Straddling Virginia and North Carolina is an area that was once described as the
“most repulsive of American possessions.”
By 1728, it was known as the Great Dismal Swamp.
But while many deemed it uninhabitable,
recent findings suggest that a hidden society persisted in the Swamp
until the mid-1800′s.
So, who lived there? And what happened to them?
People long suspected that communities had settled in the Swamp,
but the historical record was spotty.
It wasn’t until 2003 that the first systematic archaeological foray
finally launched.
But, despite having been extensively drained over the years,
the wetland still presented many practical challenges.
Researchers had to penetrate thorny thickets,
wade through waters studded with sinkholes,
and braved the threats of dangerous animals.
After several months, they finally found islands in the Swamp’s interior.
These formations quickly revealed traces of centuries-old secrets.
Archeologists found buried markings that appear to have been left
by raised log cabins, fire pits, and basins
that may have collected drinking water.
They identified what seems to have been a palisade wall
and excavated more than 3,000 artifacts,
including weaponry, stone tools, and fragments of ceramic pipes and vessels.
These discoveries, combined with previous findings,
helped tell a story that reaches far back in time.
Indigenous American people began regularly inhabiting or visiting the area
around 11,000 BCE, before it was even a swampland.
A second era of occupation began much later.
In the early 1600′s, more Indigenous people came seeking refuge
from colonization.
And later that century, it seems that Maroons—
or people escaping from slavery— began entering the area.
In fact, the team’s findings support the theory
that the Great Dismal Swamp was home to the largest Maroon settlement
in all of North America.
Because their success and survival depended on staying hidden
from the outside world,
these Swamp communities were largely self-sufficient.
Based on primary sources,
historians believe that people cultivated grains and created homes, furniture,
musical instruments, and more from the Swamp’s available resources.
These organic materials had probably already decomposed
by the time archaeologists came to investigate.
But researchers were able to find more durable objects,
like ceramic and stone items that were likely left by ancient Indigenous people
then reused and modified by others later on.
Around the turn of the 19th century, It seems the relationship
between the Swamp’s community and the outside world changed.
Lumber and manufacturing companies began encroaching on the Swamp’s interior.
They brought thousands of free and enslaved workers to live in the Swamp
and made them harvest wood, excavate canals, and drain fields.
Certain findings suggest that the Swamp’s hidden communities
might have switched to a more defensive mode during this period.
But researchers also observed more mass-produced objects from this time,
indicating that trading was taking place.
Researchers think that the secret Swamp communities dispersed
during or soon after the American Civil War,
by the end of which slavery was abolished in the United States.
Some people may have stayed in the Swamp until they passed away
or left to settle elsewhere.
Most of what we know about these hidden communities has come to light
after archeologists excavated sections of a single island.
However, there may have been hundreds of habitable islands
dotting the Swamp’s interior at the time.
Between 1600 and 1860, many people lived in these hidden settlements.
Some probably lived their entire lives within the Swamp
and never saw a white person or experienced racial persecution
in broader American society.
Generations of Black Maroons and Indigenous Americans
resisted slavery and colonization by creating an independent society
in the heart of the Great Dismal Swamp.
They fostered a refuge in what might seem like the unlikeliest of places—
but one that was more hospitable than what lay outside.
Today, this area offers a partial record of that secret, self-reliant world,
imagined and built for survival and the preservation of freedom.