Deep in the swamp, archaeologists discovered how escaped slaves remained free.

The worse the situation, the more I can understand its history as a refuge, when I came across this dark swamp. Every torn thorn and sucking mud pit makes it clearer. It is the dense, tangled hostility and huge area of this swamp that enables hundreds of fugitive slaves to live freely here.

This story is a desolate place for a rebellious nation.

We don't know much about them, but thanks to the archaeologists who walked through the quagmire in front of me, we know that they are here, living in a hidden community, and hardly used anything from the outside world before the19th century. This gloomy swamp covers a large area in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. The vegetation is too dense for horses and canoes to pass. /kloc-At the beginning of the 7th century, Native Americans who fled the colonial border took refuge here. They soon joined the ranks of fugitive slaves, and perhaps some white people escaped from indentured slaves or the law. From 1680 to the civil war, the swamp community seems to be controlled by Africans and African-Americans.

Wearing Levis and hiking boots, Dan Sayers was trapped in the mud. Instead of wearing waterproof boots like me, he stopped to light a cigarette. He is a historical archaeologist and head of the anthropology department of American University in Washington, D.C., but he looks more like an illegal country singer. At the age of 43, he has long hair and beard, and habitually wears a shabby straw hat and a pair of sunglasses in the style of Veyron Jennings. Syers is a Marxist and a vegetarian. He smokes nearly two packs of cigarettes every day and drinks a lot of energy drinks until he drinks beer.

"I'm such an asshole," he said. "I'm looking for hills, hills and highlands, because I saw such a sentence in the document:' fugitive slaves living on hills …' I've never set foot in a swamp. I wasted a lot of time. Finally, someone asked me if I had been to an island in North Carolina. Island!

This huge and dark swamp, now reduced by drainage and development, is managed as a federal wildlife refuge. The once infamous panther has disappeared, but bears, birds, deer and amphibians still exist in large numbers. So do poisonous snakes and biting insects. Syers assured me that in hot and humid summer, the swamp is full of water snakes and rattlesnakes. Mosquitoes have become so dense that they can blur the outline of a person standing 12 feet away.

At the beginning of 2004, a shelter biologist put on his waterproof boots and took sayers to where we were going. This is a 20-acre island, occasionally visited by hunters, but historians and archaeologists know nothing about it. Before sayers, there was no archaeology in the swamp, mainly because the conditions were very bad at that time. A research group got lost many times and gave up.

When you are trying to suck the soft mud, the submerged roots and branches grab your ankles, and the dry and solid ground feels almost miraculous. We set foot on the coast of the big island with fallen leaves and mottled sunshine. Walking towards the center, the bushes disappeared and we entered a park-like clearing covered with some hardwood and pine trees.

"I will never forget seeing this place for the first time," sayers recalled. "This is one of the greatest moments in my life. I never dreamed of finding an island of 20 acres. I knew at once that this place was suitable for living. Of course, anywhere on this island, you can't put a shovel on the ground without finding anything.

He named his excavation area grottoes, hilltops, northern plateaus and so on, but he wouldn't name the island. Sayers called it "the nameless land" in his academic papers and the book "A Desolate Land Against Nationalities" published on 20 14. "I don't want to give it a pseudonym," he explained. "I wonder what people who live here call this place." When he carefully examined the land they walked through, he found footprints, tools, weapons and tiny fragments of white clay pipes in their hut. He admires them deeply, partly because of his Marxism.

These people criticized the cruel capitalist slavery, and they totally rejected it. They take all risks and live in a more just and equitable way. They have succeeded for ten generations. One of them, Charlie, was later interviewed in Canada. He said that all the labor here is open. During more than ten years of field excavation, archaeologist Dan sayers found 3,604 cultural relics on an island deep in the swamp. (Alison Shelley)

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No matter where Africans are enslaved in the world, fugitives will always flee and live in free and independent settlements. These people and their descendants are called "exiles". The word may come from Spanish Simari Weng, which means wild animals, runaway slaves or something wild and provocative.

