Barbados’ First Months

Topic: Gullah History
The Gullah linguistic area in what is now South Carolina first was colonized by English speakers in 1663. [1]  Most who came were from Barbados where they had learned to grow sugar on plantations with African slaves.  Before that, Englishmen had established colonies in Virginia in 1607 and in Massachusetts in 1630.

Barbados was claimed for the English in 1624 by John Powell, a ship’s captain working for William Courteen. [2]  The limestone island lay east of the volcanic arc of the Antilles. [3]  He returned to London, where he and Courteen, along with their relatives, recruited settlers.

By then, many knew the troubled history of Jamestown.  The men who landed in Virginia had assumed local people would gladly provide food to them in peaceful trades.  Instead, they attacked.  The colony’s dependence on supply ships was tested in 1609 when a frigid winter lead to famine. [4]

Before Powell left Barbados the first time, he spent enough time on the island to ascertain it was uninhabited, although hogs introduced by the Portuguese roamed freely. [5]  Thus, before settlers migrated from England they knew it was not Virginia: it was warm, it was free of potential enemies, and food existed.

Courteen sent two ships in 1627. [6]  The first to land was commanded by Powell’s brother Henry. [7]  He stayed a few weeks while the settlers built shelters, then sailed south to what was then called the Wild Coast, and now is known as Guyana.  He returned with seeds that would grow on the island, and a group of Arawaks to plant them. [8]

 

Right here, within the first month of life on Barbados the question of language arises.  How did Powell communicate with the natives?  The answer seems to be the bilingualism that arises with trade.  Either individuals on both sides learn enough of each others language to speak, or a member of one group learns enough of the other to act as a translator. [9]

Courteen’s father was a Protestant who fled Flanders [10] when the Duke of Alba was appointed by Philip II of Spain to extirpate Protestantism in the province. [11]  He became a textile merchant in London with contacts in Dutch cities.  Like many merchants of the time, he relied of family members to serve as his representatives.  William was sent to Haarlem as an adolescent, [12] where, if he was not already bilingual, he would have become so.

William formed a partnership with his brother Peter and his sister’s second husband, John Money.  By the 1620s, he had a fleet of ships that sailed between Europe, Guinea, and the West Indies. [13]  The term “Guinea” then referred to Portuguese lands that spread from south of the Saharan desert to the mouth of the Volta river on the Gold Coast. [14]

The Dutch trade had opened after the northern Netherlands provinces rebelled against Philip and, in response to being barred from Iberian trade.  Their primary interests were gold and ivory. [15]  By 1600, Dutch merchants were trading cloth for gold in Guinea, [16] and went to the Caribbean for salt to support their fisheries. [17]

Less is known about the Powells.  Henry’s name first appears in a manuscript written around 1667 by John Scott, after he had spent time in Barbados and Guyana. [18]  He claimed Powell received the seeds from Capt Gromwegle and that “Powell and Gromwegle had been comrades in the king of Spain’s service in the West Indies.” [19]  George Edmundson [20] believes that means Powell and Aert Adriaansz van Groenewegen bought salt from mines on Venezuela’s Punto de Arraya during a short truce in hostilities between Spain and the Dutch provinces [21] that began in 1609. [22]

The treaty’s main focus was de-escalating military activities.  It finessed conflicts in West Indian trade, but the Dutch directed its ships to Caracas and the Amazon. [23]  Punto de Arraya is south of the islands south of the “M” in “Margarita” on the map. [24]  Edmundson suspects Groenewegen explored the coast before establishing trade with the Arawaks on the Essequibo river in Guyana.  In 1616, he established a trading station there on behalf of a group of Zeeland merchants who may have included Peter Courteen. [25]

Edmundson also does not think the visit to Groenewegen was prompted by a chance recollection that someone he knew “had established a colony in the River Essequibo.” [26]  He believes the visit was part of the original plan to resupply Groenewegen in return for the seeds and services of the Arawak. [27]  He cites Powell himself who said “having left the aforesaid servants upon this Island I proceeded in my voyage to the Main to the river of Disacaba, and there I left eight men and left them a Cargo of trade for that place.” [28]

During the time Powell spent with Groenewegen they may have spoken Dutch or English, whichever they had used earlier.  Groenewegen would not have been a good trader if he had not learned enough of the local Arawak language to barter successfully.  Since the Spanish, Dutch, and English all were attempting to open trade, the Arawak also would have had individuals who had learned enough of the European languages to ensure trades were fair to them.  Only a single person in the group sent to Barbados needed to be able to communicate.

The Arawak were sent on a contract that stipulated at the end of two years they could leave and would be paid with iron tools. [29]  Unfortunately, politics intervened; a rival wrested control of Barbados from Courteen, and enslaved the Arawaks.  When news reached Guyana, they turned on Groenewegen. [30]

Groenewegen responded by marrying a Carib woman “to balance the power of the Arawaks, and afterwards was at the charge of great presents to make up the business between the Dutch and the Arawak nation.” [31]  The Arawak and Carib languages are not related, and so marriage may have been the quickest way for Groenewegen to acquire a trustworthy interpreter.

