Garifuna, Balliceaux & the Botanical Garden

This week the St Vincent Grenadines Government acquired the island of Balliceaux. The site is hugely important to the Garifuna of St Vincent, and for Garinagu globally; Garinagu is the preferred term of those in living outside SVG. The island holds the bones of over 2,000 Garifuna men, women and children, who between 21 July 1796 and 2 February 1797 had been removed by the British to Balliceaux, and perished there; those who survived where exiled to the island of Roatan, off the coast of Honduras. It is not an overstatement to say that the British practiced a form of cultural genocide against these people.

During the late-1700s, Alexander Anderson was superintendent of the St Vincent Botanical Garden and wrote a little about the people then known as Black Caribs (now termed Garifuna), and about their time on Balliceaux. He wrote the following about the huge losses of life on the tiny barren island, stating that the “powerfull cause of the death of so many of them … was the agonysing reflection that they were to be forever transported from their native County to another they never saw”. It was most probably Yellow Fever that caused so many fatalities, but perhaps Anderson was correct in thinking that heartbreak probably also played a role.

I have been researching the history and heritage of the Garifuna on St Vincent for some times now, and with my colleague Prof Niall Finneran, we have led teaching-training sessions with the Garfuna Heritage Foundation. The guidebook for the Garden will include some information on the history of the Island during colonial times, as that relates directly to the history of the Garden. The quote above by Anderson will be included as no history of the Botanical Garden would be complete without information on the Garifuna people. Anderson collected plants from their gardens, and recorded some of their medical treatments. He also collected information on how they used plants, and one of my favourites is those that were used to stun fish - more on that in a future blog post though.