ENVIRONMENT TODD BALLANTINE Secret Places
The Gullah People, the true native culture on the South Carolina Coast, have a wise saying: If you don’t know where you are going, at least know where you have been. In the spirit of the Great Gullah who came before, let’s dig deep and remember their origins. WATER SCULPTED THIS LAND
CAROLINA GOLD
The “Lowcountry,” is a level terrain stretching from the seacoast to the approximate route of I-95. The mostlylevel ground was forged by rising and falling sea levels over hundreds of thousands of years. Hilton Head Island ‘s sandy soil — the grayish-tan terra infirma — is layers of pulverized seashells, quartz, feldspar, plus “pluff mud” silt from the salt marshes. On this island, it’s pretty easy to dig a hole or till a field.
Let’s journey inland to Bluffton’s Great Swamp — a vast old-growth forest of towering hardwoods and bald cypress trees that shade coffeecolored water, stained from the tannin in leaves and sediments-borne in the river flow. Alligators, turtles and a full range of serpents reside in the New River flood plain. This river is freshwater, but the level rises and falls as saltwater tides intrude downstream. At high tide, the more dense ocean tide migrates inland and wedges under the less-dense, lighter freshwater, rising the river level. At low tide, the seawater recedes and the river falls. Once, this phenomenon was worth its weight in gold.
Bluffton’s dirt is another sticky story. Not too far west of MacKay’s Creek, the water barrier boundary between Hilton Head, much of the ground turns to clay and dark muck. The farther you go inland, the slower water seeps into the ground. Farmers and land developers have long cursed the “Bluffton Gumbo” ground. But in centuries past, the Gullah ancestors — African slaves — knew exactly what to do with this sodden earth. The two soils — island and mainland — set up very different development and economies on Hilton Head Island and in Bluffton. The island soils were well suited for cultivation of Sea Island Cotton. After 1800, at least two-dozen plantations grew the fine white fibers, which rivaled Egyptian cotton in quality and price. But in the bayous of backcountry Bluffton, the real money was made in the muck.
In western Bluffton slaves imported from the Niger River delta region of Africa replicated their 3,000 years-old technique of tidal freshwater irrigation and rice cultivation. They constructed massive earthen dikes to impound the riverside rice fields. Customized water-control structures, called “trunks” were built to let freshwater into the fields for irrigation. The secret was to set the level of the inlet at the right height. The tides did all the work of bringing water to the fields, then draining it away.
After 1800, at least two-dozen plantations grew Sea Island Cotton, which rivaled Egyptian cotton in quality and price.
GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN The Lowcountry rice culture, like cotton plantations, declined after the Civil War. But if you take a pleasant stroll on Bluffton’s Linear Trail, you can still see remnants of the former rice fields wherein ancient Gullah ingenuity turned water to gold. M February 2014 115
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