Contact Period Archeology on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands

Virgin Islands National Park, on St. John. NPS photo.

A little-known story

How Indigenous peoples, Europeans and Africans actually dealt with each other in the early years of European expansion is poorly known, for all its importance. St. John is no exception, but archeology in Virgin Islands National Park is filling in the picture.

• The island: 20 square miles, colonized by Denmark in 1718.
• Settlers: Denmark sent them, defying British and Spanish claims, as early as 1672. They found "only a few Indians"; by the 18th century, none lived there.
• The questions: who were the Indigenous people at the time of contact, and what became of them? How did the Danes adapt to a new society, economy and environment?

Park archeologists set out to find sites from contact and colonization, and they show relationships among Taino and Island-Carib peoples, Europeans and Africans in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Taino and Island-Carib peoples

Archeology confirms that the Taino lived throughout the Virgin Islands, and early records place Island-Caribs there when Columbus arrived. Members of his expedition called the people of St. Croix "camballi" or "canabales" — from their Taino interpreter's word for man-eaters. The Spanish "canabales" became "caribal," then "Carib." True or not, the label became the conquistadors' excuse to kill and enslave Indigenous people.

On St. John's south shore, archeologists found several short-lived sites probably left by people the Spanish displaced between 1509 and 1519 — a coast hidden from ships on the usual routes.

Sherds of a Bellarmine (Bartmann) bottle of about AD 1650–1670, with a bone tool, found underwater. NPS photo.

Cinnamon Bay: layers of time

At Cinnamon Bay, an early-1600s sand road laid over the site sealed it, leaving undisturbed deposits. Radiocarbon dates from twelve 10-centimeter levels span AD 1060 to AD 1810, matching changes in the pottery and other artifacts; the upper 30 cm date from when cultures collided.

The dates and pottery suggest Taino culture developed rapidly — and that on St. John it disappeared before Columbus arrived.

Rival empires

St. Thomas and St. John sat close to the heart of Spain's empire, and rivals wanted a foothold. The English, then the Dutch and French, tried to use the islands' strategic position; buccaneers and pirates sheltered in their empty harbors. Sites in the park hold clues to this transition.

• Into the 17th century, the French, English and Dutch kept claiming the islands, and the Spanish, each other and disease kept destroying their settlements.
• 1665: the first Danish settlement on St. Thomas failed.
• 1672: the Danes tried again, and stayed. Their neutrality made the islands a buffer between warring powers, and they opened the port to all nations.

Few Danes would risk the crossing; most who did were indentured servants. Officially St. John belonged to the Danish West India and New Guinea Company, but its landowners and slaveholders included French Huguenots, Jews from Germany, and Africans, free and enslaved — many of whom had reason not to, weren't allowed to, or couldn't keep records.

The Danes, like other Europeans, sought wealth in the Atlantic slave trade, with a post at Accra on Africa's Gold Coast. Within 15 years of colonizing St. John, the company had 109 sugar, cotton and provision plantations, worked by more than 1,000 enslaved Africans for mostly absentee European owners.

The revolt of 1733

In 1733, a small group of African laborers known as the "Alminas" — after the plantation where it began — rose up. The article calls it the first successful slave revolt in the New World: for a time, the island was ruled by enslaved Africans.

• French troops came to help the Danes, hoping a Caribbean favor would win Franco-Danish cooperation in Europe.
• Before the revolt, the French had enjoyed wide freedoms in the Danish West Indies; before St. John was colonized, French governors on St. Croix complained that French deserters were hiding on Danish soil.
• Africa was changing too: the slave trade moved populations and reshaped West African power. Groups that had been trading partners in West Africa met again on St. John as enslaver and enslaved. The record's variety lets archeologists see past a simple "European" / "African" divide — and ask about enslaved Africans as both colonized and colonizer.

Turtle Point

At Turtle Point, at the Caneel Bay Resort, archeologists examined disturbed ground along the shore: a site with both prehistoric and historic layers. Finds included stone belts, Chinese porcelain, ground stone tools and shell buttons.

The gunflint: a honey-colored French flint, heavily worn. Caneel Bay saw the largest battle of the 1733 uprising; records say the planters made their last stand at Turtle Point before being driven into the sea and onto the surrounding cays. Was the flint dropped by French deserters? Lost in that battle, between African rebels and the European and African militia retaking the island? Or just a sign of trade among the European powers?

It is the tip of the iceberg. Park archeologists keep working on how the island's peoples lived together, and on the culture born from contact between Native Americans, Europeans, and free and enslaved Africans.

Sources

Based on "Making Contact with the Archeological Record: Identifying Contact Period Sites on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Its references include Irving Rouse, The Tainos (Yale, 1992); D. Armstrong, Creole Transformation (University of Florida, 2003) and, with M. Hauser and D. Knight, the Cinnamon Bay shoreline estate report (Syracuse, 2005); A. Caron and A. Highfield, The French Intervention in the St. John Slave Revolt of 1733–34 (1981); L. C. Larsen, The Danish Colonization of St. John 1718–1733 (1986); K. Fog Olwig, Cultural Adaptation and Resistance on St. John (1985); W. Westergaard, The Danish West Indies 1671–1917 (1917); and K. S. Wild's study of a caney at Cinnamon Bay (1999). The source writes "St. Criox" for St. Croix.