The banished people of Garifuna

Thousands of the proud Garifuna (Garinagu) people refused to be slaves on British plantations. However, after years of resistance, most were exiled by British colonists from their homeland on Yurumein and plunged into disease that ended in mass death. Those who remained were then deported to the other end of the Caribbean.

On April 12, 1797, around 2,000 Caribs of the Garifuna people stood on the docks in Port Royal on the island of Roatan in the western Caribbean. Most were at a loss and in despair—afraid and exhausted after months of poor conditions, including nearly a month’s sailing from home. What would the future bring? They had been robbed of family members, property, land, freedom, and dignity. Should they give up?

The year before, they had lost the battle for their island of Yurumein, located in the eastern Caribbean, which Christopher Columbus renamed Saint Vincent when he discovered it on January 22, 1498—the anniversary of Saint Vincent. The British colonial power had cultivated the fertile soil on the island after a large immigration in 1763 and preferred that the Garifuna become slaves on their sugar plantations, which the ever-increasing number of British had established. But the British faced resistance. A long and tenacious war was waged against the natives, and in 1795, the British decided to end the conflict by deploying larger military forces to the island. A number of African slaves fought on the side of the British. To the colonialists, the Caribbeans were seen as primitive and without rights. They defeated the Garifuna by burning down their houses and crops.

The French had tried to colonize the island earlier, but the British were about to dominate, so the French chose to fight on the side of the Garifunas for a period before abandoning them. The murder of the legendary Garifuna Chief Joseph Chatoyer demoralized large parts of the native population, and they eventually chose to surrender.

The British made the Garifunas prisoners and, in order to get rid of them immediately, deported just under 5,000 of them to the uninhabited island of Baliceaux, just south of Saint Vincent, while they decided what to do with them. This island is around 4,000 square meters, completely barren, and has a critical shortage of fresh water. The British provided supplies, but it was not sufficient. Additionally, disease was rampant among the Garifuna, most likely yellow fever or typhus. They died at a high rate, and the survivors refused to bury the dead. In December 1796 alone, 950 of them died, including thirteen British soldiers who kept watch on the island.

The British realized at some point that this was going terribly wrong, although they believed that the Garifunas had themselves to blame for much of the misery. They could have agreed to become slaves on the plantations and let go of their desire for independence. Additionally, the British determined that the disease had already broken out among the Garifuna before they surrendered. Historian Earle Kirby believed that the stench from the rapidly dying population drifted over to Saint Vincent and became unbearable for the British residents.

They then decided to deport the Garifunas to the island of Roatan off the coast of Honduras, which at the time was dominated by the Spanish. A flotilla of eight ships, including several heavy warships of the man o’war type, led by “HMS Experiment,” loaded up the remaining Garifunas. On March 9, 1797, 2,248 of them got their last glimpse of their homeland before they disappeared beyond the horizon. Yurumein was where they had been free and once lived in peace. It had been a place where Africans who escaped from slavery and survived slave shipwrecks were well received by the indigenous peoples of Arawak and Kalinago. They allowed themselves to fraternize and eventually became part of the proud people of Garifuna. Once they had been masters of their island country and the sea around them. Now everything they had was gone. It was sad, but they were still relieved to be transported away from Baliceaux, which to this day is a barren place, home only to a small number of turtles and pastures for cows. Now they were about to embark on a journey into foreign lands, and little did they know what awaited them.

Roatan was only a few days’ sail away, but the trip took over a month and became dramatic for some of the prisoners. They sailed via the island of Grenada to take on fresh water and then to Port Royal in Jamaica for more supplies and ship repairs, which took a couple of weeks. The ship “John and Mary” was so battered that they had to transfer the Garifuna to other ships.

Two of the British ships were hijacked by the Spaniards off Roatan’s neighboring island of Guanaja, including the merchant ship “Prince William Henry,” with three hundred Garifuna on board. They were sent to the port city of Trujillo on the mainland of Spanish Honduras.

