(JH, SH, C-U)
Gene K. Emanuel
When the black smoke signifying trouble bellows from the huge steam chimney of the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority's electrical generating plant, it is also a signal of distress coming from the spirit of the early North American Indian culture that had established itself in St. Thomas and made Krum Bay one of its "instrument factories" many generations ago. Archaeologists and anthropologists have generally accepted this early colonization of the Virgin Islands as a rich historical discovery, since, among other things, the type of tool made and used by these "Krum Bay people," including the important ax, were made of a compound known to us as ferric oxide, iron. In this same Krum Bay rocky landscape, hammer stones to shape their ore into tools were also found. Early in the dawn of Virgin Islands culture, when the environment really mirrored paradise, emigrants from North America were already bringing their culture and technology to these Virgin shores.
Loven, a noted Taino scholar, suggests that they may have come from the Atlantic coast of North America, the area around Georgia that later in time was to be peopled by marooned African slaves from the plantations of a dying Southern realm. Thousands of miles from their motherland, in the sheltered bay between green hilly perimeters, this early colony apparently took advantage of the calm waters and abundant sea life to fish, kraal and develop a minor sea economy. No evidence of pottery making has been found and some investigators have suggested (Booy, 98) that the absence of pottery identifiable with this culture suggests that the North American-Virgin Islanders were not yet making pottery.
What the tool making "factories," scattered among the shell heaps of Krum Bay suggest is an emphasis on the tools of military engagement -- possibly a warrior people becoming acculturated by the demands of a new environment. Fragments from the Krum Bay site show iron ore working people used the stone ax extensively in St. Thomas even before it found widespread use in the Florida peninsula. Other early Caribbean and Florida natives used the conch shell extensively as a tool and it became a stamp of their age. Later, it was to be elevated to become the trumpet from the sea and a call to worship, commerce and war for thousands of Amerindian Caribbean people. Today its sound still reverberates throughout the valleys and scenic hills of St. Thomas, the fishing shores of St. John and the fertile plains of verdant St. Croix.
The historic drum of the Krum Bay dwellers, the sweating petroglyph of Salt River's Batey Plaza near the cacique's lodging and the salt ax of Frederiksted open a "chuk" space to view acts of sovereignty and an enormous range of human activity by early Caribbean settlers whose legacy informs our cultural activities to this day. Moreover, these powerful historical realities should provide important educational content for studying our histories, cultures and the lives of Virgin Islands peoples. Beacons of man's struggle with his space and kind, they guide our understanding of our collective selves at a time when there is much doubt, question, and misconceptions about identity in general and who we are in particular. These signposts of Taino and Carib civilization--"the only salt-ax of the Celt type knowing the Americas," the notched ax of St. Croix; the Mayan influence in Taino culture; the quality of the painted pottery - then, hard, delicately painted; the large coral limestone head tooled to be mounted and used as ouanaragaona (mask)--all of these put together with the African petroglyphs at Reef Bay on St. John are bits and pieces of a psychic whole that has eluded generations on these lands.
Edgar Lake, in an address to the Board of Governors of the Virgin Islands Cultural Heritage Institute, at the installation of the Board of Governors at Government House, St. Thomas, September 4, 1993, referred to a musical panegyric and a table inlaid with mother of pearl created by Fernando Essanason on the occasion of Charles Lindberg's arrival the Virgin Islands as "another historic encounter" that, like the Taino-Carib heritage, was transformational for future generations. Lake also noted that a number of important recorders of the encounter exist in our community: notes in diaries; souvenirs; photographs; some response in art, or the collected memory. Sadly, these artifacts, like so many aspects of the true history and literature, are buried 'in some dark place.' Former Secretary Adams of the Smithsonian Institution was instructive: "In the Smithsonian . . . various pieces were gathered, mainly from the Caribbean, a century ago, for their anthropological value" and these became part of the bedrock of these collections, especially after the 1985 Afro-American index project (Lake, 1992) at the Salt River regional headquarters and sanctuary, four petroglyphs, part of the flat rocks that were set on end to enclose the plaza, have been located to this day (Hyatt, 33). One petroglyph in particular has been described as representing a pregnant woman -- perhaps a symbol or a goddess of fertility or even a childbirth icon. An even more important speculation concerning another Salt River stone monument should engage historians, creative artists and social science investigators for the window it creates to the world view and vision of the valiant people whose tragic mission it was to encounter the expansionist European privateers whose intrusion and cultural destruction brought a developing culture to a sudden and untimely end. To many the monuments are slabs of stone out of time. But in time Virgin Islanders and the world will begin to understand this petroglyph of mouths and eyes. It is characterized by a little tunnel which passes through the rock and opens outward, like the mouth of a river. Unlike the pigeon holes of the fortresses of places like Mombassa and Goree Island where captive Africans took their last look at their motherland, Hyatt claims that the tunnel in this monument near the cacique's house was used for rain magic and for the insertion of a speaking tube from which the chief/priest could speak oracularly to an awed community.
The island Caribs of Ay-Ay, like the celebrants of Kwanza in modern day St. Croix, made offerings to give thanks for the first fruits -- the anacri accompanied by carnival-like drinking feasts called ouicou. They played batey or pelota on courts bordered by rock fences that served like Austin Peterson and Paul Youngblood's public art to express the values and valorize the totems of power that ruled their society. Their military units were part of a Pan-Caribbean force that according to the testimony of their contemporaries, "were solidly united with other Carib islands, including Vieques. Thus, our Virgin Islands connection to Vieques predates the European presence in these seas and continues to this day. The Boriquenon account also informs us that (Loven and Navarrete) the Spanish never landed on Ay-Ay. Navarrete suggests that historians following Martyr's account have confused the Salt River episode with the landing at St. Martin, leading to a much more imaginative interpretation of Columbus's visit to Ay-Ay.
These accounts are other bits of evidence in the Pan Caribbean connection of which the Virgin Islands have until these last decades, been squarely in the center. So our middens, conch shells and mother of pearl are instruments and objects of our vision as well as our past. Middens are refuse heaps -- the garbage dump of centuries that contain only broken things and waste that have been the dark hole, the vault of some dark place that adds pieces to the emergent cultural map of the Virgin Islands. It is said that middens contain whole vessels, except when vessels are used for burial. That is true also of the authentic cultural history of the Virgin Islands. It is no single vessel, no solitary holy place, but is strewn through the earth layers of generational use and embedded in the memories of silent generations now fixing their final stare. It is also entombed in museums, archives, and languages from which our own middens, conch shells, and inlays of mother of pearl are formed.
QUESTIONS:
1. How is the theme of conflict between modern development and historical culture approached by the author? Is the approach a direct one or a hesitant and halting one?
2. What technological advance is attributed to the pre Colombian "Krum Bay people" whose artifacts are now viewed as being under siege?
3. What role does this article suggest the sea played in the civilization and survival of the Krum Bay people?
4. Nowadays the blowing of the conch shell can still occasionally be heard. Is it possible to relate this ritual to any of those of the Krum Bay people, according to the author?
5. How does the author employ landmarks and artifacts in establishing continuity between Amerindians, Africans and mankind in general in the terrestial space we call The Virgin Islands?
6. When the author speaks of the "monuments" as "slabs of stone out of time, what kinds of cultural residue does the word "monuments" refer to?
7. Name two types of recreational activity that are believed to have been enjoyed by Amerindians in the Virgin Islands.
8. How does the present account contribute to the view that Vieques is one of the Virgin Islands despite its administrative association with Puerto Rico?