... they were called Caribs not because they would eat human flesh, but because they defended their homes well.²

Over a generation ago, Dominica was identified as "an island in need of an historian".³ Since then, despite work by inter alia Honychurch,⁴ Trouillot, Baker, Layng himself, and others, this observation has remained true, including in relation to its Indigenous people, who call themselves Kalinago and their home Waitukubuli.⁵ This paper examines the September 1930 'Carib War' by setting it against the background of British Imperial theory and practice vis-à-vis Aboriginal rights. Emphasis is thus placed on seeing a minute part of the history of one Caribbean Indigenous nation in relation to that of other Aboriginal peoples, specifically those of mainland ‘Turtle Island’ who have erroneously been termed Indians and similarly 'reservationized' by British colonialism.⁶

While Aboriginal peoples are thought to have been living across the Caribbean for some 4,000 years, those designated 'Carib' apparently arrived from the South American mainland a ‘mere’ millennium ago. For them, Waitukubuli was perhaps less of a permanent settling-place than a way-station while travelling, typically in 50 to 60 foot dug-out kanawa, between Iounacaera (now Martinique) on its south to Aichi (Marie-Galante) and Karukera (Guadeloupe) to the north.⁷ Like their relatives across the western hemisphere, the peoples of the Caribbean were devastated by European invasion bringing with it ‘Old World’ diseases to which they had no immunities. While ‘defending their homes well’ they suffered such a tragic reduction of their numbers that by 1700 the only sizeable groups surviving in the island Caribbean were on the territories Europeans had re-named St. Vincent and Dominica.⁸ Thereafter settlers of both European and African origin (including some ‘free people of colour’) came to Waitukubuli, first from Martinique, later from Guadeloupe. Those who arrived after 1748 infringed ‘not only’ Aboriginal rights, but also international law in that, according to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Britain and France had agreed, faut de mieux, to leave Waitukubuli in Amerindian hands.⁹ By contrast the 1763 Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Year's War,¹⁰ in assigning Dominica (as well as Tobago, Grenada, the Grenadines, and St. Vincent) to Britain, made no mention of Aboriginal people.

With British colonization, 'progress' so accelerated that Dominican demographics underwent a qualitative shift toward racialized slavery on coffee and sugar plantations. Between 1763 and ’78 the trans-Atlantic slave trade brought over 41,000 Africans to Dominica, many for sale to planters in neighbouring French-colonized Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Ste.-Lucie.¹¹ Although in the course of Anglo-French hostilities during the U.S. War for Independence Dominica was re-occupied by the French, under the 1783 Treaty of Versailles it reverted to Britain.¹² By then its Amerindian population numbered fewer than a thousand. Until at least the end of the nineteenth century their numbers, like those of their relatives in North America, continued to dwindle toward disappearance.¹³

Briefly, the origins of Dominica’s ‘Carib’ Reserve and the background to the events of September 1930 are as follows. During the 1760s Amerindian survivors withdrew toward the northeast side of the island where 233 acres around Salybia came to be called the 'Carib Quarter'. A century later, in the 1860s, the Church of England in Roseau was granted land ‘in trust’ for them.¹⁴ Documentation around the grant-in-trust to the Anglicans, as Chief Hilary Frederick has pointed out, did not emphasize Aboriginal rights, but rather in ethnocentric (if not downright racist) terms treated Indigenous people as "subhuman beings, immature or otherwise irresponsible, at best children of a sort since they needed a tutor to supervise the use of their land".¹⁵ Here it is essential to note that under the British legal tradition the vital element in a fiduciary relationship is that a ‘guardian’ must behave without utmost devotion to the interests of the ‘ward’.¹⁶ In trampling on Aboriginal rights, British colonialism thus contravened Britain’s own concept of ‘the rule of law’.

