Transforming Anthropology, Vol. 14, Issue 1, pp. 10–20, ISSN 1051-0559, electronic ISSN 1548-7466. © 2006 by the AmericanAnthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article contentthrough the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

Daniel O. Sayers

DIASPORAN EXILES IN THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP,1630–1860

Daniel O. Sayers is a doctoral candidate in historicalarchaeology in the Department of Anthropology,College of William and Mary. His dissertation work inthe Great Dismal Swamp follows interests in theAfrican diaspora, political economy and Marxian stud-ies, and landscape analysis. For more than a decade, hehas worked in archaeology throughout North Americaand has striven to make archaeological research politi-cally and socially relevant. He has authored or coau-thored articles in the Journal of Archaeological Methodand Theory, International Journal of HistoricalArchaeology, Western Journal of Black Studies, andMichigan Archaeologist.

The Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study is an ongo-ing ethnohistorical archaeology project designed tobring a landscape and anthropological perspective tobear on the circa-1630–1860 occupation of the DismalSwamp. Thousands of African Americans, as maroonsand enslaved laborers, permanently dwelled in theswamp, as did untold numbers of Native Americansthroughout this period. That these groups interacted insocially and economically significant ways is attested toin the record, but very little is ultimately known abouthow their political–economic systems emerged andtransformed. This project represents the first intensiveeffort in bringing the tools of historiography, archaeol-ogy, and anthropology to an analysis of the GreatDismal Swamp as a diasporan and exilic landscape.

KEYWORDS: North American diasporas, maroons,exiles, postcontact political economy, landscape analysis

The Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina andVirginia was home to thousands of diasporans prior tothe Civil War. African and African American maroons,enslaved laborers, and Native Americans chose to liveand eke out livings in the swamp rather than contendwith the innumerable transgressions of colonialism andslavery. Despite an ambiguous and limited documentaryrecord, it is clear that people from myriad cultural back-grounds resided in the dark fens of the harsh wetland fornearly two and a half centuries after contact. If anthro-pology teaches us anything, it is that groups residing ineven such remote and trying landscapes will do what

humans always do. They will develop systems ofexchange, produce and acquire food, exploit the naturallandscape and forge cultural landscapes, form and main-tain kinship and social groups, and develop culturalsystems in which all residents are immersed andenmeshed.

The Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study(GDSLS) has been implemented to bring anthropologi-cal and ethnohistorical archaeological tools andperspectives to bear in the development of a morecomprehensive understanding of diasporan politicaleconomies and cultural landscapes (Sayers 2005b).Although the GDSLS is in progress as of this writing, ageneral discussion can be provided of the analyticalframework of the project, the documentary record of the diasporan occupation of the Dismal Swamp, andthe analytical potential of an “exilic perspective” on thesocial history of the swamp.

CONCEPTUALIZING DEFIANCE AND CAPTIVITY IN THE GREAT DISMALSWAMPAs has been made very clear from research on histori-cal capitalism and capital-infused slavery systems, therise and entrenchment of political–economic inequali-ties directly relates to processes of resistance anddefiance enacted by the oppressed and exploited (Mintz1985, Orser 1996, Paynter 1982, Scott 1985, Wolf1982). Defiance, whether as individual acts or collec-tive action, occurs whenever and wherever the struc-turations of capitalism and capitalist slavery enveloppeople, create vast ranges of systemic inequalities, andovertly restrict the power and wills of the underclasses(Frey 1991, Genovese 1979, Taussig 1980). Resistanceand defiance occur with predictable regularity whenpeople within a system are disallowed the capacity forself-reliance and are systemically denied access to, forexample, means of production, adequate food, and thematerials (e.g., commodities) that they produce asdirect producers, whether as enslaved or wage laborers(Paynter and McGuire 1991, Nassaney and Abel 2000,Turner 1995). Indeed, this range of dialectical antago-nisms is so strong and chronic that resistance anddefiance should be construed as inherent to capitalismand its secondary systems.

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Complex processes of defiance undergird thehistorical development of social systems in the pre–Civil War Dismal Swamp (Martin 2004, Nichols 1988,Sayers 2005b, Wolf 2002). Between circa 1630 and1860, people who defied the expansion and intensifica-tion of capitalism and its attendant labor regimes popu-lated the Dismal Swamp. Rather than have their livesdetermined to intolerable extents by the political–eco-nomic logic of developing and intensifying capitalismand slavery, thousands of Native Americans and AfricanAmericans chose to co-inhabit the swamp on long-termbases during this time (Leaming 1979).

