Great Dismal Swamp Maroons

Great Dismal Swamp Maroons Maroons were, laid-off and escaped slaves who settled in the marshlands of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina. Although they had to live under harsh conditions, researchers assume that thousands of them lived there between about 1700 and 1860. Harriett Beecher Stowe told of their history in 1856 in her novel Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. The most significant studies of the settlements began in 2002 with a project by Dan Sayers of the American University, Washington.

Location

The Great Dismal Swamp covers an area in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina between the James River at Norfolk, Virginia, and the Albemarle Sound in Edenton, North Carolina. The original size of the wetland is estimated to be over 4,000 km ², but human influences significantly reduced the surface. Today, the Great Dismal Swamp Reserve National Wildlife Refuge comprises just over 450 km ².

History

The first African slaves who reached the British colonies, arrived in 1619 on a Dutch ship to Virginia. At this time slaves were treated similarly as indentured servants ( indentured servants ), they were released after a certain time. Others won freedom by converting to Christianity, as the Englishman of that time held no Christians as slaves. Slave labor was used for the draining of the marshes in the 18th and 19th centuries. Escaped slaves were referred to as maroons or outlyers. The origin of the word Maroon is uncertain, different theories lead it back to Spanish, Arawak or Taíno. There were Maroons in isolated or hidden settlements in all southern states. Maroon settlements in swamps existed in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina. Further north there was only in the Great Dismal Swamp.

Since the beginning of the 18th century Maroons lived in the Great Dismal Swamp, both slaves who had purchased their freedom, and escaped. Most settled in the higher and drier parts of the swamp. Others used the swamp as an access to the Underground Railroad to the north.

Herbert Aptheker introduced in 1939 in Maroons Within the Present Limits of the United States found that probably " about 2000 negroes, fugitive or their descendants " ( Negroes, fugitives, or the descendants of fugitives ) in the Great Dismal Swamp lived. A study that was published in 2007, The Political Economy of Exile in the Great Dismal Swamp, stating that thousands of people 1630-1865 lived in the swamp, Native Americans, maroons and sewage workers. This made it one of the largest Maroon settlements in the United States. Some Maroons spent their entire lives in the swamp and defied the difficult conditions, insects, poisonous snakes and bears.

In Literature and Art

1842 wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 's poem The Slave In Dismal Swamp. In six stanzas the poet describes the " hunted Negro" ( hunted negro ), mentioned the bloodhounds and describes the conditions that would occur in the hardly a human foot or a human heart would dare ( "where hardly a human foot Could pass, or a human heart would dare " ). The poem perhaps inspired the painter David Edward Cronin, an artist of the Düsseldorf School, who served as an officer in the Civil War in Virginia and witness the slavery to his painting Fugitive Slaves in the Dismal Swamp, Virginia ( 1888).

1856 published Harriett Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom 's Cabin, her second novel against slavery, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. The title character is a Great Dismal Swamp Maroon, who preaches against slavery and moved slaves to escape.

Research

The investigation Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study began in 2002, led by Dan Sayers, an archaeologist anthropology faculty of the American University. In 2003 he conducted the first excavations in the swamp. 2009, a research program was initiated in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which investigates the impact of colonialism and the slave economy of the Maroon settlements in the swamp, also the societies before contact with Europeans. Before Sayers efforts there had been no scientific studies in the Great Dismal Swamp. The National Endowment for the Humanities fitted the project in 2010 with the " We The People Award " of $ 200,000 from.

In autumn 2011, a permanent exhibition was established. Sayers summarizes: "These groups are very inspirational. As details unfold, we are increasingly able to show how people have the ability, as individuals and communities, to take control of Their Lives, even under oppressive conditions. " ( These groups are very inspiring. With the unfolding of the details we are gradually to point to the able as humans have the ability to take their lives as individuals and groups, even under oppressive conditions in the hand. )