Typically, part of this contravention took place with Surveyor-General Arthur Skeat’s delineation of borders significantly inside those recognized by the ‘Caribs’.¹⁷ That Dominica's Administrator¹⁸ Sir Henry Hesketh Bell¹⁹ intended the Reserve to have been somewhat larger than the 3,700 actually designated is supported by a July 1902 missive sent by Bell to Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain, viz.:

I attach hereto the plan of the survey made by Mr. Skeat. It will be seen that the Carib Reserve, within the boundaries now proposed will include 3,700 acres. The inclusion of the valley lands [held as part of William Davies’ Concord estate, but on the eastern - i.e. Reserve - side of the Pagoua River], whose ownership has hitherto been open to doubt, will probably add three or four hundred acres to the area heretofore held by the Caribs, but I hope this suggested liberality will meet with your sanction. This surviving remnant of the race has been so badly treated in the past that a little kindness to them in the future may not be considered Quixotic.²⁰

In the event the Reserve's northern, western and southern sides (its eastern boundary being some eight miles of Atlantic coastline) were left open to further de facto encroachment by non-Caribs. It is also highly significant that Bell's 'Notice' failed to establish what degree of self-government Reserve residents were supposedly entitled to. More importantly it did not state — one suspects to avoid drawing attention to the fact that at no time had any treaty been made to this effect — that the ‘Caribs’ were expected to regard the Reserve as legitimate recompense for ‘extinguishment’ of their Aboriginal rights over the rest of the island.²¹

In mid-1927 Austin John, Bright John, Norbert John, Shinner Joseph and others, representing petitioners "500 in number of which 250 ... [were of] pure carib descendant [,] ... The rest ... not pure Carib but ... native born", addressed a petition to "His Most Gracious Majesty the King" (George Vth) asking for his "kind consideration in [their] behalf". They contended that Dominica’s Administrator, E.C. Eliot, was highly unsympathetic and "by all means trying his very best to reclaim [their] sovereign right".

In fact he wish to put us just like civilian. ... to put new rules over us, which is altogether different from those, which we did receive from Administrator Bell in the year 1902.

Thomas John, whom he did appoint as headman for us, has applied several time for little reward from him, and he refuse him.

... some of us are poor, so poor, that we cannot even maintain our young little one. Considering how poor and hard up we are we humble pray His Most Gracious Majesty with our utmost fidelity veneration and respect to grant us our Reserve once more and to allow us to follow our ancient rules as in the time of Ti Francois our Ancient Chief. We profoundly and humbly beg His Most Gracious Majesty to appoint Thomas John for our Chief and to increase his fee and authority.²²

This petition was sent to England with a letter from the Chief of the Reserve, Thomas Jolly John,²³ to a certain E.A. Iliffe (a stamp-collector in Sheffield who John had been in contact with for some time).²⁴ The Chief wrote that his people had "no refuge in Dominica" and asked his "Dear Friend" to please correct the petition's grammar, have it typed, and forward it British authorities.²⁵ Instead, pusillanimously explaining he had no "wish to make [himself] an accessory to what ... [might] be unconstitutional", Iliffe did not trouble to improve the petition's presentation, but instead conveyed it directly to the Secretary of State for the Colonies,²⁶ Tory ultra-imperialist Sir Leopold Amery.²⁷ The Colonial Office promptly informed Iliffe that as the petition had not been submitted through ‘proper official channels’, it had been sent back to Dominica.²⁸ From there it would be forwarded to Leeward Islands Governor Sir T.R. St. Johnston,²⁹ and only then to the Colonial Office. Behind such pettiness was the need to impress upon an Indigenous people that they were not to interpret their indigenousness as affording any government-to-government relationship with the British. Such a relationship could have been argued on the basis that the previously-mentioned Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) had not been superseded by any treaty under which Indigenous people agreed to relinquish their land. In any event, the 1927 petition having been duly re-sent,³⁰ typically nothing further was heard of it.³¹