Initially, resistant Native Americans in theChesapeake Bay Region were removed from their tradi-tional lands through European American efforts atexpanding colonialist cultures and economy during theperiod circa 1620–80 (Leaming 1979, Nash 1982). Suchill-gotten land was transformed, generally speaking, intodistinct private and corporate-owned landscapes, thecarving out of which followed the emerging logic of cap-ital and the use of land as a means of producing agricul-tural and manufactured products. Native Americans whosurvived these long-term, often violent, processes ofdiasporic displacement reacted in a range of generalways. For example, some Native Americans resided inand worked within the expansionist system as indenturedservants, enslaved laborers, or free persons (Morgan1975:328–332), whereas others fled or were forced toareas beyond the pale of colonial expansion—that is, toareas where capital had not yet become fully entrenched(see Nash 1982:43–66). Of particular interest here werethose who inhabited areas within the general extent of theearly capitalist system that could not be transformed inways appropriate and efficient for capitalist production(e.g., swamps and mountains). Capitalist expansion anddevelopment were highly uneven processes, and theseconsistent nonuniformities created spatial nodes ofremoteness, such as the Great Dismal Swamp, that oftenbecame spatialities of self-empowerment and defiancefor the oppressed and alienated.

Around 1680–1700, the capital-rooted system ofenslavement based on African labor emerged as analternative to Native American and European Americanenslavement and indentured servitude in the ChesapeakeBay region and wider mid-Atlantic (Morgan 1975).Although enslaved Africans were present as early as1640 (Klein 1989:22–36), “before the last decade of theseventeenth century, Virginia hardly qualified as a slavesociety” (Morgan 1998:1), which also held true for therest of the Chesapeake Bay region (Morgan 1998:2–3;see also Morgan 1975:295–315). Once that systemgained a firm foothold, the mid-Atlantic became hometo thousands upon thousands of enslaved, captiveAfricans, and several generations thereafter of enslaved

African Americans. As was the case with other under-classes, enslaved Africans and African Americansthroughout the Western Hemisphere, including theChesapeake Bay region, resisted the conditions ofenslavement and captivity in extremely variegated ways.

One chronic form of defiance of enslavement wasfugitivism, or marronage (e.g., Agorsah 1994; Aptheker1996; Genovese 1974; Grant 2002; Hall 1992; La RosaCorzo 2003; Price 1996, 2002; Schweninger 2002;Weik 1997, 2002, 2004). I have argued elsewhere thatflight from slavery took two general forms, extralimitalmarronage and intralimital marronage (Sayers 2004).The first form, extralimital marronage, a type of grandmarronage (Price 1996), involved flight to locales out-side the slavery system proper to areas entrenched innonslavery political economies. Examples of extralimi-tal marronage include the flight of thousands ofenslaved persons to Spanish Florida, where slavery didnot exist prior to the 1820s (Giddings 1858), the flightof African Americans into Native American territoriesbeyond the periphery of the slavery system (seeJohnston 1970:269–292), and the vast system known asthe Underground Railroad, through which tens of thou-sands of African Americans fled to nonslavery states,Mexico, and Canada (Sayers 2004).

The most common form of intralimital marronagewas short-term marooning ( petit marronage; Price1996) in local woods, swamps, and mountains (seeMullins 1972). At the other end of the intralimital mar-ronage continuum was permanent flight to locationswithin the entrenched slavery system (another form ofgrand marronage; Price 1996). Indeed, Aptheker (1996)has argued that at least fifty maroon colonies—intralimital maroon colonies according to this model—existed in slaveholding states throughout the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries.

All forms of intralimital marronage appear to haveoccurred in the antebellum Dismal Swamp. It is worthnoting that there is a strong parallel between the defiantself-removal by Native Americans and the self-removalby defiant enslaved Africans and African Americansfrom exploitative systems into the Dismal Swamp.After circa 1700, it is quite likely that a strong infusionof African American maroons joined with already-resi-dent Native Americans, European Americans, andAfrican Americans who had fled, or were descendentsof those who had fled, to the Dismal Swamp colonialist,also as a response to the earlier brutal and exploitativesystem.

