Rootwork

Rootwork and healing

African Americans had herbal knowledge brought from West and Central Africa to the United States. European slave traders selected certain West African ethnic groups for their understanding of rice cultivation to be used on slave plantations in the Sea Islands. The region of Africa these ethnic groups were taken from was called the "Rice Coast," made up of what is now Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. These areas in Africa were suitable for rice cultivation because of their moist semitropical climate; the European slave traders selected people belonging to ethnic groups from these regions to be enslaved and transported to the Sea Islands.