Maroons

The Lowcountry's swamps and creek beds harbor many secrets with their inaccessibility and isolation, but archeologists are uncovering at least part of that hidden history with research into the societies of escaped slaves who found shelter and freedom in such formidable surroundings. Called "maroons" by antebellum plantation masters (the name likely derived from the Spanish cimmaròn, meaning 'wild' or 'fierce'), these fugitives concealed themselves deep in forbidding terrain, often finding high ground on which small villages were built, surviving by hunting, fishing, occasional raids on plantation storehouses and trading with Native Americans.

Excavations in the Great Dismal Swamp

It's been estimated that as many as fifty such hidden enclaves existed in the Lowcountry during the two hundred years between European settlement of the coastal southeast and the outbreak of the Civil War, from as far north as Virginia and as far south as Florida. In South Carolina, maroon communities were long-established deep inside swamps along the Congaree, Ashepoo and Combahee rivers, as well as Goose Creek and Bear Creek in Dorchester and Colleton counties, respectively.

As early as the 1730's, South Carolina's colonial government was offering a reward of twenty pounds for the return of a maroon, or ten pounds for the scalp of a murdered one. During the Revolutionary War, many maroon communities established relationships with, and fought alongside, the British in the belief a British victory would bring their freedom to live openly. One of the most famous maroon communities established on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River in those times called themselves "the King of England's Soldiers", but were attacked and scattered by white colonialist militias soon after the war ended. Most notorious to white colonials was "Forest Joe", who led a band of maroons in raids along the Santee River until he was captured and executed in 1823. Similar violent confrontations thundered up and down the Lowcountry before the Civil War, including near Georgetown in 1820 and Jacksonboro two years later.

The Savannah River maroon fortress figures prominently in George Dawes Green's 2022 novel "The Kingdoms of Savannah". Green, a Savannah native, grew up listening to family stories of these secretive groups and is now spearheading an effort to locate the "King's Soldiers" site thought to be along Bear Creek, which flows into the Savannah River from South Carolina. No sign of the fortress has turned up so far, but Green says that's fine with him. "I like the fact that it's been two-hundred-and-thirty-five years," he told The New Yorker, "and it doesn't necessarily wish to be found."

The Wave

Weather, hot weather, is leading the news this summer (June was Earth's hottest month ever recorded, according to the NOAA), and although for us it's undoubtedly a Lowcountry summer out there, we're fortunate in having a nearly constant sea breeze to moderate temperatures somewhat during this typically warmest month of the island year. And it's been considerably hotter in past years on the island - near one hundred degrees back in 2015, for example. The highest temperature recorded to date in greater Charleston was 105 degrees on August 1st of 1999, the hottest the city's ever been since records started being kept in 1893. A close second was in June of 2021, at 102 degrees recorded at the airport.

Heat waves can be stubborn. Formed when a high pressure system forces warm air closer to the ground, that same system pushes other, potentially cooler systems aside until too much static charge builds between the systems and thunderstorms develop. And if that trapped warmer air continues to heat up for too long, the dreaded "heat dome" forms that can last for weeks at a time. So far, though, we're experiencing mostly average temperatures for the island thanks to coastal winds.

Acclimating to southern heat spells can be challenging, sometimes taking more than week of exposure to adjust. We all know, too, to keep outdoor activity to morning and early evening hours (just like our wildlife does) to avoid the signs of pending hypothermia - profuse sweating , nausea and red, sensitive skin. And, of course, stay hydrated, even ifyou don't feel thirsty while you're outdoors, especially if you're jogging or otherwise engaging in physical activity. Make it a cool summer!

Give A Hoot

A SINHG member shared with us this wonderful photograph of a Barred Owl (Strix varia) seen perched in a backyard palm tree on the island during a recent spring afternoon, an unusual time for these normally nocturnal birds to appear. It remained there calmly observing its surroundings for several minutes, then silently swooped away, perhaps to hunt for mice, voles or insects to feed to a nearby nest of hatchlings.

Barred Owl in flight (courtesy National Audubon Society)

We may tend to think of our island in terms of the abundant shore and pelagic birds with which we're seasonally blessed, but owls are permanent residents of our swamps and maritime forest habitats. We share the neighborhood with three other species in addition to the Barred Owl - Barn Owls, Eastern Screech Owls and Great Horned Owls. During the winter, we may also be visited by migrating Northern Saw-whets, Short-Eared and Long-Eared Owls. They're all a rare sighting for birders, not only because of being active mostly at night but because of their preferred roosting spots high in the tree canopy, often concealed in holes or nests abandoned by other animals or in the cratered snags of dead trees or, in the case of Barn Owls, in derelict structures.

Eastern Screech Owl (courtesy BirdFeederHub)

Camouflage, too, keeps them hidden from all but the most determined eyes, particularly the diminutive Eastern Screech Owl with a mottled plumage that blends perfectly with the bark of trees. Their vocalizations, like the Barred Owl's that sounds to human ears like "who cooks for you?", are often the only clues to their presence.

Once thought to be mostly solitary hunters, researchers have only recently become aware of how social these birds can be, forming longterm mating pairs that share hunting and feeding duties for chicks and communicating with one another through a complex language of hoots, grunts, chittering and cooing.

A coin with Athena and her owl

Owls have long been a part of Gullah/Geechee folklore, associated on the one hand with sickness and death as denizens of the night and on the other as a symbol of freedom for the enslaved, who believed that owls, with their powerful and silent flight, would carry the souls of the deceased back to African homelands. Ancient Egyptians, too, connected owls with the underworld, while Greeks associated them with Athena, the goddess of wisdom. In some South American traditions, they're either bringers of bad luck or harbingers of good fortune. But A.A. Milne's owl in the Hundred Acre Wood was merely a bad speller, naming his home the Wolery.

(If you're interested in learning everything owl, check out Jennifer Ackerman's recently published "What The Owl Knows")