After 1760, enslaved laborers were brought into theswamp by canal companies to work and live. Due to theprofit potential, capitalists who sought to constructcanal systems and lumber the vast stands of cedar couldno longer ignore the Dismal Swamp, an exemplar

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spatial node of remoteness. By 1860, thousands ofAfrican Americans had toiled and lived in the swamp asintegral players in the slow but steady transformation ofthe naturally recalcitrant Dismal Swamp into a com-modified landscape as well as in the development of aunique political economy within the confines of themorass. Further explorations of the documentary recordwill clarify the significance of these diasporans.

THE NATIVE AMERICAN DIASPORA,CIRCA 1630–1730The documentary record is largely silent about the useand inhabitation of the Dismal Swamp by NativeAmericans during the colonial era of capitalist expan-sion and intensification. What can be said is that theGreat Dismal Swamp, roughly 2,000 square miles insize during the early colonial era, provided a haven for victims of expansion. The scanty documentaryrecord also hints at the fact that swamp dwellers—Nanesemond, Tuscarora, and others—maintained aresistant posture toward the abuses and transgressionsof European American colonialism, expansion, andlabor exploitation; they continued their defiancethrough insurrections and rebellions of varying magni-tudes outside the swamp (Leaming 1979). In all, itseems that from circa 1607 to 1730, Native Americanswere the primary inhabitants of the swamp proper.Although there is no reliable estimate as to the size ofthis tribally and culturally mixed population, severalresearchers posit low numbers of Native Americans inthe area at the time of contact (Blanton 2003,Lichtenberger 1994:8).

INTRALIMITAL MARRONAGE IN THE GREATDISMAL SWAMP, CIRCA 1700–1860

The Dismal Swamp was one of the few places in theUnited States where geographic conditions made itpossible for a large colony of runaways to establisha permanent refuge. [Bogger 1982:2]

After the rise of slavery, Africans and AfricanAmericans began to flee to and reside in the GreatDismal Swamp. Some historians have concluded thatthe largest intralimital maroon population in the UnitedStates existed in the Dismal Swamp during the eigh-teenth century (Aptheker 1996:168, Genovese 1979).Leaming (1979) argued that African American fugitivesand Native Americans (as well as some fugitiveEuropean Americans, such as Irish indentured servants)developed a complexly transformative but perpetualcultural and social system between circa 1630 and 1865.It is clear, though, that of all the fugitive groups, self-emancipated African Americans were the predominant

occupants of the Great Dismal Swamp from circa 1730till the Civil War.

Leaming (1979) has found that, as early as 1719,African Americans and Native Americans joinedtogether in an insurrection that originated in the DismalSwamp; such collaborations were not uncommon inthe Chesapeake Bay region at the time (Johnston1970:273). In 1728, William Byrd encountered a familyof African Americans in the swamp that claimed to befree; he had his doubts about the veracity of this claim(Byrd 1967:56). It seems that after circa 1730, a gener-ation or two into the intensification of the slaverysystem, absconding African Americans joined existingmixed-cultural communities.

One of the earlier discussions of Great DismalSwamp African American maroons on record is by J. F. D. Smyth, who wrote, “Run-away negroes haveresided in these places for twelve, twenty, or thirty yearsand upwards, subsisting themselves in the swamp uponcorn, hogs, and fowls that they raised on some of thespots not perpetually under water, nor subject to beflooded, as forty-nine parts out of fifty are; and on suchspots they have erected habitations, and cleared smallfields around them” (Smyth 1784:239).

Other descriptions of the era are similar, and manyof these highlight the fact that maroons lived on highground in cabins or shacks, grew their own food andhunted, and augmented their supplies through pilferingat farmsteads peripheral to the swamp (Schoepf 1911).One interesting account, quite likely dating to the lateeighteenth century, is found in the business ledger ofWilliam Aitchison and James Parker, two investors inthe Dismal Swamp Canal Company: “About 15 yearsago/a Negroe man ran away from his/Master & livedby himself in the Desert [Great Dismal Swamp]/about13 years & came out 2 years ago/he rais’d Rice & othergrain & made/Chairs Tables &c. & musical instru-ments” (Aitchison and Parker 1763:51). This entry isquite informative because it not only provides a rareprimary-source discussion of long-term marooning butalso describes how the maroon engaged in handicraftand subsistence-level production for survival (see alsoCrayon 1856). In another case, a woman and her twochildren were reported to have hidden in the DismalSwamp for about seven years before finally beingcaptured (Bogger 1982:2, Simpson 1990:71–73).Advertisements for runaways who were known to beheading for the Dismal Swamp are also common in thenewspapers of the era (see Bogger 1982:2, 8; Wolf2002:46). Finally, during the mid–nineteenth century,Olmsted (1996:120–121) details a discussion he hadwith Joseph Church, an enslaved laborer in the swampwho had, sadly, been owned by a church prior to histenure in the Dismal Swamp. Church told Olmsted that

