ACCULTURATION AMONG THE GULLAH NEGROES *

ACCULTURATION AMONG THE GULLAH NEGROES* By WILLIAM R. BASCOM analysis of European customs in T HE New World the accommodation of African and problem in the United the presents a particularly difficult States because the processes of acculturation have gone much farther here than in other regions. In dealing with the Negro cultures in South America and the West Indies, the African traits that have been retained are specific enough and numerous enough to make possible the identification of the tribes whose cultures have been involved. But even among the Gullah in the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia,1 where the Negroes have been as isolated as anywhere in the United States, resemblances to specific African tribes are very rare. For the most part the similarities are to those elements which are common to West Africa as a whole-to the common denominators of West African culture--and not to those aspects of culture which are distinctive of the tribes within that area. It is therefore extremely difficult to determine what particular West African cultures have contrib­ uted to the present situation. It is now recognized that the differences in the general pattern of the cultures of Africa and Europe were not great; in fact their fundamental similarity justifies the concept of an Old World Area which includes both Europe and Africa. There were a number of institutions common to both regions, including a complex economic system based on money, markets, and middle-men, as well as a large number of crafts among which iron-working was important; a well developed system of government based on kings, and courts of law in which cases were tried by specialists (lawyers) and in which ordeals were employed to decide certain cases; a religious system with a complex hierarchy of priests and deities; a common stock of folklore and a common emphasis on moralizing elements and proverbs. Aside from writing, the wheel, the plow, and Christianity, most of the distinctive traits of Western civilization seem to have followed the industrial revolution. This similarity between the fundamental patterns of Europe and Africa has further complicated the problem of assessing the relative influences of these areas in the culture of the Gullahs. Since most African traits of a specific nature have disappeared, what is to be found is, for the most part, a series of institutions which differ from the European forms only in their • Read before the Central Section, American Anthropological Association, Indianapolis, April 26, 1940. 1 Field work in Georgia and South Carolina during the summer of 1939 was made possible by a grant-in-aid from the Social Science Research Council of Northwestern University.