Enslaved workers passed travel instructions from plantation to plantation by song, drawing on an African custom of creating songs that transmit factual information and turning song in America into codes that secretly transmitted information. “Follow the Drinking Gound” was a coded song of the Underground Railroad that gave the route for an escape from Alabama and Mississippi. Escaping slavery by running away took courage and determination. Runaway slaves used isolation as a defense mechanism. Some escaped to nearby towns or made their way to New Orleans, where they posed as free persons. Successful runaways with marketable skills formed new identities and found work as laborers, masons, mechanics, seamstresses, laundresses, steamboaters, cooks, shoemakers, ironworkers, and carpenters. Others formed rural communities in the neighboring swamp, known as maroon communities, where they raised their own food and hunted alligator, muskrat, fish, fowl, crayfish, crabs, squirrel, rabbit, deer, snake, and turtle meat. Gordon, fleeing his enslaver, raced through swamps and bayous and, after crossing each creek, rubbed his body with onions to foil his scent from the bloodhounds chasing him.