Cannon's Point Plantation, 1794–1860. Living Conditions and Status Patterns in the Old South PDF
Preview Cannon's Point Plantation, 1794–1860. Living Conditions and Status Patterns in the Old South
Studies in HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY EDITOR Stanley South Institute of Archeology and Anthropology University of South Carolina Columbia, South Carolina ADVISORS Charles E. Cleland John L. Idol, Jr. Mark P. Leone Kenneth E. Lewis Cynthia R. Price Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh John White ROY s. DICKENS, JR., (Ed.) Archaeology of Urban America: The Search for Pattern and Process ROBERT PAYNTER Models of Spatial Inequality: Settlement Patterns in Historical Archeology JOAN H. GEiSMAR The Archaeology of Social Disintegration in Skunk Hollow: A Nineteenth-Century Rural Black Community KATHLEEN DEAGAN Spanish St. Augustine: The Archaeology of a Colonial Creole Community KENNETH E. LEWIS The American Frontier: An Archaeological Study of Settlement Pattern and Process JOHN SOLOMON OTTO Cannon's Point Plantation, 1794-1860: Living Conditions and Status Patterns in the Old South In Preparation WILLIAM M. KELSO Kingsmill Plantations, 1620-1800: An Archaeology of Rural Colonial Virginia Cannon's Point Plantation, 1794-1860 Living Conditions and Status Patterns in the Old South John Solomon Otto Center for American Archeology Kampsville, Illinois 1984 ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. {Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers) Orlando San Diego San Francisco New York London Toronto Montreal Sydney Tokyo Sâo Paulo COPYRIGHT © 1984, BY ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING, OR ANY INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER. ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. Orlando, Florida 32887 United Kingdom Edition published by ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. (LONDON) LTD. 24/28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DX Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Otto, John Solomon. Cannon's Point Plantation, 1794-1860. (Studies in historical archaeology) Includes index. I. Cannon's Point Plantation Site (Ga.) 2. Plantation life—Georgia. 3. Excavations (Archaeology)—Georgia. 4. Slavery—Georgia—Condition of slaves. |. Title. II· Series: Studies in historical archaeology (New York, N.Y.) F294.C36087 1984 975.8 83-15784 ISBN 0-12-531060-9 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 84 85 86 87 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Charles Fairbanks, Samuel Proctor, and Jerry Milanich ■v. John Couper (1759-1850) Preface This volume presents the results of historical archaeological in vestigations at Cannon's Point, an antebellum sea-island cotton plantation off the Georgia coast. Because the investigations com pare archaeological remains at sites once occupied by slaves, over seers, and planters—people who differed in racial, social, and eco nomic status—this book will be of value to archaeologists for its treatment of the problem of status patterning in the archaeological record. And because the investigations compare the material living conditions of the plantation's inhabitants, this book will interest historians concerned with the treatment and daily lives of slaves in the Old South. Our understanding of the daily lives of slaves on Old South plantations was, until quite recently, based upon somewhat unrelia ble sources. Much of what we knew came from the writings of white visitors to antebellum plantations, but these elite observers saw only selected aspects of the slaves' lives. Another source has been a group XI Xll PREFACE of autobiographies of slaves who escaped to the antebellum North. Some were written by blacks, others were dictated by blacks to white editors, and most were published in the North as antislavery propa ganda. The authors were usually young men, craftsmen, and border-state ex-slaves. Because few slaves from the Deep South, women, or field hands left autobiographies, these narratives proba bly were not typical of the lives of many slaves throughout the Old South. After the Civil War, further information was gathered from former slaves. During the 1930s, for example, Works Progress Ad ministration (WPA) interviewers talked to hundreds of former slaves about their life in the South both before and after Appomattox. The narrators in the WPA project did include men and women who had worked as field slaves in the Deep South, but their reminiscences were all too often marred by lapses of memory, colored by postbellum experiences, or misconstrued by white interviewers. All these sources are more or less incomplete and biased. However, in the past decade or so scholars have begun to develop a source of new infor mation. Led by Charles Fairbanks of the University of Florida, some historical archaeologists are now examining the unwritten legacy of the slaves—their ruined cabins, their lost or discarded tools and other artifacts, and what is left of their food remains and other garbage. The goal of excavating slave cabins—as with most other archae ological excavations—is to recover tangible evidence concerning the housing, possessions, foods, crafts, recreation, and lifestyle of the former residents. Unlike many written sources, which are often di rected toward posterity, archaeological remains are rarely falsified or intentionally biased. When they discarded their kitchen garbage 150 years ago, these slaves had no idea that it would eventually interest archaeologists. Archaeological evidence does have limitations, how ever. Not all materials survive over time. Clothing, wood, and plants often decay, whereas