As though to confirm why Reserve residents so distrusted him, Administrator Eliot wrote to the Colonial Office describing them as "confirmed smugglers" who, rather than pay customs duties, "barter[ed] their canoe shells for drink and tobacco from the French Islands [i.e. Martinique and Guadeloupe]".³² This made necessary "a somewhat closer supervision ... than they appreciated". Insisting de rigueur on his "great interest in the welfare of this remnant of an ancient and interesting tribe", Eliot hoped that within a couple of decades the Reserve could be opened to the surrounding population as "few, if any pure blooded Caribs would then be left".³³

It is true that by the 1920s, due to their near-extermination followed-up by ‘envelopment and inferiorization’,³⁴ few Reserve residents retained much knowledge of their ancestral language.³⁵ Furthermore, as the petitioning complainants had made clear, many people who considered themselves Aboriginal and were accepted by their community as such did have a good deal of non-Amerindian (i.e. African) ancestry. Here parallels between the ‘Caribs’ and North American Indigenous peoples such as the ‘Mohawks’ of the ‘Iroquois Confederacy’³⁶ are instructive. Despite — indeed arguably in part because of — the incorporation of many Euro-Americans (and lesser numbers of African-Americans) into their families, the ‘Mohawk’ and other ‘Iroquois’ nations remain among the most sovereigntist of North America's 'internal colonies'.³⁷

While a second petition sent to the Colonial Office by the ‘Caribs’ — this one in August 1930 — appears below as Appendix I, a few of its key points need emphasis, especially those touching on matters of Indigenous sovereignty. The petition insisted that "within the boundaries of the Carib territory the lawfully elected Carib Chief should have power to administer law and justice" and that unless their aid was requested, "British local authorities" ought not to interfere. Also that those "living peaceably in the Carib territory should never become liable to any forms of taxation, other than the duty of keeping open some part of the road within their territory, except by their majority consent or approval".³⁸ Dominica’s Acting-Administrator responded to Chief John in a lecturing tone:

The payment of taxes is the duty of every citizen, and you should, as Chief of the Caribs, use your influence to make your people show themselves to be loyal subjects of His Majesty the King by obeying the law. Instead of helping the Government you have been setting a bad example .... I have now explained to you what your duties as Chief should be, and I hope that no more complaints will be made of your conduct toward any Government Officers ..., as otherwise His Majesty the King's Government in Dominica may consider it necessary to remove you from the position of Chief.³⁹

Early in the morning on Friday, September 19^th 1930 combustibles that had been accumulating — one could say for generations — were set alight when several ‘Creole’ policemen came onto the Reserve with the aim of seizing alcohol, tobacco, and other goods supposedly imported from Martinique and Guadeloupe without due payment of taxes. These constables searched several premises in Salybia, including a shop maintained by Mrs. Ti-Roi Joseph. When several Reserve residents moved to take back some of what had been confiscated, "The policemen shoot with their revolvers, which they had in hand already. At this time, four Caribs get wounding and fell down".⁴⁰ These men were Dudley John, Royer Frederick, Ferdinand Sanford, and Chief John’s father-in-law Alexander Valmont. One died on the spot, a second later in hospital in Roseau. Meanwhile, as Chief John related, "The Caribs then rush on the police trying to fight them, but the police run. However the Carib run them and put them out of the Reserve". The next day a Royal Navy frigate, the H.M.S. Delhi, arrived on the scene and marines launched detonators and Verey lights at the Reserve, their respective booms and flashes driving residents from their homes into the mountains.⁴¹ Police ransacked Salybia and documents, including some germane to the sore issue of the Reserve’s boundaries, were taken from Chief John’s home. When on Monday September 21^st he finally managed to make his way to Roseau,⁴² he and two of his supporters were arrested. John was suspended as Chief; thereafter Chieftancy was non-operational, at least from the British viewpoint, until 1952.⁴³ Chief John reported he was "taken to the Fort, ... undressed ... put in a cell", refused bail, and subjected to miserable rations, there to remain for eight days. During this time he was joined by nine further arrestees brought around from Salybia aboard the Delhi.⁴⁴

