Sapelo

Sapelo is one of the wooded barrier islands off the Georgia coast, surrounded by tidal marshes and creeks. Its name preserves that of Sapala, a Guale community known to the Spanish. The island's inhabitants drew on the resources of both land and sea, while waterways linked it to the neighbouring islands and mainland.

Spanish missionaries established San José de Sapala on the island. During the seventeenth century, attacks by raiders drove people from other Guale towns to seek refuge on Sapelo, including the community of Santa Catalina after 1680. In 1684 the Spanish withdrew south under continuing pressure. In the early nineteenth century Thomas Spalding developed plantations on the island, where enslaved people grew cotton and sugarcane. Among them was Bilali Muhammad, a West African Muslim who wrote a manuscript on Islamic law.