Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: Sweetgrass baskets and haint blue piazzas

Charles 11 of England, gave this part of South Carolina to eight of his loyal friends who eventually brought shiploads of settlers and slaves from their sugar holdings in Bermuda and such places, to a fine natural harbour they called Charles towne, named for their king.

Life was not peaceful. The Spanish and the French, even pirates, particularly Edward Teach, Blackbeard, offered regular assaults from the seaward side, while the Native Americans were troublesome to the west.

But still the fort grew. To serve it, Charles towne transported slaves. Some 400,000 Africans from West Africa were shipped to its island port, and traded like cash crops. Some slaves, working on the local plantations, brought their skills in rice growing, transforming the low country, so that rice soon became one of the largest exports for the developing settlement.

The local market, these days, though, is filled with the ancient craft of basket-weaving that the slaves brought with them from West Africa, passing it down from generation to generation. In early days they used the bulrushes that grew tall in the marshes making baskets tight enough to hold water, individually different, and intricate as they are functional.

Today, local sweetgrass and palmetto leaves are frequently used, though that is running out as more lawns are mowed and more verges cleared, limiting grass regrowth. The fine strands of sweetgrass are bundled together, coiled, then held in place with thin strands of palmetto, in time honoured methods as the basket takes shape.

We saw remnants of the old plantation life when we drove out to Magnolia Plantation on the outskirts of Charleston, as it is now called, along the road that skirts the Ashley River. Slave cabins remain from those days of rice cultivation. And we saw a swamp garden, too. Its waters would have been channelled for rice planting. Its banks likely would have offered a plentiful supply of the grasses the slaves needed for the baskets they made to supplement their living.

As opposition to slave trading gained traction, Charleston plantation owners and business men, attempting to protect their right to own slaves, finally elected to secede from the union, declaring independence from the north. They attacked a military installation on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, so the first shots fired in the Civil War occurred right here. Lincoln formed volunteer Union armies that went on to decimate these southern Confederate states.

In the chaos that ensued much of Charleston was torched. And much of it that wasn’t torched has in the subsequent generations been hit by hurricanes and storm surges. It is a fragile world along this coast.

Still, so very much of Charleston, today, is beautiful. Even the waterfront park dripping with heavy oak branches from whence pirates were hung for their treachery, their feet dragging in the sand. Surrounding the park are homes of exceptional style and value. Often with the ceilings of their piazzas—they do not call them porches, here, but piazzas, painted 'haint blue', a soft blue that goes back to the slave days; a tradition, it is believed, that keeps evil spirits from entering the house.

We spent days just walking the streets in Charleston, enjoying it all. One of the most beautiful cities we have visited.