um
but ’uh ent shum”—could be translated into English in
over a dozen ways: “I (hear/heard) (it/her/him/them) but
I (didn’t/don’t) see (it/her/him/them).” By distinguishing
between actions that were continual and those that were
momentary, rather than specifying the relative time of an
action per English custom, Gullah retained grammatical
rules similar to the Ewe, Yoruba, and other African linguis-
tic groups.
In addition to grammatical variations, African vocabu-
lary also diff erentiates Gullah from English. Documenta-
tion of Gullah speech from the mid-20th century, when
decreolization was already underway, uncovered thousands
of words with African origins, such as “goober” (peanut)
and “kuta” or “cooter” (turtle), which were gradually ad-
opted into English usage. In 1949, anthropologist and
Gullah scholar Lorenzo Dow Turner documented 4,000
African words, including several hundred African names
used frequently by Gullah speakers.
Th e use of non-African phrases, shortened over time,
also characterizes the language and demonstrates how ef-
forts to communicate shaped Gullah speech. According to
another early scholar of Gullah, Mason Crum, terms such
as “tebl tapa,” or “preacher,” derived from the descriptive
phrase “one who taps on the table.” Similarly, “swit maut,” or
“to fl atter,” came from the phrase “to sweet mouth.”
Elements of nonverbal communication among the
Gullah were also rooted in African patterns. A common
Gullah gesture of averting one’s gaze by turning the head
with pursed lips is reminiscent of a similar gesture from the
Kongo. Other Gullah signs, unique to individual genders,
share qualities common to various African cultures.
Gullah culture closely followed the pattern of language,
borrowing heavily from African folkways. Anthropologists
and folklorists have identifi ed strong ties to African folk
beliefs regarding family organization, religious practice,
work patterns, and artistic expression. Gullah slaves in
rice-producing regions of the coast, for example, worked
rice fi elds in an African manner, using African-style bas-
kets and fans to process the commodity. Th ey also used