Dunbar Creek: Where The Brave Igbo Men And Women Chose Death Over Slavery

Igbo Landing  is a historic site in the sand and marshes of Dunbar Creek in St. Simons Island, Glynn County, Georgia. It was the setting of the final scene of an 1803 resistance of enslaved Igbo people brought from West Africa on slave ships. Its moral value as a story of resistance towards slavery has symbolic importance in African American folklore and literary history.

In May 1803 a shipload of seized West Africans, upon surviving the middle passage, were landed by US-paid captors in Savannah by slave ship, to be auctioned off at one of the local slave markets. The ship's enslaved passengers included a number of Igbo people from what is now Nigeria. The Igbo were known by planters and slavers of the American South for being fiercely independent and more unwilling to tolerate chattel slavery. The group of 75 Igbo slaves were bought by agents of John Couper and Thomas Spalding for forced labour on their plantations in St. Simons Island for $100 each.The chained slaves were packed under the deck of a small vessel named the The Schooner York. to be shipped to the island (other sources write the voyage took place aboardThe Morovia During this voyage the Igbo slaves rose up in rebellion taking control of the ship and drowning their captors in the process causing the grounding of the Morovia in Dunbar Creek at the site now locally known as Ebo Landing. The following sequence of events is unclear as there are several versions concerning the revolt's development, some of which are considered mythological. Apparently the Africans went ashore and subsequently, under the direction of a high Igbo chief who was among them walked in unison into the creek singing in Igbo language "The Water Spirit brought us, the Water Spirit will take us home", thereby accepting the protection of their God, Chukwu and death over the alternative of slavery. Roswell King, a white overseer on the nearby Pierce Butler plantation, wrote one of the only contemporary accounts of the incident which states that as soon as the Igbo landed on St. Simons Island they took to the swamp, committing suicide by walking into Dunbar Creek.A 19th century Savannah-written account of the event lists the surname Patterson for the captain of the ship and Roswell King as the person who recovered the bodies of the drowned. A letter describing the event written by William Mein, a slave dealer from Mein, Mackay and Co. of Savannah states that the Igbo walked into the marsh, where 10 to 12 drowned, while some were "salvaged" by bounty hunters who received $10 a head from Spalding and Couper.Survivors of the Igbo rebellion were taken to Cannon’s Point on St. Simons Island and Sapelo Islandwhere they passed on their recollections of the events.

Igbo Landing was the final scene of events which, in the heyday of slavery in the United States in 1803, amounted to a "major act of resistance" and as such these events have led to enduring symbolic importance in African American folklore and literary history.The mutiny by the Igbo tribes people has been referred to as the first freedom march in the history of America.Although the events had been put off as mere Afro-American folktale for more than two centuries, research since 1980 has verified the factual basis of the legend and its historical content

Currently although the site bears no official historical marker, and a controversial sewage disposal plant was built beside the historical site in the 1940s, it is still routinely visited by historians and tourists.The event has recently been incorporated into the history curriculum in Coastal Georgia Schools.