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 Bequia HistoryBequia's earliest inhabitants were small group of Amerindians-first the Arawaks, and then later the Caribs, who along with their fellow Caribs in St.Vincent and Dominica successfully resisted the ravages of European colonisation which swept through the Caribbean in the 16th and 17th centuries. There is plenty of evidence of Carib life on the island which has been unearthed, with doubtless still more to be discovered. A small exhibit of artifacts and shards can be seen in the Tourism Office, providing an intriguing glimpse into Bequia's distant past. By the late 1600s, indigenous (''Yellow'') Caribs had to a great extent merged with runaway slaves giving rise to the so-called Black Carib. So fervent was the resistance of these Caribs to European settlement that both the French and the English essentially agreed to leave the Caribs of St.Vincent and Dominica in peace, despite both countries' desire for further colonisation of 'new' lands. A 1659 account of the French Antilles describes Bequia as being ''too inaccessible to colonise'', and used only by Caribs from St.Vincent for fishing and for ''cultivating little garden''. But by early 18th century the French were showing renewed interest in the lush and fertile island of St.Vincent. After developing if not an alliance, then at least a working accord with the Black Caribs, the French were permitted to develop a small settlement there. Bequia itself was first settled by a handful of French smallholders in 1719 who, for the next forty or so years made their living producing indigo, cotton, sugar and Bequia, as in St.Vincent, has many locations, and indeed families still carrying French names. The turning point in St.Vincent's colonial history came with the cessation of hostilities between the French and British in the Seven Years War, marked in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris. By this treaty, previously 'neutral' St.Vincent and the Grenadine Islands were ceded to the British, along with Grenada, Tobago, Dominica and Canada - while British-captured Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St.Lucia were returning to the French. Although interrupted briefly by a short-lived French seizure of St.Vincent in 1779, the long period of British settlement, colonisation and control of St.Vincent & the Grenadines had now truly begun.  |