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“[maroon] children were born, bred, lived, and died here[the Dismal Swamp],” that he, Church, “had seen[maroon] skeletons, and had helped to bury bodiesrecently dead,” and that there were maroons that lived inthe swamp that had been there “all their lives”(1996:121). Church also mentioned that they had hutsin “back places” that “were difficult of access,” andOlmsted reported that he felt that Church “had beenhimself quite intimate with them” (Olmsted 1996:121).

The maroons of the Great Dismal swamp wereimplicated, directly and indirectly, in a few of the morenotorious insurrections of the antebellum era (Leaming1979). Around the time of Gabriel’s Rebellion, newspa-per accounts, in 1802, describe increased insubordina-tion among the enslaved population around ElizabethCity, North Carolina, that was attributed to TomCopper, an infamous maroon in the Dismal Swamp.There were also reports of a substantial population ofarmed maroons from the Dismal Swamp amassing nearthe Virginia–North Carolina border (see Aptheker1996:154–155, Bogger 1982:3). Dismal Swampmaroons also figured prominently in Nat Turner’sRebellion. Nat Turner had intended to flee to the DismalSwamp after he had finished his insurrectionary workin 1831. The National Gazette and Literary Registerstates that members of Nat Turner’s cohort who werestill at large:

will be too anxious to bury themselves in therecesses of the Dismal Swamp, to give a moment’swell founded uneasiness to the inhabitants of thesurrounding countryside. It is believed that theirgang consisted principally of runaways, who hadbeen for years collecting in the swamp, and who aresupposed to have amounted to a formidable number.[National Gazette and Literary Register 1831:1639]

This means, among other things, that maroons left theswamp to assist Turner, and the plan was for all to returnto the Dismal afterward.

Several researchers have recovered a range ofsources that indirectly and directly tell of maroon com-munities and their settlements in the Dismal Swamp,with some sources more acceptable as evidence thanothers (Leaming 1979:324–574, Martin 2004:108–115).Citing one of the more compelling sources, Martin(2004:113–114) discusses the circa-1870 reminiscencesof Caleb Winslow, a later abolitionist who grew up dur-ing the antebellum era in North Carolina at the edges ofthe Dismal Swamp. Winslow discusses how maroonswere “a law unto themselves” and that “no pursuingmaster ever dared to set foot within their domain, ordaring so to do ever returned to tell the tale” (Martin2004:113). Winslow suggests that the maroons wholived deep in the remote Dismal Swamp developed their

own system of governance, had strict rules in order tomaintain safety, and, mirroring Joseph Church’s com-ments, that “scores of dusky children have been bornand reared to manhood within the bosom of this swamp,who never beheld the face of a white man” (Martin2004:114). In 1856, Porte Crayon (1856) reported onhis encounter with a maroon named Osman (an Islamicname) in a well-known writing about the antebellumDismal Swamp. Primary and secondary sources indi-cate that substantial numbers of maroons, followingpetit and grand intralimital modes, did inhabit theDismal Swamp between circa 1720 and 1860. Maroonpopulation estimates vary to a marked degree, rangingfrom 1,000 to 40,000 individuals (Aptheker 1996,Genovese 1979); according to one estimate, maroonswith a value of “over one million and a half dollars”lived in the Dismal Swamp (Simpson 1990:71). In anycase, it is certain that thousands of maroons lived in theswamp (Franklin and Schweninger 1999:86). Inresponse to this significant and flagrant marronage, theNorth Carolina legislature enacted, in 1847, A BILL toProvide for the Apprehension of Runaway Slaves in theGreat Dismal Swamp AND OTHER PURPOSES (citedin Martin 2004:99; see also Wolf 2002:63–64). This bitof legislation stated that “many slaves belonging to per-sons residing or having plantations in the neighborhoodof the great Dismal Swamp, have left the service oftheir masters and taken refuge in the said swamp” andthat these maroons had assistance from ne’er-do-wellsoutside the swamp (cited in Martin 2004:100). Thelegal document proceeds to make assertions regardingthe “corrupting” and “seducing” influences of the “evilexample and evil practices” of maroons on otherwisesubordinate enslaved persons (Martin 2004:100). Thislegislation had a profound impact on not only maroonsbut also enslaved canal laborers who had been workingin the swamp for close to eighty years by the time thelegislation was enacted (Martin 2004:100).

