Afro-Vincentian

Afro-Vincentians

Kevin Lyttle Arnhim Eustace Ezra Hendrickson Adonal Foyle
Total population
(Approx. 68,125)
Regions with significant populations
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (Approx. 68,125[1])
Languages
English
Religion
Christianity
Related ethnic groups
African people  · Afro-Barbadian · Afro-Saint Lucian  · Afro-Grenadian · English people · French people

Afro-Saint Vincentians or African Saint Vincentians are residents of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines whose ancestry lies within Africa, especially West Africa. Most Vincentians are the descendants of African people brought to the island to work on plantations.

As of 2013, people of African descent are the majority ethnic group in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, accounting for 66% of the country's population. An additional 19% of the country is multiracial, with many mixed-race Saint Vincentians having partial African descent.^[1]

History

Already in 1654, when the French tried to dominate the Caribs, they recorded the presence of a 3,000 black people and much less pure Caribs ("Yellow"), without making any reference to his state of freedom or slavery. The number was ratified twelve years later by a report of the English Colonel Philip Warner: In Saint Vicent, a French possession, there are about 3000 black and none of the islands there are that amount of Indians. ^[2] When in 1668, the British broke the treaty signed between France and the Caribs in Basse Terre, tried to impose, as a first measure of domain, that the Indians stopped of harboring to the blacks fugitives and which delivered them to the British as soon as they were required.^[3]

Actually, according researchers such as the linguist and specializing in the Garifuna language Itarala, most of the slaves arrived in Saint Vicent came from other Caribbean islands (as, according him, no boat arrived directly from Africa to the archipelago), who had settled in Saint Vicent in order to escape slavery in his land. So, in the island, came Maroons from all surrounding plantations from the islands, but were diluted in the strong culture of Carib resistance.^[4]

Although most of the slaves came from Barbados,^[5] slaves came also from places like St. Lucia and Grenada. The Barbadians and Saint Lucians arrived on the island in pre-1735 dates. Later, after 1775, most of the slaves who came running of the slavery from other islands were Saint Lucians and Grenadians.^[6]

After arriving at the island, they were received by the Caribs, who offered protection,^[7] enslaved them ^[8] and, eventually, mixed with them. Addition of the African refugees, the Caribs captured slaves from neighboring islands (although also they had as slaves white people and his own people), even more that the white people, while were in fighting against the British and French. Many of the captured slaves were integrated into their communities (this also occurred in islands like Dominica), while the others slaves were mixed only each other and with the rest of the population of the island.^[5]

However, as opposed to Itarala, some authors indicated that many slaves of Saint Vicent hailed from slaves ports of all coast from West and Central Africa: Senegambia, Sierra Leone, Windward Coast, Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra, Central Africa and of others areas from Africa. All these places provided thousands of slaves to Saint Vincent, specially the Bight of Biafra (from where came, apparently, more of 20,000 slaves, the 40% of the slaves) and of the Gold Coast (from where came, apparently, more of 11,000 slaves, the 22% of the slaves).^[9]

At any rate, to be this well, these slaves lived with the slaves of the Caribs. So, the "Black Archers", i.e. the population of African origin that had adopted Carib customs and was accepted on an island where the indigenous resistance has not gone off, caused panic among Europeans. A warrior body of Amerindians and free blacks constituted a threat to the plantation slave system and a low blow to the colonial order, unwilling to accept miscegenation that they could not control it. In turn, to ingratiate with the Caribs or because they really felt "belonging to the same single nation",^[10] the most of the black people of St. Vincent in the early eighteenth century wore loincloths, used the bow and arrow, sailed by canoe, used the tables for the infants cranial deformation, touched the snail and painted their bodies with red dye annatto or achiote (Bixa orellana).^[11]

On the other hand, perhaps because of its numerical dominance, the black community pushed the Yellow Caribs towards the leeward side of the island, staying them with the most flat and fertile part (but also more liable to be attacked from the sea) of windward. It also seems true that in 1700 the Yellows asked the intervention of the French against the Black Caribs, however, when visualized they should share their scarce land, preferred to give up the alliance.^[12]

Beginning in 1719, French settlers from Martinique gained control of the island and began cultivating coffee, tobacco, indigo, cotton, and sugar on plantations. These plantations were worked by enslaved Africans. In this same year, blacks and Amerindians repelled a force of 500 French soldiers, who upon landing, burned the villages of the coast and destroyed the plantations.^[12]

