Editing Gullah (section)

===African roots===
[[File:African Slave Trade.png|thumb|Map of both intercontinental and transatlantic slave trade in Africa]]
[[File:WIKITONGUES- Caroline speaking Gullah and English.webm|thumb|Wikitongues: Caroline speaking Gullah and English. The Gullah language has several West African words.]]

According to Port of Charleston records, African slaves shipped to the port came from the following areas: [[Angola]] (39%), [[Senegambia]] (20%), the [[Windward Coast]] (17%), the [[Gold Coast (region)|Gold Coast]] (13%), [[Sierra Leone]] (6%), the [[Bight of Benin]] and [[Bight of Biafra]] (5% combined), [[Madagascar]] and [[Mozambique]].<ref name=":0" /><ref>[http://www.nps.gov/ethnography/research/docs/ggsrs_book.pdf ''Low Country Gullah Culture Special Resource Study and Final Environmental Impact Statement''], National Park Service, Southeast Regional Office, p. 3</ref>

Particularly along the western coast, the local peoples had cultivated [[African rice]], related to but distinct from [[Asian rice]], for what is estimated to approach 3,000 years. It was originally domesticated in the inland delta of the Upper [[Niger River]].<ref name=linares>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1073/pnas.252604599|issn=1091-6490| volume = 99| issue = 25| pages = 16360–16365| last = Linares| first = Olga F.| title = African rice (''Oryza glaberrima''): History and future potential| journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences| date = 2002-12-10| pmid = 12461173| pmc=138616|bibcode=2002PNAS...9916360L|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name=genome>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1038/ng.3044| pmid = 25064006| issn = 1061-4036| volume = 46| issue = 9| pages = 982–988| last1 = Wang| first1 = Muhua| last2 = Yu| first2 = Yeisoo| last3 = Haberer| first3 = Georg| last4 = Marri| first4 = Pradeep Reddy| last5 = Fan| first5 = Chuanzhu| last6 = Goicoechea| first6 = Jose Luis| last7 = Zuccolo| first7 = Andrea| last8 = Song| first8 = Xiang| last9 = Kudrna| first9 = Dave| last10 = Ammiraju| first10 = Jetty S. S.| last11 = Cossu| first11 = Rosa Maria| last12 = Maldonado| first12 = Carlos| last13 = Chen| first13 = Jinfeng| last14 = Lee| first14 = Seunghee| last15 = Sisneros| first15 = Nick| last16 = de Baynast| first16 = Kristi| last17 = Golser| first17 = Wolfgang| last18 = Wissotski| first18 = Marina| last19 = Kim| first19 = Woojin| last20 = Sanchez| first20 = Paul| last21 = Ndjiondjop| first21 = Marie-Noelle| last22 = Sanni| first22 = Kayode| last23 = Long| first23 = Manyuan| last24 = Carney| first24 = Judith| last25 = Panaud| first25 = Olivier| last26 = Wicker| first26 = Thomas| last27 = Machado| first27 = Carlos A.| last28 = Chen| first28 = Mingsheng| last29 = Mayer| first29 = Klaus F. X.| last30 = Rounsley| first30 = Steve| last31 = Wing| first31 = Rod A.| title = The genome sequence of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) and evidence for independent domestication| journal = Nature Genetics|date = 2014-07-27| pmc = 7036042| doi-access = free}}</ref> Once Carolinian and Georgian planters in the American South discovered that African rice would grow in that region, they often sought enslaved Africans from rice-growing regions because they had the skills and knowledge needed to develop and build irrigation, dams and earthworks.<ref name="Opala2006b">{{cite web|author1=Joseph A. Opala|title=The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection|url=http://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection|publisher=Yale University|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151006082735/http://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection|archive-date=October 6, 2015|date=2006}}</ref>

[[File:Bunce Island 1805.jpg|thumb|Bunce Island, a historical slave port where the ancestors of many Gullah departed to the Lowcountry]]

Two British trading companies{{which?|date=January 2025}} operated the slave castle at [[Bunce Island]] (formerly called Bance Island), located in the [[Sierra Leone River]]. Their main contact in Charleston was American [[Founding Father]] [[Henry Laurens]]. His counterpart in Britain was the Scottish merchant and slave trader [[Richard Oswald (merchant)|Richard Oswald]]. Many of the enslaved Africans taken in West Africa were processed through Bunce Island, a prime export site for slaves to South Carolina and Georgia. Slave castles in Ghana, by contrast, shipped many of the people they traded to ports and markets in the Caribbean islands.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

After Freetown, Sierra Leone, was founded in the late 18th century by the British as a colony for poor black people from London and [[black Loyalists]] from Nova Scotia resettled after the [[American Revolutionary War]]. The British did not allow slaves to be taken from Sierra Leone, protecting the people from kidnappers. In 1808 both Great Britain and the United States prohibited the African [[History of slavery|slave trade]]. After that date, the British, whose navy patrolled to [[Blockade of Africa|intercept slave ships]] off Africa, sometimes resettled Africans liberated from slave trader ships in Sierra Leone. Similarly, Americans sometimes settled freed slaves at [[Liberia]], a similar colony established in the early 19th century by the [[American Colonization Society]]. As it was a place for freed slaves and free blacks from the United States, some free blacks emigrated there voluntarily, for the chance to create their own society.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}