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Saint Vincent's History:

A French and British colonial past but an independent and sovereign nation since
27th October, 1979.​​

The Ciboney were the first to journey from South America to St. Vincent which they called Hairoun (Land of the Blessed). The Ciboney ultimately moved on to Cuba and Haiti, leaving St. Vincent to the agrarian Arawak tribes that journeyed north from coastal South America. Not long before Columbus sailed in 1492, the Arawaks succumbed to the powerful Caribs, who had also paddled north from South America conquering one island after another on the way.​​

​In 1626, the French established a colony, but their success was short-lived. England took over a year later. As "possession" of the island see-sawed between France and England, the Caribs continued to make complete European colonization virtually impossible. It was a rift in the Carib community itself that finally enabled the Europeans to gain a foothold.
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In 1675, African slaves who survived a Dutch shipwreck were welcomed into the Carib community. Over time, the Carib nation became for all intents and purposes, two nations—one composed of the original Yellow Caribs; the other, the so-called Black Caribs or Garifuna.
 

In 1719, tensions rose so high that the Yellow Caribs united with the colonial French against the Black Caribs in what is called the First Carib War. The Black Caribs ultimately retreated to the hills but continued to resist the Europeans.

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The French established plantations, importing African slaves to work the fertile land. In 1763, the British claimed the island yet again, and a wave of Scottish slave masters arrived with indentured servants from India and Portugal. Meanwhile, the determined French backed the Black Caribs, their previous foe, against the British in 1795 in the Second Carib War (also known as the Brigands War), during which British plantations were ravaged and burned on the island's windward coast. Black Carib chief Joseph Chatoyer managed to push the British troops down the leeward coast to Kingstown. Subsequently, on Dorsetshire Hill high above the town, Chatoyer lost a duel with a British officer. The 5,000 surviving Black Caribs were rounded up and shipped off to British Honduras—present-day Belize—where their Garifuna descendants remain to this day. The few remaining Yellow Caribs retreated to the remote northern tip of St. Vincent, near Sandy Bay, where many of their descendants now live.

 

A monument to Chatoyer has been erected on Dorsetshire Hill, where there's a magnificent westward view over Kingstown and the Caribbean.  Today, he is celebrated each year on this site on National Hero's Day on March 14, which commemorates his death in 1795.  

The issue of the possession of St. Vincent has long since been resolved; the nation has been fully independent since 1979. The various ethnic groups have mixed considerably over the years, creating a unique heritage described today simply as "Vincentian."

 

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