In early October, thanks to the efforts of several elected members of the Dominica Legislative Council, international attention began to be drawn to the situation on the Reserve. They cabled the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society in London thus:

Five Dominica Caribs shot by police 19th September. Two dead outcome alleged attempted resistance seizure goods on unlicensed shop in Carib reserve. Caribs claim exempted direct taxation. Caribs were unarmed. Warship Delhi dispatched punitive expedition 21st whole Carib Community terrified Fled into woods with Babies some still there. Carib Chief held Prisoner now released on Bail Charged obstructing police. Independent enquiry into necessity shooting and subsequent treatment Carib imperative. Caribs destitute consequent recent hurricane. Illiterate and last remnants of their race. Letter following.⁴⁵

Among those endorsing this message were individuals who also wrote to the Governor saying that an inquest into the deaths of Dudley John and Royer Frederick had been improperly delayed and that it was "necessary and desirable in the public interest that the grounds for summoning the H.M.S. Delhi to Dominica, ... the demonstration of force which followed ... and the indiscriminate arrest of numbers of Caribs should be fully examined".⁴⁶ A few days later, during a session of Dominica’s Legislative Council, J.B. Charles moved and H.D. Shillingford seconded the following resolution:

WHEREAS the Carib Indians of Dominica have, from time immemorial [emphasis added], occupied certain Reserve Territory situated in the Windward side of the island where under the jurisdiction of a Chief of their own race and selection they have customarily enjoyed certain privileges such as freedom from direct taxation and the right to have disputes within the Reserve determined and settled by the Chief;

AND WHEREAS doubts have arisen as to the nature and extent of the liberties of the said Carib Indians, and as to the powers of the said Chief;

BE IT RESOLVED, that this Council is of opinion that it is necessary and desirable that the said privileges of the Carib Indians and the status of their Chief be defined and protected by Statute.

Unfortunately, if not surprisingly, this effort was defeated eight votes to five.⁴⁷

At this stage Governor St. Johnston cabled the Colonial Office asking someone to "forward [a] copy of the Treaty of Paris of 1783 .... Defence in case against Caribs quoting supposed provisions of this Treaty".⁴⁸ Confusion between the 1763 Treaty of Paris and the 1783 Treaty of Versailles had clearly arisen, probably in connection with King George the IIIrd’s ‘Royal Proclamation of 1763’⁴⁹ which had referred to Indigenous peoples’ territories as nations. Until treaties had been negotiated, their territories were to remain beyond the pale of European settlement.⁵⁰ The Colonial Office hastened to consult the Foreign Office, where a functionary admitted it was difficult to determine to what extent the 1783 treaty was relevant nearly a century and a half later in Dominica. Part of the problem derived from the convention that while commercial treaties were invalidated by war, those ceding territories were not. The Foreign Office tried to cover its flatfootedness on what was being asked by pointing out the U.S. Supreme Court had recently ruled that the 1794 Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation — usually called ‘Jay's Treaty’ after its principal U.S. negotiator, John Jay — had been only partially invalidated by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent.⁵¹ This mention of Jay's Treaty is extremely interesting in that, up to today, a number of North American Indigenous nations, not least the ‘Mohawks’, continue to assert that their 'carriage of goods’ across the U.S.-Canadian ‘medicine-line’ (border) is not smuggling.⁵²

