African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee

Africans, Culture, and Islam in the Lowcountry

Michael A. Gomez Africans,Culture,andIslam intheLowcountry he history and experience of African Muslims and their descendants is critical to understanding the lowcountry. Long viewed as the source and reservoir of Gullah culture, it is now clear that coastal islands such as Sapelo, St. Simons, St. Helena, and their environs were also the collective site of the largest gathering of African Muslims in early North America, establishing a legacy that continues to the present day. We learn a great deal about these Muslims through advertisements for enslaved runaways, as they contain unique and substantial information on individual ethnic and cultural traits. These advertisements are important in part because they occasionally provide names that are clearly Muslim but rarely identified as such.1 Names such as Bullaly (Bilali), Mustapha, Sambo, Bocarrey (Bukhari, or possibly Bubacar from Abu Bakr), and Mamado (Mamadu) are regularly observed in the advertisements for runaway slaves. Unless slaveholders clearly understood the origin of these names, they would not necessarily associate them with Islam.2 A good example of this concerns the name Sambo or Samba, which can mean “second son” in the language of the Hausa and Fulbe.3 The January 9–12, 1782, publication of Charleston’s Royal Gazette sought the return of Sambo, or Sam, described as having a “yellowish complexion . . . and his hair is pretty long, being of the Fulla country.”4 The connections between Sambo, Islam, and T 104  michael a. gomez the Fulbe become even more apparent when the preceding advertisement is juxtaposed with another notice in which a decidedly Muslim name is identified with the same ethnicity: the June 17, 1766, edition of Charleston ’s South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal features an ad in which Robert Darrington sought the return of one “Moosa, a yellow Fellow . . . is of the Fullah Country.”5 A final example comes from the May 24, 1775, edition of Savannah’s Georgia Gazette, in which appeared a notice for three missing men, including twenty-two-year-old Sambo, reportedly “of the Moorish country.”6 This association with the Moorish country may be more a reference to Sambo’s Muslim identity than to his actually having hailed from North Africa, but it should be borne in mind that Moors, or Arabo-Berbers from Mauritania and elsewhere in North Africa, were in fact also imported into North America.7 The appearance of incontestably Muslim names in the runaway slave notices is relatively infrequent. More commonly, slaveholders seeking the return of runaways associated them with particular regions of origin (for example,GambiaorSenegal)orprovidedanethnicidentity(suchasMandingo or Fula). The Charleston Courier, for example, advertised the finding of a “new Negro boy, of the Fullah nation, says his name is Adam.”8 In the case of supposed region of origin or ethnic derivation, one cannot conclusively argue that the individual in question is Muslim, but given both the African background and the tendency among American planters to conflate Muslims, ethnicity, and region of origin, the probability is high that many of these persons were Muslims. Inadditiontorunawayslaveadvertisements,Muslimidentityandnaming patterns come together in an intriguing fashion in the slave registers of the John Stapleton plantation at Frogmore on St. Helena Island, South Carolina.9 In May 1816, a list of the 135 enslaved persons on the Frogmore estate was drawn up, on which the following individuals appear: Sambo, eighty-five years old and African-born; Dido, a fifty-six-year-old “Moroccan ”; Mamoodie and his wife Eleanor, both African-born and age twentyeight and twenty-nine, respectively; and the family of Nelson, Venus, and child Harriett. Sambo and Dido were probably Muslim. Mamoodie and Eleanor had a child named Fatima in 1814 (who died in infancy), so they were very likely Muslim also. The more interesting individuals are Nelson and Venus, who were twenty-nine and twenty-seven, respectively, and both African-born. In a subsequent enslaved list drawn up in 1818, their child Hammett appears. Hammett (Hamid or Ahmad) is a Muslim name, which would suggest that one or both of the parents were Muslim. Again, africans and islam in the lowcountry  105 the remaining names on the 1816 list are not African, but twenty-eight people are listed as African-born. It is therefore possible that others were Muslim, as Nelson or Venus may have been, but the absence of a corroborating Hammett prevents any such identification. That many examples of Muslim runaways come from South Carolina and Georgia, especially...