In 1725, the English tried to settle his time in Saint Vicent. By then, according Bryan Edwards, blacks were leading the Caribs and his boss spoke "excellent French," in which he recalled to captain Braithwaith that he had rejected to Dutch and English before him, and to the French, their peace cost them many gifts. After which, backed by five hundred men armed with rifles, said he was doing a favor to let him go.^[13] Thus, the British returned to their ships then. Since then, during a long time, the Amerindian chiefs and black from Yurumein sold indigo, cotton and snuff produced by women and slaves,^[14] and in exchange for which they received arms, ammunition, tools, and wine from the French islands.^[15] This was very normal, according to William V. Davidson, after 1750, when the Black Caribs of St. Vincent were quite prosperous and numerous. The black leaders were warriors living with several wives and traveled by canoe to the islands of Martinique, St. Lucia and Grenada to change snuff and cotton they produced, complementing the female agricultural labor with African slave labor, weapons and ammunition.^[16]

In 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, France ceded control of Saint Vincent to Britain, who began a program of colonial plantation development that was resisted by the Caribs.

Between 1783 and 1796, there was again conflict between the British and the Black Caribs, who were led by defiant Paramount Chief Joseph Chatoyer. In 1797 British General Sir Ralph Abercromby put an end to the open conflict by crushing an uprising which had been supported by the French radical, Victor Hugues. More than 5,000 Black Caribs were eventually deported to Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras.

Slavery was abolished in Saint Vincent (as well as in the other British colonies) in 1834, and an apprenticeship period followed which ended in 1838. After its end, labour shortages on the plantations resulted, and this was initially addressed by the immigration of indentured servants (Indian and Portuguese people from Madeira) .

Demography

As of 2013, people of African descent are the majority ethnic group in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, accounting for 66% of the country's population. An additional 19% of the country is multiracial, with many mixed-race Saint Vincentians having partial African descent.^[1]

Black Caribs

The Black Caribs are a distinct ethnic group of San Vicente, also found in the Caribbean coast of the mainland of Central America. They are mixture of Caribs, Arawaks and West African people. However, their language is primarily derived from Arawak and Carib, with English and French to a lesser degree. Several theories have been made to explain the arrival of Africans to the island of St. Vincent and the mixture of many with the Caribs. The best known is that of English governor William Young in 1795.

According to oral history noted by the English governor, the arrived of African population to island, began with the shipwreck of a slave ship, that hailed from the Bight of Biafra in 1675. The survivors, members of the Mokko people of today's Nigeria (now known as Ibibio), reached the small island of Bequia, where the Caribs brought them to Saint Vincent, did became them in slaves and, over time, intermarried with them by supplying the African men with wives as it was taboo in their society for men to go unwed.

However, according to Young, due to "spirit" "too independent" of the slaves, the Carib teachers planned to kill all the African male children. When Africans met the Caribs plan, rebelled him and killed all the Caribs that they could, then headed to the mountains, where they settled and lived with other slaves who had taken refuge there before. However, over time, according researchers such as the linguist specializing in the Garifuna language Itarala who, as we have said, are more inclined to think, based on documented evidence that slaves were actually from other islands (mostly from Barbados, St. Lucia and Grenada), probably many Africans from the mountains also down from the mountains to have sexual intercourse with women Amerindians or to steal food. Many intermarried with indigenous Africans, thus causing the Black Caribs.^[7]

In 1763, the Treaty of Paris awarded Britain rule over Saint Vincent. After a series of Carib Wars, which were encouraged and supported by the French, and the death of their leader Satuye (Chatoyer), they surrendered to the British in 1796. The British considered the Garinagu enemies and deported them to Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras. In the process, the British separated the more African-looking Caribs from the more Amerindian-looking ones. They decided that the former were enemies who had to be exiled, while the latter were merely "misled" and were allowed to remain. Five thousand Garinagu were exiled, but only about 2,500 of them survived the voyage to Roatán. Because the island was too small and infertile to support their population, the Garifuna petitioned the Spanish authorities to be allowed to settle on the mainland. The Spanish employed them, and they spread along the Caribbean coast of Central America.

See also

• Indo-Vincentian

References and footnotes