Environmental
history is an intriguing but often overlooked discipline. The relationship
between the natural world and human civilization 
is an intriguing topic presented beautifully by Caw Caw Interpretive Center,
an environmental and historical preserve that rests upon five different former
rice plantations just outside Charleston, South Carolina. The Center's purpose
is to educate surrounding communities and visitors about the natural, agricultural,
and cultural history of the area. Visits to Caw Caw start in a welcome center
with displays outlining many different subjects including the history of rice
cultivation, the African-Americans who worked in the fields under slavery,
and the ecology and biology behind the process.
After visitors take the
opportunity to peruse the displays, guides who are also accomplished historians
provide tours over miles of trails through former rice fields. These expeditions
extend into deep forests where the only remnants of the rice fields lie in
the ditches that cut through the landscape. During slavery these crevasses
served as canals to channel the water in certain directions to cultivate the
rice. There are also leftover "gates" that would cut off the flow
of water if it was
not needed in a particular area. As visitors concentrate to avoid tripping
over cypress knees (parts of cypress trees that poke up through the swamp
and look like mini-stalagmites), the guides describe the biology and ecology
behind the landscape and how it has changed with rice cultivation.
Caw Caw also has rice fields that have been maintained as they were during slavery. This gives visitors an idea about how the fields used to look and the sheer magnitude of a rice plantation. There is so much space, and one can see how the water of the canals would surround pieces of land where slaves and plantation owners worked, turning them into small islands. The guides remind visitors about the overwhelming heat, mosquitoes, and diseases making the prospect of working on a rice plantation more dubious. The presence of wildlife also makes the idea of working in a Carolina rice field less appealing. During a stroll between the rows one can easily spot an alligator or two.
Historians are still excavating
a small island at Caw Caw where a plantation house used to rest. They anticipate
finding a slave cemetery in woods nearby. Although the house burned during
Sherman's march to the sea, the feeling that people actually inhabited, toiled
and died in this area is inescapable. Caw Caw does a very effective job of
allowing the land
to speak for itself. The isolation, the vast expanse of area that must have
required back breaking energy to maintain, and the accuracy and tediousness
needed for rice cultivation sheds a little more light on how hard slaves had
to work. It also shows how the lives of African-Americans were directly tied
to the rice they cultivated. It was everywhere, so it is not surprising that
it comprises so much of their foodways.
Caw Caw is a beautiful place, but to struggle with its natural elements would be nearly impossible. Slaves, however, succeeded in this for a very long time, making South Carolina's rice one of the most precious commodities in the world. They also incorporated it into their cooking, and the dishes that resulted still appear today.
Click here to visit the Caw Caw Interpretive Center on the web.
