Dwelling Place Read online

  And there were other Africans, some of whom bore on their bodies the long or narrow marks of their tribes and some of whom had been only recently captured and illegally brought into the country after the international slave trade had been outlawed.4

  By the 1830s, however, the number of people born in Africa was only a small part of the black population of Liberty County. In contrast to Brazil or Cuba or even Jamaica, where there had been a steady flow of Africans to buttress traditional African cultures, there had been for decades no large-scale infusion of Africans into Liberty County. This meant that in Liberty County traditional African cultures had been undergoing a transformation into an African-American culture, most specifically into the Gullah culture of those who lived in the slave cabins of the low country.5 Within that culture, however, Sharper could see not only Africans scattered among the settlements but strong reminders of African traditions and practices. He could see woodcarvings—walking sticks and spoons, bowls and grave markers—that were clearly African in their beauty and design. And at Carlawter he could see the work of Lizzy’s son Cassius, who made sweetgrass baskets for fanning rice, for carrying cotton, and for storing peas, and whose work reflected the remembered art of the Ashanti and the technical skills of the Dahomey. Most powerful of all the African survivals encountered in the settlements, however, were the beliefs and rituals that had their roots in a distant homeland and that had been transplanted, adapted, and cultivated in the landscape of Liberty County.6

  No one in the settlements represented the traditions of Africa more fully than the conjurers who could hurt an enemy or aid a friend.7 The conjurer was one who had access to the power of another world and whose work explained misfortune and adversity. In 1842 Charles wrote of what he could see of this secret life in the settlement: “They believe in second-sight, in apparitions, charms, witchcraft, and in a kind of irresistible Satanic influence. The superstitions brought from Africa have not been wholly laid aside.” A conjurer could make a person suddenly become sick or could provide a powerful love potion or heal those who had had spells cast upon them. Most conjurers lived in the settlements and were known and often feared by their neighbors. But shortly after Charles began his missionary work, Sharper had his position and authority challenged by a powerful conjurer who was evidently a runaway slave who had come to the county to hide along its rivers and in its woods and swamps.8

  Word spread through the settlements of the conjurer’s power, and people began to slip away to see him and to pay him for working his magic. The conjurer’s influence grew, and more people turned to him. Charles wrote that the conjurer turned “the ignorant people crazy; cheating them out of their time and money, creating quarrels and confusion among them, and leading them into trouble.” Charles referred to him as “that ridiculous Conjurer,” but the conjurer was dangerous to the ordered ways of the county. Whites knew that a conjurer, Gullah Jack, had been implicated in 1822 in the attempted Denmark Vesey slave revolt in Charleston. More recently, Nat Turner had led his bloody rebellion in Virginia guided by religious visions. For Charles the danger with all conjurers—and now especially with the conjurer hiding in the nearby woods—was in their “pretensions to courage, to divine protection, to the exercise of peculiar power in consummating their own plans…. They avail themselves of the passions and prejudices of the poor people and thus fit them for their own purposes. They proceed to predict events, or to see visions and dream dreams, or to give out charms of various kinds and for various purposes.”9

  The driver at Laurel View plantation, Samuel Elliott, one of the wealthiest and most enterprising men in the settlements, had recently become a member of the Sunbury Baptist Church when the roving conjurer appeared in the county. At first some in the settlements thought Elliott was in cahoots with the conjurer, for he seemed to believe in his charms and power. But Elliott, who evidently found the man a charlatan and a fraud, was laying a plan for his capture. With Elliott’s help the white authorities were able to take the conjurer and ship him out of the county. “The foolish and ignorant people that trusted in him,” said Charles, “were brought to shame.”10

