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C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\Afriga.Wpd NOTE TO USERS Page(s) not included in the original manuscript are unavailable from the author or university. The manuscript was microfilmed as received. 175 This reproduction is the best copy available. “SHE HAS HER COUNTRY MARKS VERY CONSPICUOUS IN THE FACE”: AFRICAN CULTURE AND COMMUNITY IN EARLY GEORGIA DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Tiwanna M. Simpson, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2002 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Margaret Newell, Advisor Professor Randolph Roth ____________________ Advisor Professor Carla Pestana Department of History UMI Number: 3083784 ________________________________________________________ UMI Microform 3083784 Copyright 2003 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ____________________________________________________________ ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road PO Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 ABSTRACT Much of the existing literature on black life during the era of slavery has either given secondary consideration to Georgia or emphasizes the development of the African American community during the antebellum era. Examining the impact of the growth of the slave trade to Georgia and the ways in which North American, Caribbean, and African histories intersected in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, my dissertation demonstrates that Georgia is an ideal area to study the cultural and community development of black Atlantic peoples. Georgia=s black society grew and transformed as it faced the harsh realities of labor in a growing agricultural economy and met the challenges of a chaotic American Revolution and the formation of a new nation. The early history of slavery in Georgia reaches far beyond the boundaries of the American South, this project utilizes an Atlantic perspective in reconstructing African life, community and culture. Plantation records, missionary tracts, medical books, ship records, travel and slave trader journals, court proceedings, and newspapers all from the southern lowcountry, the West Indies, Africa, and Europe are used in examining the structure of Georgia’s enslaved communities. This study finds that West African philosophy and culture transformed to meet new challenges in Georgia and remained a iii critical foundation for black society throughout the slavery era. The dissertation also finds that Africans crossed ethnic and racial barriers in building their communities. Georgia’s frontier presented an atmosphere that was brutally oppressive, yet its fluid boundaries offered unique opportunities for enslaved persons to push for cultural autonomy and freedom. From enslaved Africans’ perspectives, building communities in Georgia meant finding an advantageous position in a multiethnic, multiracial, multilingual society where most could only envision them as slave laborers. As they adjusted to enslavement, the pressures of their condition spawned unexpected allies and enemies as they built intracommunal relationships and formed connections with diverse groups of Indians and Europeans. The transformation of African culture and community in early Georgia reveals a tumultuous path marked by settlement, power struggle, and war that connected West Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the American South. iv Coolness, then, is part of character, and character objectifies proper custom. To the degree that we live generously and discreetly, exhibiting grace under pressure, our appearance and our acts gradually assume virtual royal power. As we become noble, fully realizing the spark of creative goodness God endowed us with--the shining ororo bird of thought and aspiration--we find the confidence to cope with all kinds of situations. This is àshe. This is character. This is mytic coolness. Robert Farris Thompson Flash of the Spirit African and Afro-American Art & Philosophy v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Margaret Newell, for her dedication and guidance. Her support, professional and personal, made graduate school a wonderful learning experience. I am also grateful for all the support I have received during graduate school from my other professors and fellow graduate students including, Kenneth Andrien, Carla Pestana, Randolph Roth, Stephanie Shaw, Ahmad Sikainga, and members of the Cheikh Anta Diop Historical Society This research was generously supported by The Ohio State University’s Department of History and Graduate School with the Henry S. Simms Award for Southern History, the Ruth Higgins Award, and the Graduate Student Alumni Research Award. I also wish to thank the David Library of the American Revolution, the John Carter Brown Library, and the African and African American Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame for their support with this project. vi VITA October 25, 1969.........................................................Born – Montgomery, West Virginia 1992..............................................................................B.A. Anthropology and Afro- American Studies, The University Of Virginia 1996..............................................................................M.A. History, The Ohio State University 1994-1999.....................................................................Gradutate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University 2001-present..................................................................Instructor, Louisiana State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Early American History Minor Field: African History Minor Field: Latin American History vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapters: Page Abstract.......................................................................................................................iii Dedication....................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................v Vita..............................................................................................................................vi 1. Introduction “Bridging Gaps Between Historical Fields,.................................1 Perspectives and Themes 2. Africans in Preslavery Georgia.......................................................................20 3. “From Cordage to Iron Fetters”: Georgia’s African Past................................52 4. “When the Obia Watches”: Culture and Community.....................................94 Transforms in a New World 5. “The War in Slaves”......................................................................................139 6. “Conjuh Must be Fought with Conjuh”.........................................................174 7. Epilogue.........................................................................................................205 Bibliography...............................................................................................................216 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION BRIDGING GAPS BETWEEN HISTORICAL FIELDS, PERSPECTIVES AND THEMES Savannah Gazette of the State of Georgia October 20, 1785 Absented...from the subscriber...A Negro woman, named Betty, of a yellow complexion, about 30 years old, has her country marks very conspicuous in the face, speaks tolerable English, and understands two or three different African languages; she wore oznabrig clothes, was formerly the property of Mr. Francis Lewis, with whom she lived in the Indian nation.1 Samuel Beecroft When thirty year old Betty escaped from Samuel Beecroft’s Georgia plantation, he placed an advertisement in the Gazette of the State of Georgia offering a reward to anyone who could deliver Betty to the Gaoler in Savannah. The advertisement’s detailed description of Betty presented a remarkably diverse cultural background that was common among black Georgians. Born in Africa, Betty wore the scarification marks of her ethnic group and spoke two or three African languages, as well as, what Beecroft described as “tolerable English.” She escaped from the plantation with Castalio and Jerry, both American-born slaves, who were sold to Beecroft by Maryland slaveholders. Betty’s escape reveals the cultural adaptation, transformation, and exchange that took place in 1Lathan Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements: A Documentary History from the 1730s to 1790 vol. 4 Georgia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 134-135. 1 Georgia, where her diverse African cultural heritage was matched with other African, American, and West Indian cultures. In addition to these developments, Beecroft noted in his advertisement that Betty had “lived in the Indian nation,” providing a glimpse of the complex relationships that developed among Africans and Indians. Towards a clearer understanding of Georgia’s African population in the years preceding the antebellum period, historians must follow Betty’s example and cross boundaries that sometimes separate historical fields, perspectives and themes. American history’s preoccupation with marking the point when Africans became African-Americans has created a gap in the history of the early period. Scholars accepted limited studies of the peculiar institution and slave labor rather than demanding a more sophisticated understanding of African life and culture. Historians, adopting economic frameworks, sought numbers
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