Carolinas 31the properties were maintained under the system of absen-
teeism. Plantation owners assigned a person to manage the
daily concerns of the property while they traveled to Europe
or islands in the Caribbean, or resided further inland.
By the mid-18th century, indigo became an important
article for export and source of wealth among Southern
colonial planters. Since the crop required dry, light soil,
indigo, like rice, was also cultivated in the South Carolina
Sea Islands. Th e production of indigo became tedious and
time-consuming as months of cultivating, drying, monitor-
ing, and steeping were necessary in order to produce the
most valued form of the commodity—a blue-violet dye. As
the process became a health concern, as steam and chemi-
cals from steeping were oft en lethal, cotton emerged as the
new staple in the Carolinas. By the 1790s, the need for simi-
lar agricultural environment and demands of the English
market allowed cotton to replace indigo as the dominant
crop in the Carolina colonies.
Plantation slavery in the Carolina colonies diff ered
from the systems found in the Caribbean and other Ameri-
can colonies and contributed to the development of African
American cultures in the Carolinas. Rice cultivation gave
rise to the task system and absenteeism, which played major
roles in the cultural development of South Carolina Sea Is-
lands’ Gullah communities. In the task system, a slave was
assigned one acre of land requiring weeding, hoeing, tilling,
or harvesting. Once the “task” is completed, slaves could
tend to their own gardens, known as “Negro” or “slave”
fi elds, or travel to the markets to sell any crops or goods they
produced. Without the presence of European infl uence, ab-
senteeism allowed the plantation to become a space for en-
slaved Africans to develop their own language and culture.
See also: Angolan/Kongolese; Atlantic Slave Trade; Bunce
Island; Gold Coast; Gullah; Juba Dance; Malaria; Rice Cul-
tivation; Senegambia; Sierra Leone; Stono Rebellion; Task
System; Turner, Lorenzo Dow; West-Central AfricaTamara T. ButlerBibliography
Creel, Margaret Washington. “A Peculiar People”: Slave Religion
and Community-Culture among the Gullahs. New York: New
York University Press, 1988.
Johnson, Guion Griffi s. A Social History of the Sea Islands. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1930.
Montgomery, Michael, ed. Th e Crucible of Carolina: Essays in the
Development of Gullah Language and Culture. Athens: Uni-
versity of Georgia Press, 1994.the transatlantic slave trade. Since Gold Coast slaves were
favored by owners of British Caribbean sugar plantations,
planters in the Carolinas circumvented the competition
by expanding their slave market to include peoples from
Kongo-Angola, Senegambia, and the Windward regions.
A second factor contributing to the shift from Gold
Coast slaves was an increase in slave resistance in the Ca-
ribbean and the Carolinas. Enslaved Africans from the
Gold Coast were linked to and accused of instigating slave
insurrections in Antigua and Jamaica. As a result, several
legislative acts curbed the importation of slaves not directly
from the African continent. In 1717, Carolina govern-
ment enforced a head tax on slaves from other American
or Caribbean colonies. In response to the Stono Rebellion
of 1739, which occurred near Charleston, South Carolina,
fewer West-Central Africans were imported beginning in
1740 since colonial authorities blamed “Angolans” for the
uprising. From the 1740s through the end of the slave trade,
South Carolina would import larger numbers of Africans
from Senegambia and Sierra Leone.
Th e third factor contributing to the shift in African
labor preference was the introduction of rice into the Caro-
linas. In 1680, Captain John Th urber brought gold seed rice
from the island of Madagascar, located off the east African
coast, and dispersed to fellow colleagues in South Carolina.
Once the seed proved to be an agricultural and economic
success, the plantation system became a major source of
rice cultivation. Th e infl ux of slave labor from the African
continent increased to maintain the region’s growing num-
ber of rice plantations.
In the 1750s, planters relocated rice fi elds from the in-
land to tidal and river swamps, where the plant was more
susceptible to fl ooding by freshwater. Th e land required to
successfully grow rice was located in humid areas plagued by
tropical diseases. European laborers and landowners oft en
contracted and died from tropical diseases such as malaria,
carried by mosquitoes, and cholera. Under such conditions,
plantation laborers shift ed from European indentured ser-
vants to enslaved Africans. Peoples of the Windward Coast
were found to be ideal for rice cultivation for two reasons:
rice was a staple crop along the Windward Coast and the
people of the region were immune to malaria. Malaria-
resistance was later linked to the group’s production of sickle-
shaped blood cells, which prevented the pathogen’s survival
and transmission. Since European planters were unable to
survive in the tropical environment of the rice plantations,