  Belief in conjurers, however, did not fade. Generations later a former slave living near Sunbury said of his youth, “deah sho wus conjuhin,” and another told a story of an “ole man roun yuh wut wuz cunjuhed an hab lots uh trouble wid his eyes. He dig roun his yahd tuh see ef any does is buried deah. Attuh a time he fine a dawl baby buried unduh duh doe step. Its two finguhs wuz stuck in its eye. Duh man tro duh dawl in duh ribbuh an duh trouble disappeah.” Still others spoke of meeting ghosts on the road or in a house and declared that being born with a caul (a membrane over the head) provided one with the ability to see spirits.11

  Sharper, as the black preacher visiting in the settlements, had to contend with the conjurers and with the charms that they used, which were widely feared. He united, said Charles, “the most fearless exhibitions of Divine truth, and exposures of their wickedness.” He was a man a little below middling stature, with a “smooth, benevolent forehead, and of a pleasant countenance.” When he preached, a slight impediment gave a distinctive character to his speech and “added to the interest of his address.” The consistent theme of his sermons was God’s love for all people, and over and over again he declared, “Christ died to save sinners.” When he prayed his language soared and carried the people with it. After Charles’s early sermon on creation, Sharper prayed:

  The old man went down upon his knees, with the whole congregation, in the sublimest and most overwhelming descriptions of God and address to Him, drawn from the Bible, and the deep feelings of his own soul, he brought God down in our midst, he placed us, bowing in his awful presence, as our God, Creator, King, Redeemer, and final Judge. The silence of death reigned; we had impressions of the Divine Majesty and glory during that prayer, which we never had before.12

  And when Sharper visited in the settlements and talked with the sick and the troubled, with those who were struggling with the burdens of the day and the fears of the night, the sum and the heart of the old man’s spiritual counsel was “Trust and believe in Christ.” Here, he said, was a rock in a weary land and a balm in Gilead. He consequently had wide influence in the settlements, and a large number of those who lived in the settlements looked upon him “as their spiritual Father, while all held him in veneration.”13

  But in spite of all of his efforts, the conjurers continued to make their charms and to mix their potions and to explain adversity and to promise help. One charm might be buried in a path or under the door of an enemy, where it could “exert a fatal influence.” Another might allow its possessor to break into a smokehouse or kill a master’s pig in the woods “without detection.” Still other charms could be used “to remove sickness” or to work a “meditated revenge” on enemies or to make a person, in the face of danger, invulnerable. And what helped to make the magic so powerful was that a single charm could be used for multiple purposes—a person could use the same charm to heal a friend and hurt an enemy. The secret was in knowing how to make a charm with a bunch of “hair or wool, crooked sticks, glass of bottles, rusty nails, roots, etc. prepared in size and quality and with various incantations, suitable to persons and circumstances.”14 Years later a former slave in Sunbury, when asked how charms were made, said “Dy make em uh haiah an nails an frum lots uh tings.” And another former slave who had lived near the South Newport River remembered how charms were worn for protection:

  These keep othuh folks frum wukin cunjuh on em too. They’s made of haiah, an nails, an graveyahd dut, sometimes from pieces of cloth an string. They tie em all up in a lill bag. Some of em weahs it round wrist, some of em weahs it roun the neck, and some weahs a dime on the ankle. Then ef somebody put down cunjuh fuh em it tun black an they get anothuh one tuh wawd off the evil. Some of em has a frizzled chicken in the yahd. People do say they kin dig up cunjuh an keep it frum wukin genes yuh.15

  Of course charms and conjuring could also be used against whites as a
means of resistance and revenge. For a people with no military or legal power, the powers of a secret world could be evoked to hide a feast in the woods or to defend a family from separation or to strike back at a cruel master. What whites most feared were poisonous roots and concoctions that could be slipped into foods or stirred into drinks. Stories of such poisonings were whispered in parlors and on piazzas, and over the years more than a few slaves in the low country had been charged and executed for poisoning or attempting to poison white owners or overseers.16

  Liberty County grave markers (Margaret Davis Cate Collection, courtesy Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga.)

