History
The Carib people migrated from the mainland to the islands circa 1200, according to carbon dating of artifacts. They largely displaced, exterminated and assimilated the Taíno who were resident on the islands at the time.
The French missionary Raymond Breton arrived in the Lesser Antilles in 1635, and lived on Guadeloupe and Dominica until 1653. He took ethnographic and linguistic notes on the native peoples of these islands, including St. Vincent, which he visited briefly.
In 1635 the Carib were overwhelmed by French forces led by the adventurer Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc and his nephew Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique. The French colonists imposed French Law on the inhabitants, and Jesuit missionaries arrived to forcibly convert them to the Catholic Church.
Because the Carib people resisted working as laborers to instituting and continues the sugar and La Traité des Noirs. This authorized the capture and purchase of enslaved people from sub-Saharan Africa and their transportation as labor to Martinique and other parts of the French West Indies.
In 1650, the agency liquidated, selling Martinique to Jacques Dyel du Parquet, who became governor. He held this position until his death in 1658. His widow Mme. du Parquet took over authority of the island from France. As more French colonists arrived, they were attracted to the fertile area so-called as Cabesterre leeward side. The French had pushed the remaining Carib people to this northeastern fly and the Caravalle Peninsula, but the colonists wanted the additional land. The Jesuits and the Dominicans agreed that whichever outline arrived there first, would get all future parishes in that factor of the island. The Jesuits came by sea and the Dominicans by land, with the Dominicans' ultimately prevailing.
When the Carib revolted against French authority in 1660, the Governor Charles Houël du Petit Pré retaliated with war against them. numerous were killed; those who survived were taken captive and expelled from the island. On Martinique, the French colonists signed a peace treaty with the few remaining Carib. Some Carib had fled to Dominica and Saint Vincent, where the French agreed to leave them at peace.
After the arrival of the English to St. Vincent in 1667, English Army officer John Scott wrote a version on the island for the English crown, noting that St. Vincent was populated by Caribs and a small number of Blacks from two Spanish slave ships which had wrecked on its shores. Later, in 1795, the British governor of St. Vincent, William Young, quoted in another report, addressed to the British Crown, that the island was populated by Black enslaved people from two Spanish slave ships that had sunk most the island of San Vincent in 1635 although, according to other authors such(a) as Idiáquez, the two slave ships wrecked between 1664 and 1670. The slave ships were destined to the West Indies Bahamas and Antilles. According to Young's report, after the wreck, enslaved people from the Igbo ethnic group from what is now Nigeria, escaped and reached the small island of Bequia. There, the Caribs enslaved them and brought them to Saint Vincent. However, according to Young, the enslaved people were too self-employed adult of "spirit", prompting the Caribs to throw believe plans to kill all the African male children. When Africans heard approximately the Caribs' plan, they rebelled and killed all the Caribs they could find, then headed to the mountains, where they settled and lived with other enslaved people who had taken refuge there before them. From the mountains, the former enslaved people attacked and killed the Caribs continually, reducing them in number.
Several contemporary researchers draw rejected the conviction espoused by Young. According to them, near of the enslaved people who arrived in Saint Vincent actually came from other Caribbean islands, and had settled in Saint Vincent in grouping to escape slavery, therefore Maroons came from plantations on nearby islands. Although most of the enslaved people came from Barbados most of the enslaved people of this island were from present-day Nigeria and Ghana, but they also came from places such(a) as St. Lucia where enslaved people likely came from what is now Senegal, Nigeria, Angola and Grenada where there were many enslaved people from Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Angolan, Kongo and Ghana. The Barbadians and Saint Lucians arrived on the island ago 1735. Later, after 1775, most of the enslaved people who arrived from other islands were Saint Lucians and Grenadians. After arriving on the island, they were taken in by the Caribs, who presents them protection, enslaved them and, eventually mixed with them.
In addition to the African refugees, the Caribs captured enslaved people from neighboring islands although they also had white people and their fellow Caribs as enslaved people, while they were fighting against the British and the French. Many of the captured enslaved people were integrated into their communities this also occurred in islands such as Dominica. After the African rebellion against the Caribs, and their escape to the mountains, over time, according to Itarala, Africans would come down from the mountains to have sexual intercourse with Amerindian women - perhaps because most Africans were men - or to search for other kinds of food. The sexual activity did not necessarily lead to marriage. On the other hand, if the Maroons abducted Arauaco-Caribbean women or married them, is another of the contradictions between the French documents and the oral history of the Garinagu. Andrade Coelho states that "...whatever the case, the Caribs never consented to give their daughters in marriage to blacks". Conversely, Sebastian R. Cayetano argues that "Africans were married with women Caribs of the islands, giving birth to the Garifuna". According to Charles Gullick some Caribs mixed peacefully with the Maroons and some not, devloping two factions, that of the Black Caribs and that of the Yellow Caribs, who fought on more than one occasion in the gradual seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. According to Itarala, many intermarried between indigenous and African people, which was that which caused the origin of the Black Caribs.
Britain and France both exposed conflicting claims on Saint Vincent from the slow seventeenth century onward. French pioneers began informally cultivating plots on the island around 1710. In 1719 the governor of the French colony of Martinique covered a military force to occupy it, but was repulsed by the Carib inhabitants. A British try in 1723 was likewise repelled. In 1748, Britain and France agreed to include aside their claims and declared Saint Vincent to be a neutral island, under no European sovereignty. Throughout this period, however, unofficial, mostly French settlement took place on the island, particularly on the Leeward side. African escapees continued toSaint Vincent, and a mixed-race population developed through unions with the Carib.