ENSLAVED CANAL COMPANY LABORERS,CIRCA 1760–1860

I have said this M’Pherson was an overseer whereslaves were employed in cutting canals. The labourthere is very severe. The ground is often veryboggy: the negroes are up to the middle or muchdeeper in mud and water, cutting away roots andbaling out mud: if they can keep their heads abovewater they work on.

—Life of Moses Grandy

Mercantilist and capitalist efforts to gain profits fromthe recalcitrant landscape began in the 1760s andcontinued well past the Civil War. The first canal was

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excavated in the 1760s, under the authority of GeorgeWashington and other investors. Thereafter, until theCivil War, numerous corporate concerns were formed,and several canals of considerable length (e.g., 10–20miles) were excavated by African American labor.Slowly, the Great Dismal Swamp became a significantpolitical–economic and commercial landscape. Canalcompanies reaped fortunes from timber, wood products,and canal tolls (Arnold 1969; Dismal Swamp CanalCompany Records 1815–1865). Even though most ofthe Great Dismal Swamp was divided into corporateholdings on paper, large areas of relatively undevelopedand “natural” swampland remained that defied the logicof efficiency and economic control (Cohen 2001). Theresult of capitalist efforts at exploiting and transformingthe swamp was a unique landscape where long lineartracts of land associated with the development of canalswere surrounded by vast areas of largely unaltered nat-ural swampland.

By the second decade of the nineteenth century, afairly sizable population of enslaved workers waspresent in the Dismal Swamp (Wolf 2002), and theywere employed at, primarily, canal construction andlumbering. By the late 1830s, Edmund Ruffin surmisedthat there were about 500 men employed in the swampat the time of his travels therein (Ruffin 1837; Simpson1990:48). Also, Moses Grandy, an enslaved worker inthe Dismal Swamp along Jericho Ditch in the 1820s and1830s, mentions one supervisor having “500 to 700men under his control” (Grandy 2003[1844]:170). Thistrend appears to have continued into the 1840s andup till the Civil War (see Fouts 1995; Olmsted1996:114–116, 120). For example, after the 1847 NorthCarolina legislation regarding maroons (discussedabove), county clerks required descriptions of individ-ual enslaved laborers in the Dismal Swamp; one docu-ment lists and describes more than 400 enslavedworkers employed by just one company of many oper-ating in the swamp at the time (Fouts 1995; see alsoWolf 2002:63–64).

The documentary record makes it clear that duringthe period from 1760 to 1860, thousands of enslavedand free African American laborers were brought intothe swamp to live and to work for canal companies.Furthermore, there do exist descriptions and drawingsof the camps in which these workers lived (e.g., Crayon1856; Olmsted 1996) that have great potential relevancefor archaeological research. When we then consider thecoeval and earlier presence of thousands of marooningAfrican Americans, it seems accurate to say that theDismal Swamp was an African American landscape onseveral levels, certainly after 1730 or so at any rate.With the high population of African Americans overthis period, it would be expected that some degree of

interdependence and meaningful interaction occurredbetween maroons and enslaved laborers. Although lim-ited in information about Native Americans, the docu-mentary record clearly outlines a unique system oflabor and goods exchange that emerged betweenenslaved and marooning African Americans.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MARRONAGEAND ENSLAVEMENTMaroons were quite significant to the labor regime thatevolved for canal company timber production and canalexcavation during the nineteenth century. Canal com-pany laborers were paid outright for shingles after acertain amount was produced (Crayon 1856; Olmsted1996:114–115). Individual workers produced shingles(if that was the job they were given), and, according toOlmsted, “it is only required of him that he shall havemade, after a half a year has passed, such a quantity ofshingles as shall be worth to his master so much moneyas is paid to his owner for his services, and shall refundthe value of the clothing and provisions he has required”(Olmsted 1996:115; see also Crayon 1856:451).Otherwise, as Olmsted (1996:115) says, “[t]he slavelumberman . . . lives measurably as a free man; hunts,fishes, eats, drinks, smokes, and sleeps, plays andworks, each when and as much as he pleases” (Olmsted1996:115; for another claim that canal laborers hadunusual levels of freedom, see Ruffin 1837:518). Thisrelatively rare labor system allowed much latitude forcanal laborers to get their shingles in the prescribedtime and to accrue wealth in order to buy their freedom(see Grandy 2003). Maroons helped canal workers tothis end.

