HAPPY FRIDAY P.O.U.!
THE GHOST OF IGBO LANDING
The story of Igbo Landing (also spelt Ebo or Ibo) is a powerful one. The Igbo were a tribe from what is today Nigeria, renowned for their particularly strong resistance to slavery. The act of defiance that gave Ebo Landing its name has been memorialized in everything from TV to a Nobel Prize winning novel, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.
After being captured in Africa, a group of Ebo tribespeople were shipped to Savannah and sold to plantation owners including Congressman Thomas Spalding. The newly bought slaves went next to Dunbar Creek on St. Simon’s Island. When they were brought to land, the Ebo chief declared, “The water brought us, the water will take us away!” He then walked into the creek, with at least 10 others following.
The slavers yelled at the slaves to stop, and threatened them with guns, but the Africans had already decided that death was a better option than a life of servitude. They walked into the water and didn’t come back out.
Today, people report that on quiet and foggy nights you can still hear the rattling of chains and the chant, “the water brought us, the water will take us away.” One woman even claims to have seen the ghosts of the dead men, chained together, barefoot, and in rags. Some fishermen avoid the creek so as not to disturb the ghosts.
In 2002, a number of Ebo tribesmen traveled from Nigeria to bless the ground. The leader of the congregation said he had come “to evoke their spirits, to take them back to Igboland.” Two centuries later, perhaps the water finally took them away.