How a Witch Doctor and a Bald Eagle Saved Daufuskie Island

Tales from the late writer Roger Pinckney, High Priest of Daufuskie Island

Andrew Branning arrives on Daufuskie Island, located between Savannah and Hilton Head Island

Larger-than-life Daufuskie Island author and historian Roger Pinckney, a Lowcountry legend, passed away last week. He wrote more than 10 books, including “Blue Roots: African American Folk Magic of the Gullah People.”

He was known as a storyteller, and many of his stories were centered around his beloved Daufuskie, which he visited for the first time over 60 years ago. Pinckney was raised in Beaufort, and it was his father, the Beaufort County coroner and dock-builder, who introduced his son to this remote island he eventually called home.

I met him by chance several years ago. My fascination with the island began in 2015 when I first read Pat Conroy’s The Water is Wide, about his experiences teaching on an island with no bridge to Hilton Head or anywhere.

Humidity hung heavy that July afternoon when we pulled up in our boat to Freeport Landing. The Old Daufuskie Crab Company stood at the end of the dock, and folks were gathered at Marshside Mama’s, enjoying a few beers. listening to the band and eating platters piled high with fried shrimp. We sat down under the gazebo at a wooden picnic table. Salt breezes drifted in on the ebbing tide, exposing oyster flats and pungent aromas of pluff mud, which can be as nose-wrinkling as wasabi- the taste of “home.” Lowcountry. We ordered a fried fish sandwich and lingered there, watching the crowd. That’s when I noticed a familiar face, writer Roger Pinckney, known as the High Priest of Daufuskie Island. He was chatting with a few tourists, nodding and smoking his pipe.

We overheard him saying, “ Why, the Hilton Head I once knew is gone to highways, bridges, and blacktop. But we still have Daufuskie, and I’m doing everything I can to save it from the greedy developers.”

“If you haven’t heard about the “no money root” Dr. Buzzard and the bald eagles that finally stopped the developers on Daufuskie, then you haven’t read my story.”

Roger Pinckney at home

Unless you read Roger Pinckney, hunter, fisherman, and voodoo expert in residence, you will never understand Daufuskie. I decided to take his tour—a historical, environmental, straight-talking tour of this remote island surrounded by the waters of the Calibogue Sound, the Intracoastal Waterway, and the Atlantic.

Shortly, the time came to board the van for the tour, one of the few vehicles on the island. Everybody here rides bikes, walks, or jumps in a golf cart. “Five thousand acres,” Pinckney shouts,” one hundred and fifty people. No bridge, no stop lights, no fast food restaurants, no traffic lights, and no traffic at all. That’s not how the real estate wizards on Hilton Hell wanted it,” he explains. “They came to Daufuskie in 1979, spent two hundred million dollars, and said this island would be the ‘Martha’s Vineyard of the South.’ Well, it ain’t happenin’ - then went broke.”

Roger continued to drive the van down a sandy lane hugged on either side by palmetto trees and majestic oaks. Every landmark along the way had a tale to tell, from the old school house Pat Conroy made famous when he taught school to the remnants of rice dikes built on the backs of slaves. A long white sandy beach stretched out in front of us - the only sound was that of waves splashing onto the shore and an occasional seagull swooping down to grab his lunch in the smooth green waters. Suddenly, I looked over to my left and saw high-rise condos standing empty along the beachfront.

Arriving at Bloody Point, Pinckney said, “As a boy, I knew every last keeper of Bloody Point Lighthouse. Arthur ‘Papy’ Burn brewed scuppernong in the old lamp house. When the Internal Revenue folks came after him for not having a license to sell it, he gave the wine away. Papy once said he wouldn’t trade a teaspoon of Daufuskie dirt for the whole state of South Carolina. Today, the narrow brick structure is home to the “Silver Dew Winery,” which dates back to 1883, when it served as a storage building for lamps and wicks used in the Bloody Point Lighthouse.

A few minutes later, we arrived at the Copper River Cemetery, a ground sacred to the Gullah people. They buried their dead with faces pointed east so their souls could fly back to Africa. Piles of oyster shells nearby testify that people found abundance and contentment on this island long before the beginning of time.

Our next stop was the Melrose Inn, a mansion eerie in its stillness - a mere reflection of what might have been. “Hope you’re not afraid of ghosts. If not, you’ll love this place.” It’s surrounded by beach cottages - all empty but one, which now is my home,” said Roger Pinckney. The day I was there a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag hung defiantly outside the front door. It was one of several dozen cottages that lined the beach, now just a pastel-colored ghost town by the sea. The lack of neighbors doesn’t bother Pinckney. He laughed and said, “It just keeps the rent down.”

Our last stop was Sandy Lane condos, where Pinckney told the story of how the condos were destroyed by Dr. Buzzard, the famous Beaufort root doctor who put the “no money root” on them. “When the condos went up, my neighbor got so depressed that he got drunk and cussed a flock of buzzards in a nearby tree. “Go tell Dr. Buzzard he’s fallin’ down on the job,” he yelled. “The truth is that the very next day, those buzzards left, and American bald eagles started nesting in that tree. Well, it didn’t take long for Fish and Wildlife and the DNR to get wind of it and come charging over here to close down the whole dang thing.” Pinckney said this with a huge smile and a chuckle. When he pointed out the nest that halted developers, the whole crowd clapped and cheered.

One last thing: Pinckney was proud to proclaim that the only fast food on the island has fins, fur, or feathers. He will be missed by many.