She
proudly showed me a picture of her mother and her aunt, two very good-looking
black women, well dressed in the style of the 1910s. They had handsome, regular
features with bright, intelligent eyes that looked directly into the camera. I
could not help but notice their hair. Both girls had luxurious, thick, wavy
black hair, parted in the middle and arranged at the back in a bun. She looked
across at me and smiled.
"Carib,"
she said.
"From
St. Vincent?" I asked.
"Yes."
"One
of the finest vistas in the Caribbean is that from Coke's View in the St.
Vincent, looking down the rock-bound coast to the Grenadines; a view that is
best on a day when the trade winds are freshening and the white foam breakers
against the dark rocks and the sea seem to be racing towards Bequia,"
wrote Sir Philip Sherlock in a radio script, which he delivered one Sunday in
October, 1963. Because there are so many Vincentians or people of Vincentian
descent living in Trinidad today, and especially in memory of Mrs. Gittens, who
showed me the photograph of her mother and her aunt, I will bring to you the
text of Sir Philip Sherlock's most interesting account of the Black Caribs of
St. Vincent.
"Drive
over the mountain ridge behind Kingstown, and you come to a very different
view, as Mesopotamia valley opens up before you with some of the finest
terracing of land in the West Indies. This fine sweep of cultivated land is in
sharp contrast with the north end of the island. St. Vincent is as mountainous
as Dominica, and the central ranges are so high and difficult that up to
several years ago it was the only island that was not crossed by a road.
"Mount
Soufrière itself rises to just over 4,000 feet, and it reaches this height
within two miles. Flying over the crater, you could look straight down into a
bleak, deep cup, sinister with its yellow lake 2,000 feet down in the centre.
Perhaps Soufrière looks all the more sinister because it is one of the two
active volcanoes remaining in the Caribbean. It's a fantastic location and
holiday makers and groups of excursionists make their way down the inside of
the crater. In 1902, Soufrière and its partner, Mt. Pelée in Martinique,
erupted. Before that, Soufrière erupted in 1812, causing the most dreadful
destruction and laying waste much of the island."
"This
triggered a mass exodus from St. Vincent of entire families to Trinidad, a
migration that continues to this day.
"The
volcano is itself a reminder that the island is almost entirely volcanic in
origin," writes Dr. Sherlock. "It is made up chiefly of ash and other
broken material. It is not too fanciful to say that St. Vincent has had
elements of the volcanic in its history also. It was a Carib stronghold.
Columbus testified on the strength, courage and determination of the Caribs,
and in his journal, when he advocated making slaves of them, he writes
that—'they are a wild people, fit for any work, well proportioned and very
intelligent, and who, when they have got rid of their cruel habits ... will be
better than any other kind of slaves.'
"The
Caribs held St. Vincent in such strength that the island was one of the last of
the lesser Antilles to be settled by Europeans and the first group of settlers,
whether French of English, had to make treaties with the Caribs in order to get
a foothold. The last of these treaties was made in 1773, ten years after the
island became British.
"As
in Grenada, so in St. Lucia, the French and English fought each other for
possession of the island. The sharpest conflict took place in the 1790s, the
period of the conquest of Trinidad by the British and the revolt of Fedon in
Grenada. One of the most skillful of the revolutionary leaders in the Caribbean
was Frenchman Victor Hugues, a man of extraordinary energy who stirred up the
slaves and the Caribs against the English.
"In
the years immediately before Hugues arrived in the Caribbean from France, the
English expanded sugar production in St. Vincent in preference to cotton, with
the result that sugar production rose from 3,700 tons in 1787 to over 14,000
tons in 1828. The increase in sugar meant an increase in the number of slaves,
and where there is slavery, there is the fear of slave uprisings. Hugues knew
well how to organise disaffection and he had considerable success. On landing
in St. Lucia, he immediately proclaimed all slaves were free, organised a
rising and recaptured the island from France.
"After
St. Lucia, he stirred up the Black Caribs of St. Vincent. These Black Caribs
were a mixture of African and Carib. You will find them in St. Vincent to this
day. The 1960 census showed that there were 1,200 Caribs in St. Vincent, most
of these are in fact Black Caribs.
"Urged
on by Hugues, the ancestors of these same people rose in rebellion and there
was desperate fighting, so desperate that it looked at one time as if the
French and their Carib allies would succeed in throwing the English off the
island, as they had done in St. Lucia. In the end, the rebellion was put down,
and large quantities of Black Caribs were carried away from St. Vincent and
settled in the Bay islands, in Ruatan and Bonacca off the Mosquito coast of
South America.
"Years
later, some of these Black Caribs were allowed to leave Roatan and settle in
the southern part of British Honduras, and today you will find them among the
most progressive and hardworking of the inhabitants of Belize. Some make a
living cutting timber in the forests, others fishing, others are farmers. They
number about 7,000. It is because of this transportation that the number of
Black Caribs in St. Vincent is so small.
"After
a period of turbulence, St. Vincent settled down to become a sugar island.
England often exported criminals. Many "poor whites" came to the
Caribbean and made a home for themselves at Dorsetshire Hill, northeast of
Kingstown. Many Portuguese were settled there in the same way that many also
came to Trinidad. West Indian immigration to Trinidad and Tobago over the last
150 years has contributed to an aspect of our cosmopolitanism in that tens of
thousands of people, mostly of African descent, have come here, their origins
at first very diverse, but in the melting pot of Trinidad and Tobago we all
have become one people."
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