  Not as dangerous to order or as secretive as the world of conjurers and charms, but nevertheless disturbing to whites and many pious blacks, was the world of entertainment in the settlements. The “chief amusement” in the settlements, Charles later wrote, “and that to which they become passionately fond is dancing.” Protestants believed dancing, by whites or blacks, was an amusement of the world and not a practice for members of the church. Those who had had their hearts changed were to live different lives from the worldly, and this meant that they were to abstain from dances, which led to temptations and sin. “We know,” Charles wrote, “what evils attend the amusement in elevated society. Those evils are aggravated and multiplied among the poor and labouring classes.” In particular, for those who lived in the settlements Charles believed dancing to be “a dissipating, demoralizing amusement,” and it was “so viewed by those who are the really serious, virtuous and pious among them.” He had found that their “dances are not only protracted to unseasonable hours, but too frequently become the resort of the most dissolute and abandoned, and for the vilest purposes.”17

  Sharper no doubt knew of such dancing—there was the buzzard lope and the camel walk, the fish tail and the snake hip—and he no doubt had heard of the secret drums that would call the people to sneak away for a dance, even to so far away a place as St. Catherine’s Island. “Dey beat duh drums on St. Catherine,” an elderly black from Sunbury would remember. “Den dey heah it at Harris Neck an folks deah tell all ub us yuh bout duh dance. We all go obuh tuh St. Catherine in a boat an dance an dance till mos daylight.” In the settlements themselves, such dances often followed a corn shucking or were at Christmas or on New Year’s Eve. There were fiddlersin the settlements, people whom Charles considered neither “sober” nor “devout persons.”18

  Some planters, however, thought dancing a good diversion for the slaves and sponsored dancing as a reward at the end of a hard season of work. Roswell King, Sr., before his own religious conversion, even thought dancing better for the slaves than preaching by black slaves like Sharper, which could get out of hand. The dancing allowed a diversion for the people and kept them from focusing on more troubling matters. He had written Pierce Butler in Philadelphia:

  There is one plan I cannot forbade proposing (it is not much Expense) which is to send me a full dozen Fiddles that will cost from one to two dollars each. I must try to break up so much preaching as there is on your Estate. Some of your Negroes die for the Love of God and others through feir of Him. Something must be done. I think Dancing will give the Negroes a better appetite for sleep than preaching.19

  The most common musical instrument in the settlements, however, was not the fiddle but the banjo—an instrument that most likely had its origins in African musical traditions. A long neck gourd, grown in one of the settlement gardens, would be selected and carefully dried. It needed a straight neck and as round a head as possible. About a half-inch above the level of the neck, the head of the gourd would be cut, a cat hide stretched across it, and a hank of horsehair used for strings. With the music from such a gourd banjo, African Americans in the low country had been dancing and singing for years by the time Sharper was making his visits to the settlements.20

  Like the sweetgrass baskets and the Gullah dialect, the music of the settlements represented something both old and new. The dancing that Sharper saw and the singing that he heard were expressions of a remembered culturalstyle—a cultural style that lay beneath and united all the diverse cultures of Africa represented in the settlements. At the heart of this remembered cultural style was a rhythmic and percussive music that permeated everyday life.21 Charles found that those who lived in the settlements sang “very often about their business or of an evening in their houses.” Phoebe and Patience would sing as they washed clothes or snapped beans in the yard; others would sing as they chopped cotton or shucked corn or harvested rice or rowed boats.22 Rachael, who was born at Maybank in 1833, later sang to a white baby as she rocked him:

  By oh baby go sleepy!

  Maumer ketch one raaaabit,

  Bile um sweet for baby!

  Rock um by baby go sleepy,

  All de bread an’ de cheese I git,

  Put um up for de baby!

  Maumer ketch one raaaabit,

  Bile um sweet for baby!23

  This lullaby, sung first no doubt to a baby in the settlement, was at the same time African in its rhythmand something new that was being created out of the experience of African Americans. Rachael was going to give the baby extra food to eat, somethingthatwould be specialforachildin thesettlement—bread, cheese, and rabbit. Singing such a song in her Gullah dialect, she was drawing together with passion and pathos traditions from Africa and Europe and creating a distinct cultural tradition that reflected the social and material realities of the settlements.