On April 11, 1797, Roatan appeared on the horizon, and the following day the flotilla sailed into Port Royal on the southeast side of the island. The commander of the Spanish fort there surrendered, probably due to the strong British military presence in the arriving group. By this time, the number of Garifunas was reduced to 2,026. The British had brought what they calculated to be sufficient supplies for six months for the Garifuna, including food, livestock, and fishing equipment. But the deportees believed it was not sufficient, and the British went back for a new round of supplies. Upon returning to the island, most of the Garifuna had disappeared.

The British had hoped that the Garifuna could defend the island against the Spanish, but 1,465 surrendered to the Spaniards in return for transportation to the Honduran mainland. Their homes had already been taken from them, and they thought it was too cramped on Roatan.

On the mainland, they were put to work preferably as soldiers and fishermen. Land was also cleared so that the women could farm both for themselves and for selling. As well as feeding themselves, this also contributed to saving large parts of the migrating Spanish coastal population from famine. They had no knowledge of living and producing food in tropical regions and received important knowledge from the Garifunas.

 
Only 206 Garifunas remained on Roatan. They mainly stayed to the north of the island and established themselves in the areas on the northeast coast, with their center at the place they called Rubadan, which is today the village of Punta Gorda. There is no link between the two names. Punta Gorda is an attempt to translate the Garifuna term “Duburugu” (fat point) into Spanish, which was the term for a landmark, i.e., a pile of stones that to this day stretches from the hillside down to the beach in the village.

Immediately after unloading the Garifuna people in Port Royal, the British flotilla sailed to the mainland port city of Trujillo to take back the hijacked merchant ship “Prince William Henry.” The whereabouts of the other hijacked ships are uncertain. The British started their attack with a somewhat useless bombing of the harbor. But after a truce and negotiations, they finally got the ship released with its prisoners included.

On their way back to Roatan, the British spotted enemy ships, and the escort felt outnumbered and headed north towards Nova Scotia, Canada. The “Prince William Henry” suddenly became on its own and eventually ended up shipwrecked on the Mesoamerican reef that surrounds Roatan, where the Garifuna still on that ship perished.

In the following years, the Garifuna communities spread out along the coast of what eventually became independent Honduras, British Honduras (now Belize), and Guatemala. They most often established themselves in extended family groups, led by a “captain” as they were organized at home on Yurumein. They preferred to live in seclusion, close to the sea for access to fishing and trade. Additionally, they gravitated towards paid work such as cutting mahogany trees, soldiering, agriculture, and trade, or as sailors and workers on fruit and sugar plantations.

The Second World War also provides job opportunities in the United States and some emigrated there.

Not everyone came to Roatan in 1797. There was still a significant number hiding in the mountains of the island they still chose to call Yurumein. From there they carried out revenge actions against the British establishments on the island. Their attacks were often characterized by brutal killing and maiming. But eight years after the great deportation, the last of them surrender to the British colonial authorities. Many eventually became slaves on the British plantations.

One of their traditional dances reproduces some of the tactics that the Garifuna used on Saint Vincent. When the British came, the warriors dressed up as women and attacked them off guard. The dance takes place with men in women’s clothes.

Today, most Garifunas are Catholics, at least in name, something that was almost forced upon them as the region was dominated by Spain. Some call the British’s careless handling of the Garifuna at the time genocide. If history is to be believed, it is not difficult to see why many people felt that way.

Because today the Garifuna are numerous and they have managed to keep the traditions by consciously cultivating the culture which is strongly characterized by the African one, which holds them together as a people.

The director of the Garifuna Cultural Center in Punta Gorda, Audrey Flores, does not see this deportation today as a curse but rather a blessing.

“We are a large, yet tightly-knit community spread over a large area, with a unique culture that consists of language, music, clothes and dance. We show the world that we are proud and take care of our culture,” says Flores proudly.

They are very proud of their ancestry, especially the resistance they waged on Yurumein, symbolized by the recognition of their warlord Joseph Chatoyer.
But in some areas, they are still oppressed and persecuted. Why? And what did the British themselves think of this deportation at the end of the seventeenth century?

The Garifuna Cultural Center in Punta Gorda Roatan is temporarily closed.