In the meantime a question about Dominica had been asked in the British House of Commons.⁵³ Responding on behalf of the second (1929-31) Labour Government, ‘Willie’ Lunn claimed that ‘Caribs’ with firearms (presumably their hunting rifles) had attacked police.⁵⁴ The truth seems to have been quite otherwise. One of the constables present on the fateful day, a Private Jacob, testified that although in the course of their daily work people in Salybia had been ‘walking with cutlasses’, they had taken care to put them aside before engaging the police with sticks, stones, and bottles.⁵⁵ A reply to a subsequent Parliamentary question would further demonstrate how unsympathetic a supposed socialist could be toward ‘Indians’ who proved troublesome. The individual concerned was the second Labour government’s Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies Drummond Shiels. Asked about the ‘Carib’ plight, he flippantly replied that the Delhi warship operation had provided Reserve residents with "some compensation in excitement which they would not get normally".⁵⁶

Very early in January 1931 Dominica Administrator Eliot wrote to Governor St. Johnston suggesting a recent English visitor, Douglas MacRae Taylor (1901-1981), had been "largely instrumental in fermenting [sic] and fostering the spirit of unrest in the Carib Quarter". Eliot reported Taylor as having arrived in Dominica late the previous July, stayed on the Reserve for a week or two, then departed north to Guadeloupe.⁵⁷ Such targeting of this particular visitor as a ‘foreign agitator’ is delightful in that Taylor was at the time undertaking a "lifelong exercise in linguistic anthropology"⁵⁸ and a career that would make him "doubtless the single most knowledgeable authority alive on the Island-Carib".⁵⁹

Official views on the ‘Carib War’ were in due time reflected in a ‘Command Paper’ titled Conditions in the Carib Reserve spun from many pages of testimony recorded May 11^th to 27^th 1931 at the library in Roseau.⁶⁰ A voice from these proceedings that should be heard is that of Angel Valmont, mother of Royer Frederick, one of two men killed in the ‘Carib War’. She explained that Royer had been the eldest of her three children. Their father being chronically ill, this adolescent had been supported his family by cultivating provisions and, though he could not afford a canoe, by fishing. Before Royer’s death the Valmont-Fredericks, like the rest of the people on the Reserve (and indeed Dominica’s poor majority) had already been suffering after-effects of the severe hurricane of September 1930.⁶¹ What the killing of Royer Frederick meant to his parents and other relatives on the Reserve symbolized, at the most basic human level, how trampling on Aboriginal rights directly threatens Indigenous survival.

With the events of September 1930 receding into history, the main lesson colonial ‘men-on-the-spot’ seem to have drawn from it was wonderfully ‘modern’ — there ought to be more policing. Administrator W.A. Bowring doubted the wisdom of setting-up a constabulary post on the Reserve as personnel stationed there would not necessarily be able to call for back-up. As he said, "to knock down a pole or break a wire in the long stretch of 8.5 miles would be most simple". Bowring found that what Reserve people wanted, "more especially the men, ... [was] to be left alone".⁶² He thought, however, that official visits to the Reserve on a monthly basis were needed to show that "Government authority is paramount within the reserve as well as outside" so as to "dispel once and for all the attitude of independence or quasi-independence ... claimed by certain of the Caribs".⁶³ T he Governor nonetheless insisted that the proposed police station be built.⁶⁴ Typically it would for many decades be the only structure on the Reserve to have electricity.⁶⁵

At the Colonial Office, a pair of functionaries had meanwhile summed up the situation thus: As for decades disputes had been arising over issues connected with ‘Carib’ sovereignty, it was "a good thing" that matters had been brought to a proverbial head for clearing-up. There had never, they asserted, been a grant of land, let alone "any acknowledgement or recognition of an independent Carib state". Rather "the Reserve had merely been set apart for their occupation". What constituted ‘Carib’ status had likewise not been established, nor any rules "as to the persons or classes of persons entitled to the usufruct of the Reserve". Furthermore, "The Caribs ... [had] never enjoyed any immunity from taxation"; their de facto exemption from the Boat Tax was grounded, not in law, but merely in charitable feelings, ‘at the will of the Sovereign’. Although conditional on ‘good behaviour’ the Reserve should be allowed to exist ("at any rate for the immediate future"), its size "should not be extended".⁶⁶

