Black Seminoles: The Gullah Connections.

THIS PAPER can be seen as an expiation exercise by the author for not having pursued the Gullah connections of the Black Seminoles in the book she co-edited in 1996, The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom Seeking People. At the time, while working to bring Dr. Kenneth W. Porter's massive manuscript under control for publication, she had only peripheral knowledge about the Gullah. She certainly knew that the language that the Black Seminoles spoke was a creole language and she mentioned as much in a footnote in chapter 11, but did not pursue the matter further. (1) The research for this paper was developed along the following lines: 1) looking for information if Porter, the premier Black Seminole historian, had an inkling of the Black Seminole/Gullah cultural connections, and if he had contacted Dr. Lorenzo Dow Turner on the subject; 2) examining the language connections between Gullah and Afro-Seminole Creole (the official name of the creole language spoken by the Black Seminoles); and 3) examining Black Seminole naming practices to verify if the practices that were common among South Carolina slaves, who were the ancestors of the Black Seminoles, had survived into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.