Marriage, the process of liberation from slavery, took place in Latin America and the Caribbean, India's slave island, Angola and other parts of Africa. But until recently, the idea that maroon animals also existed in North America was rejected by most historians. Sayers said: "In 2004, when I started talking about the permanent settlement of chestnut animals in the everglades, most scholars thought I was crazy." . "They take the fugitive as an example. They may hide in the Woods or swamps for a while until they are caught, or they may be free on the subway with the help of Quakers and abolitionists. "

With the low-key American marriage and heroic white people participating in the underground railway, sayers thinks that historians show racial prejudice and are unwilling to admit the power of black resistance and initiative. They also revealed the shortcomings of their method: "Historians are limited to original documents. Speaking of exile, there is not so much on paper. But this does not mean that their stories should be ignored or ignored. As archaeologists, we can read on the ground.

The subscription of Smithsonian magazine is now only 12 dollars. This article is selected from the September issue of Smithsonian Magazine.

Syers first heard of the depressing swamp Marlon from a professor at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia. At the end of 200 1 they smoked after class. Syers proposed to write a paper on19th century agricultural archaeology. Professor Marley Brown III stifled his yawn and asked him how much he knew about Malone in the Great Gray Swamp, suggesting that this would be a more interesting paper project. "That sounds great," sayers said. "I don't know what I'm doing."

He began to study the archives of this desolate swamp. He found some scattered information about1exiles in the early 7th century. The original description was that escaped slaves and Indians attacked farms and plantations and then disappeared into the swamp with stolen livestock. 17 14, Alexander Spotswood, deputy governor of Virginia Colony, described this desolate swamp as a "no man's land", where "there are scattered and disorderly people gathering every day". Because in the Virginia records of18th century, Africans and African-Americans were not called "people", which indicated that poor whites also joined the swamp community.

1728, william byrd II led the first survey and entered the depression swamp to determine the boundary of Virginia/North Carolina. He met an exiled family, described them as "hybrids", and clearly realized that others were watching and hiding: "To be sure, many slaves were hiding in unknown places in the world …" As a nobleman in Virginia, Byrd hated his days in the swamp. "It has never been a poster made by the American Welding Society for rum, nor is it the front page of the newspaper that announced Obama's election. All Karl Marx's works are on the bookshelf.

I asked him how Marxism influenced his archaeology. He said: "I think capitalism is wrong in terms of social ideals, and we need to change it." . "Archaeology is my activism. I'd rather dig in this dark swamp than go to the Washington shopping center to hold up signs. When ideology promotes the study of archaeology or other fields, it can produce great energy and important breakthroughs. It may also cause inconvenient data to be ignored and the results are biased. Syers concluded that there were a large number of permanent and rebellious "resistance organizations" in this dark swamp. Is it possible for him to over-interpret the evidence? "

"Historical archaeology really needs to be explained," he said. "But I always imagine what my worst critics will say or want as evidence. I did a decent job to convince my academic colleagues. A few people don't buy it. " Let me see how much money is invisible to historians. "

He took me across the hall to his laboratory, where soil samples were piled in plastic bags and placed on high shelves, and hundreds of cultural relics were bagged and numbered and stored in metal cabinets. I want to see the most important and exciting discovery. "In a sense, this is the most frustrating archaeological project imaginable," he said. "We didn't find much, everything is very small. On the other hand, it is fascinating that the soil is completely undisturbed. You have crossed the surface of an unknown world.

In order to determine the age of these soils and the traces left by human beings, sayers used various techniques. One is the superposition law: the deeper you dig, the older the undisturbed soil layer is. In addition, artifacts such as cultural relics, arrows, pottery and nails found in them can be dated according to the styles and attributes of these artifacts through the collective knowledge of historical archaeologists. The third technology is optical luminescence (OSL), he explained:

"We collected soil samples without exposure to the sun and sent them to the laboratory." . "They can measure the last time these grains of sand saw the sun. Usually, historical archaeological projects do not need to use OSL, because there are documents and mass-produced cultural relics. This proves how unique these communities are in avoiding the outside world.

Before 1660, most people in this nameless land were native Americans. 16 19, African slaves came to Jamestown nearby, and within a few years, the first exiles appeared. After 1680, native American materials became scarce, and what he thought was chestnut cultural relics began to dominate.