To deny Reserve people the security of their landbase — particularly as they had begun to achieve some demographic recovery from their nineteenth century near-extinction — was certainly to undercut, quite literally, the grounds for their survival. Toward this same end the Colonial Office entirely agreed with prohibiting ‘Carib’ women from bringing non-Aboriginal partners to live with them on the Reserve while allowing ‘Carib’ men leeway to introduce non-Aboriginal women. As well as being grossly patriarchal, this served to reduce the number of women on the Reserve, mothers and grandmothers as primary caregivers and culture-carriers able to transmit Aboriginality to future generations. Such gendered colonialist policy in relation to Dominica’s Indigenous people followed to perfection that long since instituted under Canada’s Indian Act. From before Confederation in 1867 until amended (not very satisfactorily) in 1985, this quintessential piece of ‘white-settler’ legislation stripped thousands of Indigenous women and their children (many very ‘Indian-looking’ and discriminated against accordingly) of their Aboriginal status.⁶⁷

As perceived by Colonial Office officials, the ‘Caribs’ were pretending to a significance they did not have. With "no traces of primitive customs or traditions, no folk-lore, dances, songs or music, no costume or ornament", they were not really distinguishable from the rest of the population. The "Caribbean race", asserted these little gods at the Colonial Office, had "disappeared".⁶⁸ Thus any "sentimental desire to conserve the racial individuality of this people ... [could] command little sympathy".

Their blood is no longer pure, and it would be better for them to mingle with the rest of the population .... Their present isolation is described as squalid and we have the evidence of the schoolmaster that the children of those who have married out of the tribe [‘out of the tribe’ amended to read ‘to non-Caribs’] are brighter intellectually than the others.⁶⁹

Although contentions that Reserve residents were overwhelmingly ‘mixed-bloods’ and this suggestion of unhealthy levels of endogamy were somewhat contradictory, the point was to push ‘extinction’ via biological as well as cultural assimilation.⁷⁰ That the dominant society would gain control over a few hundred acres was not, however desirable the land, the main point. More crucial was that the survival of an Aboriginal people on "the last remnant of communal land in the Caribbean"⁷¹ constituted a reproach to European invasion of the hemisphere and imposed notions of private property-ownership of land, and in precisely that part of the ‘New World’ where in 1492 the genocidal ‘original accumulation’⁷² of Indigenous peoples’ domains had begun.

In the U.S., under the 1887 Dawes ‘Allotment Act’, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) forced privatization of reservation land such that in the course of a few decades Aboriginal people lost a large portion of their landbase.⁷³ In the 1940s and ‘50s the BIA’s ‘Termination Policy’ deprived entire Indian nations of their legal existences.⁷⁴ In 1959, in Canada, Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s Department of Indian Affairs advanced yet another scheme for assimilation through the elimination of Indigenous legal identity.⁷⁵ Once there were no more ‘Indians’, neither would there be any treaties. So many Aboriginal people and their supporters resisted this ‘White Paper’ that it had to be discarded. They have since won several Supreme Court cases very supportive of First Nations’ land-rights.⁷⁶ Subsequently ‘Red resistance’ in Canada linked-up with ‘Red Power’ from the U.S. as part of a world wide spiritual movement toward Indigenous revitalization.⁷⁷

The people properly called the Kalinagos of Waitukubuli, together with members of other Aboriginal nations throughout the Caribbean basin region, have an important part to play in this process.

APPENDIX I:

Waitukubuli Kalinago petition of 10 Aug. 1930⁷⁸

WE, Thomas John, Chief of the Caribs, and all the Caribs of Dominica greet and express their loyalty to His Most Gracious Majesty George V, King of Great Britain, of Ireland and the Dominions and Colonies over Seas, Emperor of India, and humbly submit to His Majesty's Gracious consideration this our petition.