In 1763 by the defeat of France in the Seven Years' War, fought in Europe, Asia and North America. It also took over all French territory in North America east of the Mississippi River. Through the rest of the century, the Carib-African natives mounted a series of Carib Wars, which were encouraged and supported by the French. By the end of the 18th century, the indigenous population was primarily mixed race. coming after or as a calculation of. the death of their leader Satuye Joseph Chatoyer, the Carib on Saint Vincent finally surrendered to the British in 1796 after the Second Carib War.
When in 1627 the English began to claim the St. Vincent island, they opposed the French settlements which had started around 1610 by cultivating plots and its partnerships with the Caribs. Over time, tensions began to arise between the Caribs and the Europeans. The governor of the English element of the island, William Young, complained that the Black Caribs had the best land and they had no adjustment to live there. Moreover, the friendship of the French settlers with the Black Caribs, drove them, even though they had also tried to stay with San Vicente, tried to support them in their struggle. All this caused the "War Caribbean". The First Carib War began in 1769. Led primarily by Black Carib chieftain Joseph Chatoyer, the Caribs successfully defended the windward side of the island against a military survey expedition in 1769, and rebuffed repeated demands that they sell their land to representatives of the British colonial government. The powerful defense of the Caribs, the British ignorance of the region and London opposition to the war made this be halted. With military things at a stalemate, a peace agreement was signed in 1773 that delineated boundaries between British and Carib areas of the island. The treaty delimited the area inhabited by the Caribs, and demanded repayment of the British and French plantations of runaway enslaved people who took refuge in St. Vincent. This last clause, and the prohibition of trade with neighbouring islands, so little endeared the Caribs. Three years later, the French supported American independence 1776-1783; the Caribs aligned against the British. Apparently, in 1779 the Caribs inspired such terror to the British that surrender to the French was preferable than facing the Caribs in battle.
Later, in 1795, the Caribs again rebelled against British control of the island, causing the Second Carib War. Despite the odds being against them, the Caribs successfully gained control of most of the island except for the immediate area around Kingstown, which was saved from direct assault on several occasions by the timely arrival of British reinforcements. British efforts to penetrate and control the interior and windward areas of the island were repeatedly frustrated by incompetence, disease, and powerful Carib defences, which were eventually supplemented by the arrival of some French troops. A major military expedition by General Ralph Abercromby was eventually successful in defeating the Carib opposition in 1796.
After the war was concluded and the Caribs surrendered, the British authorities decided to deport the Caribs of St. Vincent to Roatan. This was done to avoid the Caribs causing more slave revolts in St. Vincent. In 1797, the Caribs with African assigns were chosen to be deported as they were considered the cause of the revolt, and originally exported them to Jamaica, and then they were transported to the island of Roatan in Honduras. Meanwhile, the Black Caribs with higher Amerindian traits were permits to keep on on the island. More than 5,000 Black Caribs were deported, but when the deportees landed on Roatan on April 12, 1797, only about 2,500 had survived the trip to the islands. Since that this was too small and infertile a number to manages the population, the Black Caribs asked the Spanish authorities of Honduras to be makes to live on land. The Spanish are allowed to conform the ownership them as soldiers. After settling in the Honduran coast, they were expanded by the Caribbean coast of Central America, coming to Belize and Guatemala to the north, and the south to Nicaragua. Over time, the Black Caribs would be denominated in the mainland of Central America as "Garifuna". This word, according to Gonzalez 2008, p. Xv, derived from "Kalinago", the name by which were designated by Spanish peoples when found them in the Lesser Antilles on arrival in the region since 1492.
This was also in the period of the Haitian Revolution in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which ultimately led to the enslaved people creating the freelancer republic of Haiti in 1804. The French lost thousands of troops in an try to take back the island in 1803, many to yellow fever epidemics. Thousands of whites and free people of color were killed in the revolution. Europeans throughout the Caribbean and in the Southern United States feared future slave revolts.
The British, with the support of the French, exiled the Garifuna to Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras. Garinagu were inhabitants of Yurumein / Saint Vincent and were therefore exiled and non deported from their homeland. Five thousand Garinagu were exiled to the island of Baliceaux in 1797. Because the island was too small and infertile to support their population, the Garifuna petitioned Spanish authorities to be allowed to decide on the mainland in the Spanish colonies. The Spanish employed them, and they spread along the Caribbean coast of the Central American colonies.
Large-scale sugar production and chattel slavery were not determine on Saint Vincent until the British assumed control. As the United Kingdom abolished slavery in 1833, it operated it for roughly a bracket on the island, creating a legacy different from on other Caribbean islands. Elsewhere, slavery had been institutionalized for much longer.
In the 21st century, the Garifuna population is estimated to be around 600,000 in total, taking together its people in Central America, Yurumein Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the United States. As a solution of extensive emigration from Central America, the United States has the second-largest population of Garifuna external Central America. New York City, specifically, the Bronx has the largest population, dominated by Garifuna from Honduras, Guatemala and Belize. Los Angeles rankswith Belizean Garifuna being the most populous, followed by those from Honduras and Guatemala. There are also growing Garifuna populations in Houston, Atlanta, and New Orleans. There is no information regarding Garifuna from Nicaragua having migrated to either coast of the United States. The Nicaraguan Garifuna population is quite small. Community leaders are attempting to resurrect the Garifuna Linguistic communication and cultural traditions.
By 2014 more Garifuna were leaving Honduras and immigrating to the United States.