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7. Calvary of the Caribs
- University Press of Mississippi
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136 Chapter 7 Calvary of the Caribs “Posterity will hardly believe the number of lives lost in these islands.” —Robert Bisset, British army, 1796 After his decisive victory at the Vigie, Abercromby turned his attention to “the Object which presses most upon my Mind at this Moment”1 —the question of the Caribs. The general was under orders to remove the Caribs from the island but the detail of the operation was anything but clear. First, the planters had greatly underestimated the number of Caribs. Abercromby suggested, with impressive accuracy for someone who had been in the country a matter of days, that there were in fact some five thousand men, women, and children. The second problem was where to send them. After years of discussion and with ultimate victory in sight the British were no closer to a decision . Abercromby’s solution was to send them to St.-Domingue. It had the advantages of being to leeward, making any return to St. Vincent against the prevailing winds more difficult; after the slave revolution there it was doubtful “to whom it is to belong”; and its population was big enough for the new arrivals not to affect the strategic balance. The Samaná peninsula on the east end of the island of Hispaniola was touted as a possibility.2 What was certain was that this time there could be no place for the Black Caribs on St. Vincent. Abercromby was committed to doing his duty as a soldier but as a newcomer to the scene in St. Vincent he was not untroubled by the responsibility of sending an entire people into exile. “However just the Sentence against these People, I feel personally the Load imposed upon me, in being forced to put it in Execution,” he wrote.3 While the fight against the French “Brigands” had been decided by a pitched battle at the Vigie, the British attempt to force the surrender of the Caribs would follow the pattern established by the attack on Du Vallée’s carbet the previous year: displacing the Caribs into the mountainous interior Calvary of the Caribs 137 and destroying their canoes and provisions with the aim of starving them into submission. The end appeared to be nigh when on 15 June, five days after the French surrender at the Vigie, three Carib chiefs, named as Desfon, Jack Gordon, and Baptiste,4 sent a flag of truce to the military post at Mount Young seeking an accommodation. They were given a military escort to Kingstown where they proposed an end to the conflict along similar lines to the treaty of 1773. The key element was that they should be left in possession of their lands. They admitted having burned the estates and cane fields of British planters but said that the British in turn had destroyed their provisions. There had been casualties on both sides, each had inflicted and received injury; now there was no reason to continue the conflict. They admitted that they had started the war but observed that in any case “everybody was then at war.”5 For the British, though, the time for compromise had long since passed. All they were prepared to concede was that in turn for their surrender the Caribs would be spared their lives. The Carib chiefs were shocked at the intransigence of the British. They asked for three days to consult with other heads of families. When the three days were up there was no sign of the chiefs and no word from the Caribs. The British were surprised at the Black Caribs’ continued resistance. It was “generally understood” that after the reduction of the French forces on the island the Caribs would “would have surrendered themselves without hesitation .”6 The British negotiators had threatened to bring the whole force of the island against the Caribs if they did not come in but they did not immediately resume the war. Weeks passed with no progress towards a surrender. The British, though, were not prepared to wait indefinitely. On 7 July General Hunter asked the colony for five hundred “Negroes with Bills and Cutlasses to destroy the Provisions in the Charaib Country,” insisting that it was “absolutely necessary” that this should be done without delay.7 In mid-July more chiefs came in to sound out the terms for surrender, some of them promising to bring their people in. The surrender terms demanded by the British were unequivocal: “Your having been guilty of numerous acts of Treachery...