WE beg His Majesty to grant us:-

1. The restoration of our ancient rules of privileges, where perpetual continuance was graciously accorded us by Her late lamented Majesty Queen Victoria and which have unlawfully and unjustifiably been taken away from us since the year 1926.

By our ancient rule and privileges, is meant that within the boundaries of the Carib territory the lawfully elected Carib Chief should have power to administer law and justice over the Carib people and that there should be not interference on the part of the British local authorities except at the Chief express request or at the majority of the Carib people MOREOVER, that the Carib people living peaceably in the Carib territory should never become liable to any forms of taxation, other than the duty of keeping open some part of the road within their territory, except by their majority consent or approval.

2. That the Government grant of ten shillings a month at present made to the Carib Chief be raised to a sum compatible with the upkeep of dignity and honour of his position.

WE would bring to His Majesty's notice that a protest and petition made by us some time ago [i.e. in September 1927] to His Majesty's Secretary of State has remained unanswered and unacknowledged.

FINALLY, we would submit to His Majesty's gracious consideration that we, the Carib people, have since the beginning of British rule in this island always lived as peaceable and loyal subjects of His Britannic Majesty, that since the beginning of recorded history these islands have always been our home, and that today, living on a small section of territory in this island we, the last of our race are, through lack of recognition, absence of means of communication and marketing, reduced to a state of poverty in which we can only face extinction, we are convinced that the submission of these facts will suffice to persuade His Majesty of the urgency of taking such measures as will ensure us, His Majesty's loyal Carib subjects, the proper respect, recognition and protection worthy of His Majesty's Government.

(signed Thomas John, Carib Chief)

APPENDIX II:

Douglas Taylor to Noel Teulon Porter, 25 Sept. 1930⁷⁹

Dear Noel,

I have just returned to France from the West Indies where I spent some time amongst the Caribs of Dominica (not to be confounded with the Dominican Republic or Santo Domingo). I am writing to you, as the only person I know interested in such matters, to ask if you would be willing to help me to preserve the Carib race, of whom only four to five hundred remain, and who are rapidly becoming extinct in the pure form owing to the local government’s trying to ride over the privileges accorded them by Queen Victoria.⁸⁰

Dominica is a island belonging to the British Leeward group, situated 15°N by 61°W between the French islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique, which I also visited. It is the most mountainous and the most wild of the Antilles, about 40 miles by 20, and the only place on earth where pure Carib blood survived. They probably owe this continued existence to the fact that there are no proper roads across the island, whose greater part is still uncultivated and covered with virgin forest.

The Caribs now live in a legally defined Reserve of ample dimensions on the windward and most savage part of the island, under the nominal rule of their Chief. There is no village as we understand it, the houses which are well built of hardwood in a style of their own raised on stakes, and scrupulously clean, being scattered over miles, each one being surrounded by plantations of coffee, cocoa, vanilla, nutmeg, breadfruit, tania, dachine, limes etc. and the whole intervening countryside being covered with bay trees. About then miles inland starts the forest, from which they get their hardwoods, seman, balata, ceder and gommier this latter being used for the making of the native boats, gommiers, which they sell for 25/- the current price at Fort de France [Martinique] being 18 pounds (a good boat takes several men several weeks to complete). This together with carib baskets and limes is their only way of getting money. The only means of communication with the port of Roseau is by sea, in these same gommiers, which means an absence of several days from the Reserve, and considerable danger in the channel of Martinique[.] Salybia, (the Carib Reserve) does not possess either doctor or priest the nearest being about 3 to four hours walk entailing the crossing of a river impossible in the heavy rains.