  In a similar manner, Sharper was leading the people of the settlements as they helped create a world of African-American Christianity. In Liberty County this world was taking institutional shape around the black preacher and watchmen at Midway and the watchmen at the Baptist churches at North Newport and Sun-bury. But much of the vitality of African-American Christianity flowed from the bush arbors built near the settlements and near the churches and from the “hush arbors” built in secret places. In these simple structures, often little more than a gathering place in the woods, different worlds overlapped and sometimes collided: the world of Africa and the world of Europe; the worlds of conjuring and entertainment and the world of Christian piety and discipleship.24

  As Sharper visited the plantations, he would preach and pray and sing with the people in the arbors. And from these simple places, and others like them across the South, there flowed a river of song of amazing depth and beauty— the spirituals of a people held captive, the cries of the heart of those who lived in the settlement at Carlawter and at Maybank, at the Retreat and at the Mallard Place, and in all the smoky slave cabins of the South:

  My God is a rock in a weary land

  weary land

  in a weary land

  My God is a rock in a weary land

  Shelter in a time of storm.25

  The spirituals were the catechisms of the arbors—they taught the stories of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. There were spirituals about the Old Testament patriarchs:

  O wrestlin’ Jacob, Jacob, day’s a-breakin’:

  I will not let thee go!26

  And there were spirituals filled with the bloody imagery of Judgment Day:

  And de moon will turn to blood (Thrice)

  In dat day, O-yoy [a sort of prolonged wail] my soul!

  And de moon will turn to blood in dat day.27

  And in between spirituals from Genesis and Revelation were spirituals that told about crossing the Jordan River, about King David, and about a valley of dry bone. And from the New Testament there were spirituals about Mary and Jesus, about disciples and about the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. The spirituals not only taught these biblical stories, they drew the singers deep into the stories and made the biblical stories a part of the experience of the settlements:

  See how they done my Lord

  done my Lord

  done my Lord

  See how they done my Lord

  An’ He never said a mumblin’ word.28

  The catechism of the arbors, however—unl
ike the ones written by Charles—did not tell about Onesimus or sing: “Servants obey in all things your Masters according to the flesh, not in eye-serve as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.” Rather, there was another biblical story that was sung and memorized by the people: “Go down Moses, tell ole Pharaoh to let my people go!”

  Often using a call and response for questions and answers, the catechism of the arbors allowed the singers to memorize and internalize the message of the spirituals that took the singers through the life of faith.29 The seeker had to “walk this lonesome valley,” and the converted had to be watchful lest they strayed and the Lord come unexpectedly:

  Brudder, keep you lamp trimmin’ and a-burnin,’

  Keep your lamp trimmin’ and a-burnin,’

  Keep your lamp trimmin’ and a-burnin,’

  For dis world most done.30

  And for the believers, there were words of comfort and words that reassured the singers that Jesus knew the sorrows of the settlements:

  Nobody knows de trouble I see

  Nobody knows but Jesus,

  Nobody knows de trouble I’ve had

  Glory hallelu!31

  Permeating these songs of sorrow that told of burdens and troubles was a remarkable joy that gave courage and invited resistance to the degradations of slavery.32 This joy was also a part of the catechism of the arbors, and it was rooted in a vision of a different future, of a new heaven and a new earth, where there would be no more masters or mistresses, no more slave sales in Riceboro, no more whippings, no more illness, no more death, no more partings. By offering a vision of a different future, the catechism of the arbors was insisting that life in Liberty County was not part of some eternal, unchanging order but was going to change. A day was coming, this catechism taught, when the land would be healed and there would be no more slough separating Carlawter and Montevideo—indeed, on that jubilee day there might even be a great reversal, when the last would become the first, when those who sat around fires in the settlements would sit in the best seats at the banquet of the Lord.