According to Crayon, “The Swamp is said to beinhabited by a number of escaped slaves, who spendtheir lives, and even raise families, in its impenetrablefastness. These people live by woodcraft, externaldepredation, and more frequently, it is probable, byworking for the task shingle-makers at reduced wages”(1856:451). He also notes that shingle-makers “returngreater quantities of work than could possibly havebeen produced by their own labor, and draw for two orthree times the amount of provisions necessary for theirown subsistence” (Crayon 1856:451). A Canadianmaroon, interviewed about his flight into the DismalSwamp in the 1850s, also generally mentions this sys-tem: “I boarded wit a man what giv me two dollars amonth for de first one: arter dat I made shingles formyse’f ” (Redpath 1996[1859]:243). Importantly, headds that “dar are heaps ob folks in dar to work. Moston ‘em are fugitives, or else hirin’ dar time” (Redpath1996:243). Canal companies turned a blind eye to thepresence of maroons in their gangs for obvious profit-motivated reasons.

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The Canadian maroon’s testimony sheds light on afew social and political aspects of the maroon–canalcompany laborer dynamic. He, for instance, speaks of apreacher named Fisher, who was a maroon. Apparently,preacher Fisher was a significant figure in the swampat that time: “Many’s been de ‘zortation I have ‘speri-enced, dat desounded t’rough de trees, an’ we wouldalmos’ ‘spect de judgement day was comin’, dar wouldbe such loud nibrations, as de preacher called dem;‘specially down by the lake [Lake Drummond, in theVirginia part of the swamp]” (Redpath 1996:244). Thuswe see that religiosity permeated, to an unknown extent,the maroon and canal laborer system.

However, not all relationships among maroons andcanal workers were beneficial for both parties. Olmstedtells how canal company laborers, “betray them[maroons] instead of paying them” (1996:121).Olmsted also mentions that a class of maroon capturershad emerged in the 1840s, apparently because of thechronic marronage in the Dismal Swamp (Olmsted1996:121; see also Bogger 1982). However, they appearto have focused on maroons who worked in the canalcompany camps.

It appears then that a rather complicated social–-economic system emerged after the two groups of AfricanAmericans coresided in the swamp. Although there weremaroons who lived on their own in more remote loca-tions of the swamp, many maroons, it appears, joined upwith the company laborers to gain access to goods,money, and companionship. Religious ceremonies atLake Drummond appear to have supplied a spiritual ele-ment to life in the swamp and one has to suspect thatother aspects of religion filtered through daily life in theswamp. And whereas selfish and economically motivatedbetrayals were evidently common enough, it appears thatmost maroons were able to work in the swamp in relativeanonymity. In general, what is apparent in the documen-tary record is that a Dismal Swamp political economy,replete with unique exchange systems, subsistence activ-ities, and religiosity, thrived during the pre–Civil War era.

EXILIC LANDSCAPES, DEFIANCE, ANDALIENATION

And just beyond the frontier between “us” and the“outsiders” is the perilous territory of not-belonging:this is to where primitive time peoples were banished,and where in the modern era immense aggregates ofhumanity loiter as refugees and displaced persons.

—Edward Said

As has been made clear, the Great Dismal Swamp canbe considered a diasporic landscape where people fromquite disparate backgrounds found some form of refuge

from the exploitations and transgressions of colonialexpansion, human captivity, and enslavement in the out-side world. Although there were significant differencesin the motivations behind the occupation of the DismalSwamp by these groups, the concept of “exile,” as pre-sented by Edward Said (1990), may provide an avenuefor expanded discussion of the significance of thesediasporans, their political economies, and their remotelandscapes.

