Settled by
indigenous cultures thousands of years ago, the islands were selected by
Spanish colonists as sites for founding of
colonial missions. Historically the Spanish influenced the
Guale and
Mocama chiefdoms by establishing Christian missions in their major settlements, from
St. Catherine's Island south to
Fort George Island (at present-day
Jacksonville, Florida). Both chiefdoms extended to the coastal areas on the mainland. The Mocama Province included territory to the
St. Johns River in present-day Florida. The mission system ended under pressure of repeated raids by English South Carolina colonists and Indian allies. Spain ceded its territory of Florida to Great Britain in 1763. After 18th-century European-American settlement of Georgia and Florida,
planters purchased and
enslaved Africans for labor. Many were used to work the labor-intensive cotton, rice, and
indigo plantations on the Sea Islands, which generated much of the wealth of the colony and state. The Sea Islands were known historically for the production of
Sea Island cotton. The enslaved workers developed the notable and distinct
Gullah culture and language which has survived to contemporary times. During the
American Civil War, the
Union Navy and the Union Army soon occupied the islands. The white planter families had fled to other locations on the mainland, sometimes leaving behind their slaves. The slaves largely ran their own lives during this period, supported by Northern
missionaries and
abolitionists in the
Port Royal Experiment . They had already created cohesive communities, because planter families often stayed on the mainland to avoid
malaria and the isolation of the islands. Large numbers of slaves worked on the rice and indigo plantations, and had limited interaction with whites, which enabled them to develop their own distinct culture. During the war, the Union Army managed the plantations and assigned plots of land to slaves for farming. After President
Abraham Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation became effective on January 1, 1863, more than 5,000 slaves on Union-occupied islands obtained their freedom. After the war, although the
freedmen hoped to be given land as compensation for having worked it for so many years in slavery, the federal government generally returned properties to the planters returning from their refuges or exile. Many of the freedmen stayed in the area, working on their former plantations as
sharecroppers,
tenant farmers or laborers as the system changed to free labor. In 1893, a deadly major
hurricane struck the Sea Islands. ==List==