Through his stories of African Americans from the South Carolina low country, Ambrose E. Gonzales, newspaper editor and son of a South Carolina rice planter, was instrumental in drawing attention to the unique coastal dialect known as Gullah.
Ambrose Elliott Gonzales was born in Colleton County, South Carolina, on May 27, 1857. His father, General Ambrosio José Gonzales, was a revolutionary who had left Cuba in opposition to Spanish rule there. His mother was Harriet Rutledge Elliott. Although he did attend school in Virginia for a short time, he was mostly educated at home. At the age of sixteen, he learned telegraphy and began to work as an agent and telegrapher for the Charleston & Savannah Railway Company in Grahamville, South Carolina. Leaving the railroad in 1879, he returned to the family plantation to farm for two years before moving on to New York City, where he worked for Western Union. After a brief time working as a telegrapher in New Orleans, he came back to South Carolina to work for the Charleston Post and Courier. Finally moving to Columbia, South Carolina, he and his brother Narciso founded The State newspaper.
During his life in coastal South Carolina, Gonzales had been closely associated with that area’s unique African American population, the Gullah. Due to their relative isolation from other slave populations, the Gullah (and the Geechee, as they were called, in neighboring Georgia) had developed their own dialect to communicate with their masters and each other. H. L. Mencken described this dialect as a simplification of the English language, which for instance might use only two simple forms of a pronoun, no matter the case, number, or gender. Thus “ee” could be he, she, or it; um could be him, her, it, or them. James Weldon Johnson, in the preface to his Book of American Negro Spirituals, calls Gullah “a phonologically and grammatically simplified English; that is, an English in which the harsh and difficult sounds are elided, and the secondary moods and tenses were eliminated.”
Earlier authors had attempted to replicate Gullah speech, including Caroline Gilman in Recollections of a Southern Matron (1837), Edgar Allan Poe in “The Gold Bug” (1843), and William Gilmore Simms in The Wigwam and the Cabin (1845). Many more examples were to appear in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One notable collection was Charles Colcock Jones Jr.’s Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast. In many early stories featuring black dialect, and in the increasingly popular minstrel shows, however, the authors felt free to invent various types of fractured English and pass it off as authentic.
Ambrose Gonzales began by publishing a few of the Gullah tales from his childhood in The State. The tales became so popular that he eventually published a series of books that make up what is known as the Black Border Series: The Black Border: Gullah Stories from the Carolina Coast (1922); With Aesop Along the Black Border (1924); The Captain: Stories of the Black Border (1924); and Laguerre: A Gascon of the Black Border (1924). When the series was complete, it included 145 sketches. The first volume, The Black Border, included both an introduction to the language and a glossary. H. L. Mencken remarked that “it remained for a layman to write the first intelligent account of it [Gullah], and to compile the first workable vocabulary.” The tales themselves were witty, full of quaint similes, and almost always included a moral. Addison Hibbard noted their “sympathetic characterization, rich and abundant humor with occasional touches of pure pathos, skill in story-telling, faithful reproduction of times and manners of a vanishing day, vividness of description, and convincing sketching-in of regional background and atmosphere.” According to Hibbard, “With the recent awakening of the whole country to the vividness and simple power of Negro song and legendry there has come a new enthusiasm for representing the race accurately. America is at last realizing that within her borders perhaps the most distinctive contribution to native art and song has been made by a suppressed people,” and “the world is learning now what Southern white men have long known and appreciated—the color and richness of the Negro’s speech.”
Although modern critics have found Gonzales’s depictions of African Americans condescending and his remarks on their character extremely critical, his work gave invaluable insight into the fast-disappearing life and language of the Gullah people. Ambrose Gonzales died on July 11, 1926, and is buried in Elmwood Memorial Gardens in Columbia.
Nancy Snell Griffith
See also Boo Hag; Flying Africans
Further Reading
Gonzales, Ambrose. 2010. The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast. Bedford, MA: Applewood Books.
Hibbard, Addison. 1926. “Aesop in Negro Dialect.” American Speech 1 (9): 195–199.
Mencken, H. L. 1923. “Specimens of Current Fiction.” The Smart Set 70 (2): 143–144.
Pollitzer, William S. The Gullah People and Their African Heritage. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.
Snowden, Yates. 1920. History of South Carolina. Chicago: Lewis.