The Caribs themselves, of whom there must be at least 250 quite pure (the chief himself puts it at 400 out of a total of 500, but I think he is optimistic) are small and wiry, the women sturdy and well formed; olive to light copper skin though which the blood shews red, high cheek bones, slightly slanting eyes, broad flat foreheads with tendency to recede towards the top, coarse black straight hair, hands and feet small, the latter with very high arches. A peculiarity is that men and women have little or no hair on the face and body. In character, they are much less exhuberant [sic] than the blacks, almost melancholic, soft voiced and extremely shy with strangers. Their language is almost extinct, only the old men remember some of it, the current language is Creole French and of course the young ones learn a certain amount of English in school. The rest of the population of the island, black and white, look upon the Caribs much as we look upon the gypsies [emphasis added] - as a lazy good for nothing lot. In point of fact they are not lazy but as long as they stay on the reserve, they can only work for themselves. I think this suits their temperament best, and it is sure that if they went to work on the big plantations the race in it’s pure form would soon be extinct. At it is, many of the girls leave to marry half-caste or niggers,⁸¹ and the chief himself has a pretty half Carib wife.

They are at present very unhappy because the government, (the administrator is a man called Eliot) is trying to starve them into absorbtion [sic] with the nigger population. They want on the one hand to levy taxes on boats etc, and on the other hand to bring the Caribs under the jurisdiction of the local coloured magistrate in Rosalie – the nearest village out of the reserve. The shop keepers in Roseau, - a days journey by boat or though the jungle on foot, now refuse to buy their bay leaves, and give less and less for the baskets. A Carib basket is the local form of luggage throughout the West Indies; made to be carried on the head, it is about 3 ft. long and 1 1/2 broad by 3ft. tall, very light and waterproof, made of the bark of a tree called "la rouman" double lined, i.e. one basket made to line another wither [sic] plantain leaves between the two; the design is in black red brown and white. Each one takes about two days to make – after the preparing of the bark – and they sell if lucky, after carrying them to market, for 2/- a piece. Could they be sold in England in quantities to make export worth while?⁸²

I enclose a copy of a petition to the King written by the Carib chief. You will see that his complains are rather on the score of prosperity than health. But in my opinion one of the most important things is to preserve the health of the Carib infants a great many of whom suffer from mal-nutrition, which produces a disease called locally "chaws"⁸³ and which results in a bleeding from the genital organs. Anthropologists and ethnologists like yourself would find a great many things to interest you among these people, and I think it is worth while doing something to ensure the continuation of the race.

Is it worth while sending this petition?⁸⁴ Could a campaign be started in the Times (letters) or in some other papers? The chief’s idea is that if he came to Europe and could tell people about the Caribs he could raise enough to start a little local industry for the extraction of bay essence and bay rum. Or they might sell some produce in Europe. ...⁸⁵

APPENDIX III:

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Alfred, Taiaiake. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. Don Mills ON: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Amerindians, Africans, Americans: Three Papers in Caribbean History Presented at the 24th Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Historians, Nassau, 1992. Mona: University of the West Indies, Dept. of History, 1993

Assembly of First Nations (Canada). "Historical Aboriginal Border Crossing and First Nation Trading Rights to be decided by the Supreme Court of Canada". Ottawa: AFN press-release dated 16 June 2000.

Atwood, Thomas. History of the Island of Dominica. London: J. Johnson, 1791.

Baker, Patrick. "Ethnogenesis: The Case of the Dominica Caribs", America Indigena 48:2 (1988), 377-401.

--------. Centring the Periphery: Chaos, Order, and the Ethnohistory of Dominica. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994.

Banks, E.P. "An Inquiry into the Structure of Island Carib Culture". Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1954.

--------. "A Carib Village in Dominica", Social and Economic Studies 5:1 (1956), 74-86.

Barreiro, José. "Carib Gallery", Northeast Indian Quarterly 7:3 (1990), 47-55.

Beckles, Hilary. "Kalinago (Carib) resistance to European colonization of the Caribbean", Crossroads of empire: The European-Caribbean connection, 1492-1992. Cave Hill: University of the West Indies, Dept. of History, 1994, 23-37.

Blanchard, David. Seven Generations: A History of the Kanienkehaka. Kahnawake: Kahnawake Survival School, 1980.

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Footnotes