iron, ceramics, and bones usually survive. But by combining the incomplete archaeological record with the in complete written record, we may achieve a clearer appreciation of how slaves lived. Our comparison of written and archaeological sources also permits us an evaluation of the accuracy of the nar ratives and reports left by plantation owners and white visitors. We were able to pursue this approach at Cannon's Point, an abandoned cotton plantation that operated from 1794 to 1861. Can non's Point contains the ruins of two sets of four slave cabins and their refuse middens. At one of these cabins we exposed the founda tions and much of the refuse midden, which contained nonperisha- PREFACE Xlll ble possessions and food remains discarded by two generations of slaves. Surviving written sources available from Cannon's Point (and other sea-island cotton plantations) include plantation ac counts, letters written by the planter family, and descriptions of the plantation left by such visitors as Aaron Burr, Basil Hall, Fanny Kemble, and Charles Lyell. The documents attest to the presence of an elite planter family, the Coupers, and their hired middle-class overseers on Cannon's Point Plantation. The ruins of houses once occupied by these two groups were revealed by survey, and refuse middens were found at the houses of each group. Because planters, overseers, and slaves differed in racial, social, and economic status, they enjoyed or suffered differential access to the material wealth of the plantation—cash crops, food crops, and livestock. Their differ ential access to material wealth is reflected in the archaeological record of their material living conditions—house ruins and the dis carded artifacts and food remains of the middens. The written and material record of Cannon's Point Plantation thus offers a rare op portunity not only to examine the material living conditions of the Old South, but also to observe a substantial example of status pat terning in the archaeological record. Acknowledgments Charles Fairbanks of the Department of Anthropology, Univer sity of Florida, initiated plantation archaeology with his excavations at Kingsley Plantation, Ft. George Island, Florida, and Rayfield Plan tation, Cumberland Island, Georgia. His excellent articles on slave cabin archaeology were the source of many of the research hypoth eses in this book. Throughout the long period of research and writ ing, Dr. Fairbanks generously shared his vast knowledge of histor ical archaeology. During the months of analysis and writing, Samuel Proctor and Jerry Milanich of the Florida State Museum spared time from their own research. Sam Proctor was especially helpful, relying on his comprehensive knowledge of Southern history to aid me in locating historical sources. Stephen Cumbaa, a highly talented zooarchaeologist at the Na tional Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa, unselfishly offered aid and encouragement to me as I analyzed the Cannon's Point faunal xv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XVI remains in the zooarchaeological laboratory of the Florida State Mu seum. Elizabeth Wing graciously provided me with work space and access to the comparative faunal collections. Stanley South, editor of the Studies in Historical Archaeology series, offered invaluable criticism and advice. Moreover, he encour aged me to make the needed revisions. In addition, South's numer ous publications proved indispensable in writing the chapters. The archaeological research that made this book a reality was funded by National Science Foundation and Sea Island Company grants awarded in 1973 to Charles Fairbanks and Jerry Milanich. The Sea Island Company, of Sea Island, Georgia, the owners of Can non's Point, also furnished meals and quarters for the archae ological field crews. Student crew members of the University of Florida Archeological Field Schools excavated the plantation sites during the spring and summer quarters of 1973 and 1974. In addition, Charles Fairbanks, principal investigator of the Cannon's Point project, and two mem bers of the spring 1974 field school, Kathy Beidelman and Nina Thanz, mapped the standing ruins of the Couper house and kitchen and the overseer's house. Another member of the spring 1974 field school, Vincent Amanzio, aided me in reconstructing the ceramic and glass items from the plantation sites. Because documentary research played a major role in this study, I thank the staffs of the following institutions for their coop eration: Margaret Davis Cate Collection, Brunswick Junior College, Brunswick, Georgia; Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Georgia Historical Library, Savannah; Wimberley George de Renne Library, University of Georgia, Athens; Duke University Library, Durham, North Carolina; Georgia State Archives, Atlanta; and the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of Florida, Gainesville. I also thank the people who responded to my written requests for aid: James C. Bonner, Milledgeville, Georgia; E. M. Coulter, Uni versity of Georgia; Lilla Hawes, Director, Georgia Historical Society; James Heslin, Director, New York Historical Society; Bobby Frank Jones, Tennessee Technological University; William D. Posteli, Tulane University School of Medicine; and William K. Scarborough, University of Southern Mississippi. Others contributing useful in formation were James Bagwell, Georgia Southwestern College; K. G. Berrie, Brunswick, Georgia; Francis A. Lord, Columbia, South Car olina; and W. H. Parker and Curtis Stevens, of St. Simons Island. Finally, I am most grateful to Sophie Otto, who typed several
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