One of the highlights of the Gullah Celebration is the marsh tacky horse race on Mitchelville Beach on Hilton Head Island.
The marsh tacky is a rare breed of colonial Spanish horse found in South Carolina. They are descended from Iberian horses that arrived on Spanish ships in the 1500s. The horses were abandoned along the South Carolina coast and managed to survive on their own. For centuries, these abandoned horses adapted to the environment and developed into a unique strain of colonial Spanish horse.
The breed derives the "tacky" part of their name from the English word meaning "common" or "cheap," because they were the most common horse in this area of the country for most of their history.
After the Civil War, they were commonly used by members of the Gullah community on the islands off the South Carolina shore for use in fields and gardens.
At Christmas, the Gullah men would have a horse race to determine who had bragging rights for the best horse on the island.
Here’s a story of memories of those days by Annette Cheek:
My eyes were as big as chinaware saucers as my daddy told us stories of marsh tacky horses running wild on Hilton Head Island.
My daddy was a river man, (not by trade but by passion) with reddish skin weathered by years of saltwater sting. His history lessons usually came while the “young ‘uns” were bent over a picnic table heading shrimp or picking blue crab caught earlier that day.
During those times, folks had no malls, no cable, video games or even fast food on the island. However, the river and the ocean had all the adventure we could handle. Hilton Head Island was a beautiful, tropical wilderness with no crime, no red lights and no stop signs. The island was like being in a world separate from the rest, where every day was paradise!
You could almost hear my heart beating with anticipation as the school bus approached my stop. Mr. Marston’s place was just a block from my house and he was so kind to allow our gang to ride his horses after school. We would saddle up the beautiful majestic beast and head out to Marshland Road, down Hwy. 278 then over to Folly Field Beach, racing to the water’s edge.
The weekends were full of excitement. The family tradition was to spend the day on the banks of the Broad River with family and friends. Daddy would spend the day casting his net and fishing while us young ‘uns would crab with our homemade chicken-neck bait lines. The marshland was brimming with wildlife. You could sit for hours and watch the fiddler crabs dance across the pluff mud, appear and disappear, just like magic. It was always a challenge — and not for the faint at heart — to try and catch a handful to use later for fishing bait. Sharing the catch of the day was a weekend tradition, bringing folks together that had never met.
Hot, humid mornings with air as thick as cotton started each long summer day and ended at sunset being covered with the familiar smell of Pluff Mud. It was time for supper and time to settle down and dream of tomorrows adventures.
Most every morning the gang would meet up down on the bank of the broad river, climbing the huge moss covered water oak trees that lined the river bank, watching for pirates and throwing together any makeshift raft we could muster up. Hence the name forced upon us by my daddy - “river rats”.
I guess you could say the “River Rats were daydreamers. We could sit on the bank of the broad for hours just coming up with all sorts of ideas and plans for mischief.
At dusk when the stars begin to pop out at you like pop corn, you could lay back on the ground and lookup and imagine all kind of stories of adventure. In the Bright sunshine, you could look up at the sky and imagine places and people you have never seen before. Daydreamers have the ability to go to far away places and experiences adventures which only ponder in one’s imagination. Sharing dreams is exactly what the “river rats” did. The “river rats” traveled to places only available in one’s deepest corner, where pirates roamed the rivers and monsters came from the deep.
It was always comforting to have a friend along when sharing such dreams.
Now, I don’t know about any wild horses but there was plenty of wild life and a whole lot to learn in the adventure of the “river rats” on Marsh Tacky Island.
Read more at www.marshtackyisland.vpweb.com.