For Said, exile is an existential and socialized stateof being in and via which human actors, as individualsor groups, form identities, develop historical senses ofself-worth, and, in some instances of large group exile,cultivate and nurture nationalistic ideologies. Exile isnot a position in which one finds oneself, per se. Rather,exile is a self-positioning forced on humans by otherhumans. For the exiled, these processes create a perpet-ually foreign present and self. Thus, the memories ofand identification with erstwhile homelands, places ofnativity, familiar communities, and personal pasts arecleft from that present and are also made foreign anddiaphanous. To be exiled is to be forced into developinga new state of uprooted being and all that such existen-tial rending entails. And one of the significant results ofexile is the development of notions and senses ofdefiance to the constraints and impositions of forcedtransplantation. Quoting Simone Weil, Said posits thesignificance of the exilic problem: “To be rooted isperhaps the most important and least recognized needof the human soul” (Said 1990:364; see also Malkki1997:52). And for Said, the roots of identity and placethat have primary existential consequence are thosebinds to place that are developed prior to exile:

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but ter-rible to experience. It is the unhealable rift betweena human being and a native place, between the selfand its true home: its essential sadness can never besurmounted. And while it is true that literature andhistory contain heroic, romantic, glorious, eventriumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are nomore than efforts meant to overcome the cripplingsorrow of estrangement. The achievements of exileare permanently undermined by the loss of some-thing left behind forever. [Said 1990:357]

Said suggests rather strongly that exile is inextricablylinked to estrangement and alienation. Exile is alien-ation of a grand order. Thus, the exilic life is always sit-uated within a perpetual alienation from self, others,and place where all formerly existing structurations oflife and mind are now somewhat apparitional and mostcertainly discontinuous with the present. Interestingly,in Marxian analysis, alienation and estrangement areintegral aspects of capitalist production and shape

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human interactions and relations of all sorts (e.g.,relations of production, labor relations, laborer relationswith commodification processes; see Meszaros 1971,Ollman 1973, Sayers 2003). Equally significant, alien-ation also plays a critical role in the development ofresistant class consciousness. Thus, the potential signif-icance of exile to political–economic analysis is quiteapparent as alienation and exile seem to dovetail in theirpsychosocial and political economic significance.

So, what were the Native American and Africandiasporas but historically recognized instances of massexile? Native Americans were perpetually forced fromtheir homelands and their historical ties to time andplace. Cultural continuities were irrevocably trans-formed, families and communities shattered, and rootsto space and place decisively cut. Africans were forcedinto labor regimes across the Atlantic and foreverremoved from their places of nativity. From these massexiles came novel communities, cultures, and ideolo-gies, to be sure, but also with them came oppression,marginalization, sexual and physical exploitation, con-stant re-transplantation (or re-exile), and forced labor,among other things. Of course, intricately bound withinthese historical processes were the varied and continu-ous forms of resistance discussed in this article. Aspeople willfully tried to maintain and/or transformsenses of self and community amidst the alienation andchaos of exilic life “in motion” (Shami 2001), theirchronic reactions to the transgressions of the political–economic orders in which they found themselves stoodout as defiance to exile and abuse.

The historical political economy of exile pervadedthe material conditions of existence in the DismalSwamp as well as the psychosocial and ideologicalaspects of community and individual life. Therefore, thedialectical relations between exile and numerous otherphenomena at several scales can potentially be explored.For instance, the dialectics of gender relationshipswithin exilic conditions can be studied through varioussources of data (e.g., documentary, oral traditional, andarchaeological; see Partnoy 1988). Also, general andspecific aspects of self- and social identity formationin exilic communities can be examined (Bisharet 1999).As one last example, the localized roles of space andlandscape as a geographies of exilic alienation could beprofitably studied; the Dismal Swamp, ironically a sanc-tioned refuge now and an unsanctioned refuge of a verydifferent order prior to the Civil War, seems most oppor-tune for such explorations.

When we look then at the three general groups ofinhabitants of the Dismal Swamp we are now in a posi-tion to see initial connections between exilic processesand the fact of the continued presence of these people.Native Americans and marooning Africans and African

Americans in the Dismal Swamp were in some senseadding another layer of exile to their preexisting exiliccondition. It is reasonable to postulate that in so doing,they were seeking a space and place in which to re-rootthemselves after exile in order to elaborate lifeworlds thatwere closer to their ideals and in which they could formmeaningful communities. They essentially underminedthe role of exile as a form of cruelty inflicted on humansby one another by opting to exile themselves and turnthe tables on the outside system in a mode of counter-exile. Canal laborers also fit into this framework. Ininstances in which canal laborers chose to work in theswamp, they were opting to exile themselves from thebroader exilic system, much like the maroons and NativeAmericans. In cases in which the enslaved laborer wasforced to work in the swamp, it was yet another layer offorced exile, re-exile, that so circumscribed all diasporiccaptives. Obviously, when considering all residents ofthe Dismal Swamp, it can be said that the centuries ofvariegated forms of Diasporic exile helped forge highlycomplex political–economic and cultural systems in thatremote landscape.

