The inhabitants, both white and black, as may be conceived, were in great consternation, and were about to make preparations to move to some more favored soil, when a furious hurricane was experienced. The destruction of property was great; dwelling houses and sugar works were destroyed, and lives were lost. The inhabitants who survived the tempest were in despair, believing their calamities would never cease. But they soon found, to their great joy, that this hurricane was a blessing, rather than a curse. THE BLACK ANTS WERE EXTERMINATED, and none have since been seen in the island.
Chapter XXIX. INSURRECTION IN GRENADA
I have already stated that the French established their first settlement in the island of Grenada in 1650. They found the island inhabited by the Carib Indians, who, regarding the white men as beings superior in goodness as well as intellect, gave them a cordial welcome, and treated them with kindness and hospitality. The French, well pleased with their reception, gave the cacique a few hatchets, knives, and beads, and a barrel of brandy, and very coolly took possession of the island they had thus purchased. Their conduct in this respect reminds one of the language of the ill-treated Caliban to the proud Prospero:
"This island's mine, Which thou tak'st from me. When thou camest first, Thou strok'dst and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in't; and teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee, And showed thee all the qualities of the isle The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile; Cursed be I that did so."
The remonstrances of the Caribs against the wrongs they were doomed to suffer were as little heeded by the colonists as the complaints of Caliban by Prospero. The French were resolute, powerful, and rapacious, and treated the red men with inhumanity. The Indians, unable to contend with their oppressors by open force, fled to their mountain fastnesses, and commenced an obstinate predatory warfare upon the whites, murdering without discrimination all whom they found defenceless. This led to a bloody and protracted struggle for the mastery; and a reenforcement of troops having been sent from France to aid the infant colony, it was decided, after mature deliberation, that the most expeditious and effectual mode of ending the war, and establishing peace on a permanent basis, was TO EXTERMINATE THE CARIBS.
These original "lords of the soil" were accordingly driven from their fastnesses, hunted by parties of soldiers, shot down like wild beasts wherever found, until their number was reduced from thousands to about one hundred. Bing cut off from the mountains by a military force, this remnant of a powerful band fled to a promontory on the north part of the island which overlooked the ocean, and, hard pressed by their civilized foes, more than half their number leaped over the rocky precipice into the sea which dashed against its base. The others were massacred.
This promontory has ever since been known as "Morne des Sauteurs," or the "Hill of the Leapers." I have stood upon the extreme point of this promontory, where I could look down some eighty or a hundred feet into the raging abyss beneath, and listened to the mournful tradition as detailed by one of the oldest inhabitants of the island. This is only ONE of the vast catalogue of cruelties and wrongs that have been inflicted on the Indians by the whites in constant succession, from the first settlement of the New World to the present time.
The French, who were long in possession of the island of Grenada, established on the plantations French customs, the French language, and the Roman Catholic religion. When the island fell into the hands of the English, although no organized plan was adopted to interfere with the customs of the slaves, or change their language, the English failed in acquiring the attachment of the negroes, who lamented the absence of their French masters, and sighed for their return.
Early in the year 1795, during the French revolution, a plan was conceived by some white men and five mulattoes, in Guadaloupe, who were aware of the existence of this discontented feeling, to create an insurrection among the slaves in Grenada, and take possession of the island. Emissaries were sent among the plantations, who conferred with the principal negroes, and secretly made arrangements for the work they contemplated. In the month of August, two or three sloops, each containing thirty or forty men, with a supply of arms and ammunition, arrived in the harbor of La Baye, on the eastern side of the island. The expedition was commanded by an active and intelligent mulatto named Fedon, and landed in the night, captured the small fort which overlooked the harbor, took possession of the town, murdered a number of the white inhabitants, and plundered the houses and stores. Runners were employed to convey the news to the different plantations, and the insurrection of the slaves was complete.