July 29th 2023.
Deep in Georgia, visitors may be standing on hallowed ground, the remnants of a history of slavery. This land is the ancestral home of the Maroons – brave souls who escaped slavery and built a life for themselves in the wilderness.
Novelist and nonprofit founder George Dawes Green and 13 others travelled to the land, about 20 miles from Savannah, Georgia, to uncover any remains of the “fortress” built by the Maroons in the 1780s. Legend has it that close to 100 former slaves once lived in the fortress, surrounded by a wall, weapons, and guards.
The publication of Dawes Green’s novel, The Kingdoms of Savannah, last year has reignited interest in the area. Archeologists, historians, and wanderers have all been travelling to the land – known as Abercorn Island or Belleisle – to find artifacts that might shed light on the lost history of the Maroons. Rick Kanaski, an archeologist, admitted that he didn’t think he would find much. Yet he hoped to uncover some life stories of the individuals who were reclaiming their personhood and creating their own society.
Kanaski and a group of explorers presented their research at an event in July, in an effort to bring these stories out of the shadows. According to Savannah Now, Kanaski has devised a process to identify the locations of the Maroons and possibly recover items from the communities.
The Maroons didn’t just settle in Georgia. Some of them made it to Florida, to Prospect Bluff in the Apalachicola National Forest. While it has been close to 200 years since their demise, uncovering a lost history could draw wide support.
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