‘Mé nou ka kontiné goumen’: Histories of Indigenous Resistance and Chattel Enslavement in Dominica

Overview

Wai’tukubuli – tall is her body – holds a unique place both in the Caribbean archipelago, as well as in the history of European invasion and occupation in the Caribbean since 1492. Columbus sighted Wai’tukubuli on a Sunday in 1493, thereafter chartering the island under the colonial name of Dominica. Singularly, in the confrontation of Caribbean First Peoples with the brute force and interests of European invaders, Dominica remained a stronghold for the Kalinago people separate from overwhelming colonial occupation well into the 18th century. Kalinago resistance to the Spanish, French, English, Dutch…attempts at invasion and colonial settlement were fiercely fought off – from as early as 1499 – to such an extent that a treaty was signed between English, French, Kalinago representatives in 1660 declaring the island of Wai’tukubuli to be left alone and outside of colonial processes in the Caribbean region.ⁱⁱ

This of course did not hold. The singularity in the post-Columbus era of Caribbean history is that Dominica was not only declared to be left alone by European powers, it was apparently dragged into colonisation gradually in an encroaching – and still violent – creeping process over a period of over two centuries.ⁱⁱⁱ

Declaring Dominica a neutral island in the post-1492 conflicts between European powers over the use of the Caribbean as their ‘newfound’ farmland on which to outsource mass generation of wealth was legally entrenched 3 times:^iv

•First with the 1660 Treaty in St Kitts, signed between the English, the French, and Kalinago representatives, carrying across the geopolitical relationship between Europeans and Wai’tukubuli as well as Yarumein (Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines).

•The 1668 Treaty signed in Nevis, between representatives of the same peoples as above, re-affirming the same principles of neutrality.

•The 1748 Treaty, signed in France and declaring Dominica, Wai’tukubuli, to be left to its people, the Kalinago people.

The 1748 Treaty did not last the occupation of Dominica by the British, first in 1763, then uninterruptedly from 1783.^v Once again, the strand of British colonisation was notably uninterested in any form of negotiated cohabitation with the First Peoples of Caribbean islands – be this under a coerced negotiation or under a strategy of survival – unless it was directed by their own hands and motivated by their own financial interests. This is what gradually developed in Dominica after the 1763 occupation.^vi

This post aims to briefly consider the histories of Kalinago resistance in Wai’tukubuli as confronted with the processes of European colonisation and encroaching domination in the archipelago. Part of the work of reparatory justice movements is rehabilitating the historical disconnections deliberately manufactured by colonial narratives between pre- and post- the 1492 period in the Caribbean archipelago. It is undeniable that the Caribbean and our communities today cannot exist the way that we do without our archipelago having been founded on and through the near-total ethnic cleansing and genocide of our First Peoples. This, despite the wealthy heritage and number of First People communities remaining in several islands in the archipelago, often creates the distortion of an ahistorical region: the Caribbean as a region without history or civilisational presence until 1492. This is a colonial myth – of many. This narrative becomes anchored into our sense of history, as manipulated by a colonial script. The history of Wai’tukubuli and then Dominica is an example – emphasis on ‘an’ – that bridges this disconnect.

Kalinago Resistance – “Our people are becoming in a manner like yours , since they came to be acquainted with you; and we find it some difficulty to know ourselves, so different are we grown from what we were here-to-fore”^vii

Resistance to European attempts at colonial settlement in Wai’tukubuli began as early as 1499, when an armed group of Spanish invaders – that included Amerigo Vespucci of the later colonial derivation of ‘America’ – was fought back out of the island’s shores by Kalinago warfare.^viii This pattern of European assault and Kalinago resistance lasted until well into the mid 18th century.

Alongside this, and as mediated by the above listed treaties, the Kalinago people in Wai’tukubuli further negotiated their survival through trade deals with notably English and French invaders, with crops that the Kalinago at first had monopoly over its supply – for instance, tobacco.^ix Alongside the violence European invaders perpetuated against the Kalinago people in Wai’tukubuli – against the backdrop of region-scale ruthless violence against First Peoples in a quest for domination – the Kalinago carved out a market for themselves with which to trade with invaders and thereby hold stronger stakes in negotiating their survival and land rights – as close as such a thing could be respected at the time in the face of hostile governments and military powers whose foreign policy was and remains driven by extraction.^x

This trade introduced new materials into Kalinago life and customs. Due to the overwhelming system of colonial economy; tense trading situations shifted from a Kalinago forced adaptation to survive the presence of invaders at every horizon, to a dependence on the materials supplied by European colonial settlers. From the mid-17th century, the Kalinago people on the island were increasingly pushed windwards by English and French groups that were encroaching on the westward part of Wai’tukubuli through wanton invasion and establishment of small illegal settlements, and/or though difficult negotiations with the Kalinago district chiefs – hold that part about district chiefs, I coming to that.^xi By that point, the Kalinago stronghold on certain crops in a market they themselves managed to create for their purposes of surviving on their land no longer held as strongly, as European colonial settlers found ways to cultivate said crops through an increase in enslaved labour ‘imported’ to the island through intra-regional trafficking.^xii

“Sucked into the periphery of the growing mercantilist world economy on islands which were becoming increasingly multi-ethnic, the Kalinago, like the other groups which arrived on the islands, survived by adapting and contributing to the new emergent Creole culture”^xiii

The literal map of Wai’tukubuli was chartered according to the Kalinago direction of their home.^xiv Records of maps chartered by European colonial settlers demonstrate the ways the geography of colonisation in Dominica was to a great extent manoeuvred by Kalinago chiefs.xv Remember what I said just now about district chiefs? In the mid-18th century, when English and French groups were increasingly encroaching on the Kalinago island, the Jeffreys Map c.1760^xvi illustrates how Kalinago chiefs, by areas called districts, divided where and how Europeans were allowed to form small settlements on the westward part of the island. This map [left hand side, below] demonstrates that direction in the placenames of certain areas and parishes.^xvii While the placenames did not survive British occupation on the map of Dominica, some of the outlines of these districts remained.^xviii What appears, is a peek into how British occupation encroached onto indigenous territory by their signature move of almost literally drawing up lines in the soil almost to the precision of a ruler.^xix Dominica has 2 districts and then parishes in the windward part of the island. In the western and southern part of the island, on the Jeffreys 1765 map there are 8 districts. This later shows up in the renamed parishes in the Jeffreys 1773 map.^xx