Igbo Landing Historic Site, Historic site at Dunbar Creek, Saint Simons Island, United States.
Igbo Landing Historic Site is a stretch of Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island, Georgia, where the water widens between a marsh-grass bank and a tree line; a small white building with a dark roof stands among the trees on the far shore. The creek bears no monument at the water itself: the state historical marker erected in 2022 stands about two miles away at Old Stables Corner, the northwest corner of Frederica and Sea Island roads.
In May 1803, 75 enslaved Igbo people from present-day Nigeria were bought in Savannah by agents of John Couper and Thomas Spalding for $100 each. During the voyage to St. Simons Island, they rose up, drowned their captors and grounded the vessel in Dunbar Creek. Led by a high Igbo chief, they walked into the creek singing that the Water Spirit would take them home.
The name comes from the Igbo people of what is now Nigeria. The 1803 story lives on in Gullah and African American oral history as the flying Africans legend, recorded from interviewees such as Floyd White and Wallace Quarterman by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s. The event is now taught in coastal Georgia schools.
A memorial marker installed in 2022 provides background information about the 1803 event and stands openly accessible at Dunbar Creek. The surrounding area is natural and there are no developed paths or facilities on site.
African-American oral traditions tell of people walking into the water while singing a melody in their mother tongue. Some versions of the story speak of the drowned transforming into birds and flying back across the ocean.
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