Editing Gullah (section)

===Origin of Gullah culture===
[[File:Gullah1.PNG|thumb|The Gullah region once extended from SE North Carolina to NE Florida]]

The Gullah people have been able to preserve much of their African cultural heritage because of climate, geography, cultural pride, and patterns of importation of enslaved Africans. The peoples who contributed to Gullah culture included the [[Kongo people|Bakongo]], [[Ambundu|Mbundu]], [[Vili people|Vili]], [[Yombe people|Yombe]], [[Yaka people|Yaka]], [[Pende people|Pende]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Ras Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dPfzevzxIboC&q=mbundu |title=African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry |date=2012-08-27 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-02409-0 |pages=70 |language=en}}</ref> [[Mandinka people|Mandinka]], [[Kissi people|Kissi]], [[Fula people|Fulani]], [[Mende people|Mende]], [[Wolof people|Wolof]], [[Kpelle people|Kpelle]], [[Temne people|Temne]], [[Limba people (Sierra Leone)|Limba]], [[Dyula people|Dyula]], [[Susu people|Susu]], and the [[Vai people|Vai]].<ref name=":0" />

By the middle of the 18th century, thousands of acres in the [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] and [[South Carolina]] Lowcountry, and the Sea Islands were developed as [[African rice]] fields. African farmers from the "Rice Coast" brought the skills for cultivation and tidal irrigation that made rice farming one of the most successful industries in early America.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

The subtropical climate encouraged the spread of [[malaria]] and [[yellow fever]], which were both carried and transmitted by mosquitoes. These tropical diseases were [[Endemic (epidemiology)|endemic]] in Africa and might have been carried by enslaved Africans to the colonies.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_rice.htm/|author=West, Jean M.|title=Rice and Slavery: A Fatal Gold Seede|website=Slavery in America|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120206050437/http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_rice.htm|archive-date=2012-02-06}}</ref> Mosquitoes in the swamps and inundated rice fields of the Lowcountry picked up and spread the diseases to European [[settler]]s, as well. 

Because they had acquired some [[immunity (medical)|immunity]] in their homeland, Africans were more resistant to these tropical fevers than were the Europeans. As the rice industry was developed, planters continued to import enslaved Africans. By about 1708, South Carolina had a black majority.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/geography/slave_laws_SC.htm/ |title=South Carolina Slave Laws Summary and Record |website=Slavery in America |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120318172059/http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/geography/slave_laws_SC.htm |archive-date=2012-03-18 }}</ref> [[Golden Isles of Georgia|Coastal Georgia]] developed a black majority after rice cultivation expanded there in the mid-18th century. Malaria and yellow fever became endemic. Fearing these diseases, many white planters and their families left the Lowcountry during the rainy spring and summer months when fevers ran rampant.<ref name="Opala2006b" /> Others lived mostly in cities such as Charleston rather than on the isolated plantations, especially those on the Sea Islands.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

The planters left their European or African "rice drivers", or overseers, in charge of [[Rice production in the United States#Early history|the rice plantations]].<ref name="Opala2006b" /> These had hundreds of laborers, with African traditions reinforced by new imports from the same regions. Over time, the Gullah people developed a creole culture in which elements of African languages, cultures, and community life were preserved to a high degree. Their culture developed in a distinct way, different from that of the enslaved African Americans in states such as North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, where the enslaved lived in smaller groups, and had more sustained and frequent interactions with whites and British American culture.<ref name="Cassidy2020">{{cite journal |author1=Frederic G. Cassidy |title=The Place of Gullah |journal=American Speech |date=Spring 1980 |volume=55 |issue=1 |page=12 |doi=10.2307/455386 |publisher=Duke University Press |jstor=455386 |issn=0003-1283}}</ref>

In late 2024 underwater [[sonar]] was used to map 45 previously unknown irrigation devices used to control water flow for rice fields in conjunction with earthen dams and levees, developed by the Gullah Geechee over an area of 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of the northern end of  Eagles Island, North Carolina, US. This provided evidence of the Gullah Geechee engineering and technological skills used for rice cultivation.<ref>{{cite news| last=Walker | first=Adria R | title='I didn't realize the role rice played': the ingenious crop cultivation of the Gullah Geechee people |newspaper=The Guardian | date=21 December 2024 | url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/dec/21/gullah-geechee-rice-fields-north-carolina}}</ref>