Its live oaks were cut for valuable ship timbers a few ships were even built on Ossabaw, right next to the lumber supply. Once the English settled their boundary wars with Spain, Ossabaw’s natural resources became a magnet for a series of landowners. So far, only a few pottery fragments from broken olive jars reveal their presence there. Catherines Island to the south, on Ossabaw the Spanish seemed to be just passing through. Likewise, the Spanish continued to explore the islands of “La Florida.” Although they established a mission on St. The native peoples used buckeye sap to stun fish so they were easy to harvest in these calm backwaters.īy the 16th and 17th centuries, coastal natives would have seen French sailing ships mapping the Georgia islands and naming its rivers after those of their homeland. Often there’s a clump of red buckeye growing close by it’s not a coincidence. Although much of the shell material later was mined to build tabby structures and to surface sandy roads, in places you still can stand on the remains of a midden bordering a tidal creek and contemplate a landscape across the centuries.
These mounds also served as burial sites for their kin in four Ossabaw mounds dated at 1100-1300 C.E., archaeologists found dogs interred there as well. As they did on many other Georgia barrier islands, native peoples left behind evidence of their occupation in the form of shell middens, mounds constructed largely of oyster shell left over from seasonal feasting. Humans have been part of the Ossabaw landscape for over 5,000 years. We may give a name to an island but we are defined by the imprint it leaves on us.
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