Gonzales, Ambrose E.—Primary Document
Ambrose E. Gonzales, The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast (1922)
Ambrose E. Gonzales is best remembered for his ethnographic research among the Gullah in South Carolina. As a collector of folklore, Gonzales recorded the stories as they were told by the Gullah. This work included a phonetically correct transcription of the local dialect. While numerous nineteenth-century authors took great liberties when portraying the Gullah speech, Gonzales carefully studied its grammar and pronunciation patterns. As such, his writings are historically accurate dialect descriptions rather than racial stereotypes of African American speech. Consequently, his tales preserve both the linguistic and artistic heritage present in Gullah culture.
NOBLESSE OBLIGE
Joe Fields was the most onery looking darkey on Pon Pon. Squat, knock-kneed, lopsided, slew-footed, black as a crow, pop-eyed, with a few truculent looking yellow teeth set “slantindicularly” in a prognathous jaw, he was the embodiment of ramshackle inefficiency. Although he worked only now and then, thanks to the industry of a hardworking wife, he usually owned, encumbered by a chattel mortgage, a wretched half-starved horse upon which he rode to his occasional employments.
Joe, runt as he was, had two sources of pride—the aristocratic lineage of his “owners,” for he had belonged to the Heywards, and the achievement, on his own behalf, of the paternity of twins. Poor, patient Philippa, being only the mother, and a person of no family to speak of, having been the slave of a Charleston baker—whose fortunes rose during the war, though his Confederate yeast didn’t—Philippa, of the bourgeoisie, was not taken into account. “Dem two twin duh my’own,” and “Me nyuse to blonx to Mass Clinch,” were the Andante and Allegro of Joe’s prideful song. When some lusty young wench, during the customary “chaffing” of the plantation dinner hour, would ridicule his small size, Joe would swell with importance, grin like a ’possum, and overwhelm her with the retort: “Little axe cut down big tree! You see dem two twin, entyi Dem duh my’own.’’ But the “two twins,” poor little dusky wights, were in evidence in the neighborhood and could be estimated: it their true value and Joe’s paternal prowess appraised accordingly, but “Mass Clinch” lived away off “een Walterburruh” and, later, as governor, in Columbia, and his name, mouthed unctuously by his former slave, carried with it a weird, mystical importance, a portentous something that held his auditors with staring eyes and dropping jaws till Joe reached his climax, when the tension relaxed and they returned to earth.
Once started, Joe’s imagination fed upon his words as a dog upon his own fleas. One day when Philippa reprobated his want of industry, Joe, other negroes being present, began to brag: “Wunnuh haffuh wu’k ’cause wunnuh blan blonx to po’ buckruh. Yo’ niaussuh se’f haffuh wu’k! Enty I shum een town one time duh stan’ een ’e bake sto’ duh mek bread, en’ ’e kibbuh wid flour ’tell ’e baid stan’ sukkuh deseyuh cedar hedge duh wintuhtime w’en w’ite fros’ dey ’puntop’um?”
“Enty yo’ maussuh wu’k, Joe?”
“Who? My Maussuh? Mass Clinch? ’Ooman, you mils’ be fool! Enty wunnuh know him duh quality? You ebbuh yeddy ’bout quality wu’k? Wuffuh him haffuh wu’k? No, suh! Him hab him ob’shay, Mistuh Jokok, fuh wu’k. My maussuh tek ’e pledjuh. ’E ride hawss, ’e eat ricebu’d en’ summuh duck en’ t’ing’. Him hab t’irteen plantesshun ’puntop Cumbee Kibbuh. Him plant seb’n t’ous’n’ acre’ rice.”
“Seb’n t’fous’n’ acre.”
“Yaas, enty uh tell wunnuh ’e plant nine t’ous’n’ acre’ rice? Wunnuh t’ink me duh lie, enty? Uh swaytogawd, w’en uh bin Cuinbee one time uh count fo’ t’ous’n’ head uh nigguh’ duh hoe rice een de baa’nyaa’d fiel’. Xigguli’ stan’ een Mass Clinch’ fiel’ sukkuh crow’ duh mustuh! En’ him hab seb’n hund’ud mule’!”
“De mule’ wu’k ’pun Cumbee?” asked an iconoclast.
