Skip NavBlack Caribs Of St.Vincent
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 Soufriere 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 center. Perhaps Soufriere 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, Soufriere and its partner, Mt. Pelee in Martinique, erupted. Before that, Soufriere erupted in 1812, causing the most dreadful destruction and laying waste much of the island.
Exodus From St. Vincent
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 or 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.