Meet the Moderators: Jason Roberts on the Dismal Swamp
Jason Roberts is one of the moderators for the “The Creolization of America: Beyond Black, White and Red.” 
Jason Roberts is an M.A. candidate in history at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA. He is researching maroon communities in the Dismal Swamp. “Creolization” of African, Native American, and European peoples does not warrant a simple definition. There were many different regions and subregions that saw different degrees of influence from the three continents. The Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina, home to a maroon colony of runaway slaves, had its own “swamp culture” that was unique to that of the surrounding areas while it also had varying degrees of outside influences. Early in European colonization, it was inhabited by people who were hiding from something as its impenetrability garnered its inhabitants a degree of secrecy. The majority of early inhabitants were Native Americans who were feeling the pressure of land encroachments and whites who sought to escape society. Whites and Native Americans established survival methods and formed groups often with members of both ethic equations. African Americans, as chattel slavery developed and increasing numbers of runaways took refuge in the swamp, joined these groups rather than establishing their own. Thus, the “swamp culture” was a conglomeration of the three with minimal African cultural continuity evident. A look at Virginia as a slave depot lends further support to this position. Primary accounts of slaves who experienced the swamp reveal the maroons to be Christianized and highly able to communicate with the outside world which they did to negotiate trade.