CONCLUSIONIt can be said quite comfortably that the Great DismalSwamp was a diasporic landscape par excellence andthat defiance by thousands of exiles was an integralaspect of that landscape and the lives of its denizens.This was truly a marginal landscape where subalternalienation, freedom, enslavement, and resistanceexisted in the interstices of an intensifying regional andglobal capitalist economy. Although the general out-lines of this history can be reconstructed, it remains thetask to develop a comprehensive understanding of howexilic and counter-exilic lives were lived in the swampand what the roles of the specific landscape(s) of theDismal Swamp were in these processes.

The documentary record, although extremelyhelpful, is not the only source of information fromwhich to develop a sound understanding of the socialand political–economic histories of the exiles of theDismal Swamp. The author has initiated the GDSLSwith the intention of beginning to expand researchbeyond extant documents and to bring the tools ofanthropology to bear on the subject of the exilic use ofthe swamp prior to the Civil War. To this end, archaeo-logical work in the United States Fish and WildlifeService’s Great Dismal Swamp National WildlifeRefuge in North Carolina and Virginia was initiated in2003 and is scheduled for completion this year. Thusfar, several archaeological sites have been discovered inthe Refuge, many of which quite likely relate tomaroons, postcontact Native Americans, and enslavedcanal company laborers (see Sayers 2005a, 2005b;

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Sayers et al. n.d.). The archaeological recovery of mate-rials left behind by these diasporans and features repre-senting their use of landscape and place to try tomitigate and undermine the effects of exile, exploita-tion, and alienation will provide telling historicalinsight into how the communities operated, survived,developed, and, perhaps, fell apart at the liminal edgesof expansionist capitalism. Also, interviews withdescendents of maroons, canal company laborers, andNative Americans have also begun to be performed, andthere is much potential in this area for developing atleast a preliminary sense of the range and significanceof oral traditions that have survived to the present.

The GDSLS is making great strides in bringingtogether formerly unknown or poorly understoodaspects of the pre–Civil War diasporic histories of amajor landscape element of the Chesapeake Bay region.Perhaps as important, this study will finally allow for atelling of a story of these quasi-mythologized butlargely forgotten and ignored people. Theirs is a story ofdefiance, exile and counter-exile, self-emancipation,and an active search for self-empowerment. Their histo-ries are evocative and teach us that willful actions, evenfrom within oppressive straits, can inspire greatchanges in the manners in which people of the modernera live. Such reminders are indeed still invaluable andnecessary because the capitalist order still exacts itsheavy destructive toll on many, many lives.

NOTESMany, many thanks to Lee Baker and Brad Weiss forinspiring the production of this article and to DannaGreenfield, Lee Baker, and the reviewers of this articlefor helping make it a better piece. In having helped makethe Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study possible, interms of counsel, inspiration, ongoing dialogue, andassistance in the field, I wish to thank the following indi-viduals: Vipra Ghimire, Brendan Burke, Aaron Henry,Marley Brown III, William Fisher, Terrance Weik,Michael Blakey, John Wilson, Martin Gallivan, JulieRowand, Shelley Hight, Bryan Poovey, Cindy Lane,Delores Freeman, Brent Fortenberry, Audrey Horningand her volunteer students, Dan Lynch, Dave Brown,Thane Harpole, Jeff Dame, Kathleen Bragdon, DennisBlanton, Pat Gammon, Mary Keith Garrett, AriHartmann, Michael S. Nassaney, Susan Sayers, AnthonyP. Sayers, Warren Perry, Jackie Martin, Jim Christensen,Josh Walsh, and Gordon Yamazaki. The Canon NationalParks Science Scholars Program has generously sup-ported this project through a multiyear grant. TheCollege of William and Mary Anthropology Departmentand the Office of Grants and Research have also sup-ported this project since its inception. CRT, Inc., presi-dent Troy Schindelbeck of Grand Haven, Michigan, has

my thanks for the use of quality archaeological fieldequipment that his company produces. The archaeologi-cal fieldwork performed for this project was made pos-sible by the good graces of the United States Fish andWildlife Service and the fine staff at the Great DismalSwamp National Wildlife Refuge Office, Suffolk,Virginia, under ARPA research permit #2004-01-DISand USFWS special collections permit #C-2004-01.

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