“Co’se de mule’ wu’k, en’ de nigguh’ wu’k, en’ Mistuh Jokok wu’k. Eb’rybody wu’k ’scusin’ my maussuh. Dem mule’ hab long tail’ dull summuhtime fuh switch fly, but w’en wintuhtime come en’ dem ‘leb’n hund’ud mule’ tail’ roach, de pyo’ hair wuh shabe off’um mek one pile stan’ big mo’nuh rice rick!”
“Hukkuh yo’ maussuh plant all dat rice en’ t’ing’ ef ’e yent wu’k?”
“Enty I tell wunnuh him lib een Walterburruh? Duh summuhtime ’e does dribe duh plantesshun now en’ den full see how him crap stan’. Him dribe two hawss’, en’ de buckle on ’e haa’ness shine lukkuh gol’. One nigguh dull seddown behine ’e buggy wid all two ’e han’ fol’ befor’um lukkuh hog tie. Mass Clinch hab on one kid glub ’pun ’e han’ wuh come to ’e elbow. W’en ’e git Cumbee, ’e light out ’e buggy. T’ree nigguh’ run up fuh hoi’ ’e hawss’ head. Mistuh Jokok mek’um uh low bow. Mass Clinch iz uh berry mannussubble juntlemun, alldo’ him iz quality, en’ him ’spon’ to de bow. Den ’e biggin fuh walk. Him hab shishuh rich walk! Den ’e cock ’e hat one side ’e head. You nebbuh see nobody kin cock ’e hat stylish lukkuh Mass Clinch. Den ’e onbutt’n ’e weskit. ’E pit ’e lef han’ een ’e britchiz pocket, en’ swing ’e walkin’ stick een ’e right han’, en’ biggin full quizzit him ob’shay. By dis time ’e git ’puntop de baa’nyaa’d hill en’ look obuh ’e fiel’.
“‘Jokok’,” ’e say, “ ‘dat de stretch flow you got on my rice, enty?’ “
“‘No, suh, dat de haa’bis’ flow.’ “
“‘De debble’!” ’e say. “‘E mus’ be mos’ time fuh ricebu’d !’“
“‘Yaas, suh. We gwine hab some fuh dinnuh’.”
“‘Wuh else you got fuh eat?’’ Maussuh quizzit’um.
“‘We got one cootuh soup mek out’uh tarrypin’ wuh bin een one pen duh fatten ’pun gritch en’ ting,’ en’ one trout fish, en’ summuh duck’.”
“‘You hab enny mint?’”
“‘Yaas, suh, we hab ’nuf.”
“‘Berry well, mek we a few julip’,” ’e say. “‘You got enny mo’ ’pawtun’ bidness dat ’quire my ’tenshun?’”
“‘Yaas, suh: snake hole en’ crawfish en’ t’ing’ spile one uh we bank, en’ de trunk blow out, en’ uh hab uh berry bad break, en’ Cumbee ribbuh comin’ een de fiel. You wantuh shum, suh?’”
“‘No, I t’engk you’,’” ’e say. “‘Leh de ribbuh tek’e co’se. Leh we eat’.”
“Wen ’e gitt’ru ’e bittle, ’e hab ’e fo” hawss hitch up, en’ Mistuh Jokok pit two-t’ree bag uh cootuh en ricebu’d en’ summuh duck een him cyaaridge, en’ ’e gone spang Walterburruh, same lukkuh bu’d fly! Da’ duh my maussuh!”
By the time Joe concluded his story the noon hour was over, and the awed negroes rose silently to resume their work. One old mauma, turning to Joe as she knocked the ashes out of her clay pipe and carefully stuck it in the knotty wool behind her ear, said, “Joe, dat duh Gawd you binnuh talk ’bout, enty?”
“No, enty I tell wunnuh duh Mass Clinch Heywu’d! Him duh my maussuh, me duh him nigguh. Me ain’ ha Huh wu’k, him ain’ haffuh wu’k. Wen wunnuh look ’puntop’uh she, wunnuh look ’puntop’uh me. Me en’ him alltwo stan’ same fashi’n.”
“‘I t’aw’t,” said the old woman, scornfully, “I t’aw’t nius’ be de blessed Gawd you bin gib shishuh high praise, but I always yeddy suh Him duh de ainjul’ maussuh, en’ I yeddy suh de ainjul’ w’ite en’ shiny lukkuhtaar een de sky, but you, nigguh! YOU black ez uh buzsut.’”
Source: Gonzales, Ambrose E. The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast. Columbia: The State Company, 1922.