The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge — a sprawl of forested wetlands along the Virginia-North Carolina border — has already been identified as an important thoroughfare in the Underground Railroad to Freedom. Now an archaeologist has uncovered evidence that the swamp played an even greater role in enslaved African-Americans’ struggle for freedom.

For the first time, the remains of largely self-sufficient settlements established deep in the swamp between the colonial era and the Civil War by fugitive slaves known as maroons” have been discovered by Dan Sayers, a College of William and Mary doctoral candidate.

Some of the camps may have been inhabited by generations of maroons, according to Sayers. Throughout the early centuries of American history, the Great Dismal Swamp was a sanctuary not only for fugitive African-Americans but also for enslaved canal workers and displaced and disenfranchised Native Americans.

The number of slaves who fled to the swamp — then widely regarded as a fearsome place thick with impenetrable bogs and bloodthirsty beasts — increased sharply after the Revolutionary War, which disrupted the Southern plantation system and eventually led to the gradual abolition of slavery in the North. Many runaways paused in the swamp before continuing their quest for freedom. Thousands of others remained to live in hidden, largely self-sufficient island settlements, far from the chains and tracking dogs of “civilization.” “The swamp may have had the largest maroon population in North America,” Sayers said.

His field research got underway a few months before Great Dismal Swamp NWR became the first refuge included in the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program. Following that designation, Sayers successfully applied for a prestigious Canon National Parks Science Scholar award, which helped pay for his research.

At the start, the 34-year-old Sayers was hardly a seasoned bog walker. “I wasn’t especially interested in swamps when I was growing up; they’ve pretty much drained the swamps in Michigan,” he said. “But I had a professor at Western Michigan University who one day mentioned how significant a study of maroon communities would be because they were evidence of African-American resistance to slavery.” His academic advisers at William and Mary also encouraged him to search for maroon living-places.

“I had to start from scratch,” Sayers said. Interestingly, his is the first sustained archaeological research undertaken in the swamp. Drawing on advice from refuge staff members and local naturalists, he concentrated on a handful of isolated islands. And in the fall of 2003, he strapped on his tools, picked up a machete and headed into the refuge, whose 111,000 acres encompass a remnant of what was once a million-acre swamp.

Sayers and the volunteers who accompanied him in the early going had to work around (and through) the destruction left by Hurricane Isabelle, an especially savage storm that ravaged much of eastern Virginia and North Carolina. In the swamp, Isabelle downed tens of thousands of trees and significantly raised water levels.

After carefully examining several sites, Sayers struck pay dirt. “I found some things — like lead shot and handmade tools — that I expected to find,” he said .“And things that I did not find — like pipe bowls and stems, mass-produced ceramics, glass vessels, iron tools — supported the notion that the residents of many camps got little of what they needed from the outside world.”

Elsewhere, he also uncovered the remains of temporary 18th and 19th century camps first occupied by the slaves who dug ditches and canals and then by woodworkers who subsequently turned the swamp’s cedar and cypress into shingles, staves and other wooden products that were floated out on the waterways.

Sayers methodically sifted soil from carefully selected plots — often, in the case of a suspected maroon site, rectangles that followed the outlines of rough-hewn cabins — through a screen supported by a tripod. On one island, Sayers recalled, a black bear took a keen interest in his work — or, rather, in the thick black plastic he used to cover tools left at the site overnight. On many a morning, he would find the plastic ripped and bitten. The bear also had a taste for tripod legs; they looked like toothpicks when he was through gnawing.

Sayers has not yet completed work on his doctor’s degree, but news of findings — which he and other cultural specialists have reviewed in several public appearances — has already found a wide audience.

An award-winning television documentary on the Great Dismal Swam — and its important place in African-American history — included an update on Sayers’ discoveries. The documentary, produced by the city of Chesapeake (Va.) public communications department, was first aired in the fall of 2005.

The mounting interest in the life and times of the maroon communities, together with the Underground Railroad designation, have made Great Dismal Swamp Refuge an increasingly popular destination for African-Americans and others interested in the rich history of the region.

In response, the refuge is installing interpretive panels at its entrances. New facts sheets — long and short versions — are also available for visitors. Tour guides now must be well-versed in the swamp’s extraordinary wealth of plants and animals and its role as a safe haven for African-Americans.

“So many people come in and ask about the maroons,” said Delores Freeman, the refuge’s visitor services professional. “‘Who were they?’; ‘Where did they live?’; ‘How did they sustain themselves?’ It’s opened us up to a whole new audience — including church groups. Bus loads of people come in, and they all want to hear about the maroons.”