Sayers appeared in a swamp near his previous research site. Through a dating method called luminescence, syers can determine the age of a small house from the end of 17 or the beginning of 18. Archaeological discoveries of swamps, some of which will be permanently exhibited in the National Museum of African American History and Culture, including clay, are used to fill gaps between logs or branches of a long-lost wooden house. (Jason Pitra) Before the war, nails cut by machines from a swamp community were rusted and melted to form biconical iron and copper ornaments, such as beads. Excavators also found a piece of clay tube and bowl fragments left in the18th century or in the early19th century, and a small lead bullet possibly from the17th century. (Jason Pietra) An ancient arrow about 6,000 to 6,500 years ago was transformed into a knife by swamp residents in the 17 or 18 century. Jason Pietra said that the man pulled out a stone arrow about an inch long and one side was cut off to form a tiny machete or scraper. "Inside the swamp, there is only one source. Imagine, "syers said. "Dig, cut, get mud, and work in chest-high water. In summer 100 degrees, there is water everywhere, and mosquitoes are impious. It is very cold in winter. Beat, whip. Death is very common.

This canal, now called the Washington Trench, was the first large-scale invasion of this dark swamp. Dig more canals. Timber companies cut down thousands of acres of Atlantic Bai Xuesong, which is called juniper locally, and turned it into barrel walls, masts and roof slabs.

Because the canal allowed slave hunters to enter the swamp, it became more dangerous for exiles. But there are also new economic opportunities. Exiles can cut shingles for timber companies that turn a blind eye. Before 1856, Frederick Law Olmsted traveled to the south as a reporter. He once described those exiled people in his book. He observed that "poor white people own a small swamp and sometimes hire them", and exiled people also steal from farms, plantations and careless travelers.

Olmsted asked the local people if they had shot the slaves. "Oh, yes," was the answer. "But some people would rather be shot than taken away, sir." Obviously, there are two different ways of exile in the swamp. Those who live on the edge of the swamp or near the canal interact with the outside world much more. In remote inland areas, nameless places and other islands, there are still exiles living in isolation, fishing, farming and trapping wild boar in the mud deep in the swamp. We know it from the excavation of Dan sayers and former Charlie. He described all the families who had never seen white people. Seeing white people will scare them to death.

White residents in Norfolk and other communities near the swamp are afraid of being attacked by chestnuts in the swamp. Instead, it was the Nat Turner Uprising of 183 1, a rebellion of slaves and free blacks. More than 50 whites were killed, and then at least 200 blacks were killed in retaliation. Turner intends to hide in the dark swamp with his followers, recruit hooligans and more slaves, and then appear to overthrow white rule. But two days later, his rebellion was suppressed, and Turner was captured and hanged after hiding for two months.

What has become of this desolate swamp? Olmsted thought that there were only a few people left in the 1950s of 19, but he stayed near the canal and didn't venture inland. There is evidence in syers that there was a prosperous community in this nameless place before the Civil War. "That's when they came out," he said. "After the civil war, we got almost nothing. It is possible for them to reintegrate into society as free men.

In the early days of his research, he began to interview African-Americans in communities near the swamp, hoping to hear family stories about exiles. But he gave up his sideline. "There is still a lot of archaeological work to be done," he said. "We only excavated 65,438+0% of the islands."

After the civil war, the swamp was reclaimed with wood (the picture shows 1873, a shop serving loggers). Syers has never found a record of leaving purgatory: "Unless we get news from their descendants or find written records, we will never know the details of Exodus." (Janas picture) * * * *

He has no monsters and no cigarettes. It's time to leave this desolate swamp and go to the nearest convenience store. On a raised gravel road, we passed a charred forest illuminated by lightning. We bypassed the shore of Lake Drummond, a perfect blue lake in the center of the swamp. We continued to drive through the submerged cypress trees until we reached the place surrounded by thorns and bushes on both sides of the road. "I lived comfortably in the swamp," he said. "The bear will watch me dig. I met giant water snakes and rattlesnakes with thick thighs. But nothing is worse than scratches, insect bites and losing equipment in the mud. A young woman walked into an underwater hole and then disappeared. But she quickly surfaced without causing any harm. Many times, students and other tourists are entangled in thorns and have to be cut off. He said: "Nothing will happen soon or easily. "The swamp is a liar, and summer is really hard to endure. But I like it. Thunderstorm weather is really bad. Frogs, insects and birds cry, just like chipmunks hear. I like what the swamp has done for me and what it has done for them.