The primary interest of the Dutch was gold that washed out in rains near the headwaters of the Essequibo. [32]  Caribs were the main traders along the lower course of the river where they supplied tribes with “Dutch iron.” [33]

Groenewegen’s son later became a trader, [34] and thus similar to the Luso-African children of African woman and Portuguese men who became active in the slave trade there.  However, Ian Robertson says:

“no serious claim has yet been made for the development of a trade language between these tribes, which were essentially Arawak and Carib speaking, and the Dutch traders with whom they came in contact.  If a trade language did in fact develop it seems clear that it passed into extinction as a result of the shift in Amerindian-Dutch relationships which was occasioned by the introduction of the plantation system.” [35]

That began after the founding of Barbados.

Graphics
Kmusser.  “Map of the Caribbean Sea and Its Islands.”  Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 9 April 2011; last updated by JohnnyMrNinja on 16 February 2013.

End Notes
The primary source for information of the settlement of Barbados is a manuscript in the British Museum by John Scott.  “Descriptions of Guiana, Tobago, and Barbados.”  Sloane mss 3662.

Vincent T. Harlow reprinted it in Colonising Expeditions to the West Indies and Guiana, 1623-1667.  London: The Hakluyt Society, 1925; since reprinted.

George Edmundson established the veracity of the document by comparing it with contemporary English, Dutch, and Spanish sources in part two of “The Dutch in Western Guiana.”  English Historical Review 16:640–675:1901.  William Thayer has transcribed the article and posted it on a University of Chicago website.

The information in it is repeated in one form or another by later historians.  In my citations, I am using the earliest, accurate article or book easily available on the internet.

1.  The post for 10 January 2019 discusses the early history of South Carolina.

2.  N. Darnell Davis.  Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados.  Georgetown, British Guiana: Argosy Press, 1887.  22–23.

3.  “Geology of Barbados.”  Wikipedia website.

4.  “History of Virginia.”  Wikipedia website.  This occurred during the mini-ice age that began in the 1400s and lasted until the 1900s.  A chart by RCraig09 shows severe dips in temperatures in the late 1500s and again in the early 1600s. [36]

5.  Davis.  23.

6.  “Courten.”  4:332–346 in Biographia Britannica, edited by Andrew Kippis.  London: W. and A. Strahan, volume 4, 1789.  4:323.  This William is the focus of 4:332–327.  This was brought to my attention by Edmundson, 1901.  Davis thinks three ships were sent, but only gives details for two. [37]  While his history of the politics seems to be accurate, his account of Powell has absorbed elements of legend telling; occurrences of three are common in folklore, [38] but also happen to be the number of ships used by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

7.  Davis.  27.
8.  Davis.  29.

9.  Salikoko Mufwene mentions the importance of interpreters in “Pidgin and Creole Languages.” 133–145 in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, volume 18, edited by James D. Wright.  Oxford: Elsevier, 2015 second edition.  133–135.

10.  Kippis.  4:323.

11.  Amy Eberlin.  “Flemish Religious Emigration in the 16th/17th Centuries.”  University of Saint Andrews website, 7 February 2014.  The importance of this population movement is mentioned in the post for 19 May 2019.

12.  Kippis.  4:323.
13.  Kippis.  4:323.

14.  “Guinea (Region).”  Wikipedia website.  The word comes from the Portuguese “Guiné.”  Some think that, in turn, comes from a Berber term for people with darker skins.  Others suggest it is derived from the city of Djenné, which dominated the gold and salt trade in western Africa.

15.  Hugh Thomas.  The Slave Trade.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.  159.
 
16.  The importance of gold is mentioned in the post for 7 November 2021.  When silver flooded Europe, gold became the preferred medium of exchange. [39]

17.  Thomas.  160.  He says merchants often were financed by men who had founded the Dutch East India Company in 1600.  Christian Koot describes how Dutch merchants operated in “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Chesapeake and the British Caribbean, 1621–1733.”  72–99 in Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680–1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders, edited by Gert Oostindie and Jessica V. Roitman.  Leiden: Brill, 2014.  79.

18. “Captain John Scott.”  Wikipedia website.

19.  Edmundson, 1901.  656.  Spelling modernized; the original is “Powell & Gromwegle had been comrades in the king of Spaines servis in the West Indies.”

20.  Edmundson was a mathematician who spent years doing research for the British government’s commissions adjudicating the modern boundaries of Guyana. [40]

21.  Edmundson, 1901.  662
22.  “Twelve Years’ Truce.”  Wikipedia website.  The truce lasted from 1609 to 1621.

23.  Jonathan Israel.  The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.  409–10, 437.  Cited by Wikipedia, Truce.

24.  For a clear map of the area, see Rem Sapozhnikov.  “The Salted World of Araya.”  Tiwi website, November 2004.

25.  Edmundson, 1901.  659

26.  The idea that everything occurred by chance probably is a later interpretation.  Scott wrote Powell “bethought himself that an old comrade-in-arms of his in the King of Spain’s Service, one Captain GROMWEGLE, a Dutchman, had established a Colony in the River Essequibo.” [41]  Kippis thought the discovery of Barbados was not an accidental discovery, but rather the “result of a deliberate well-laid scheme, formed on hints from Sir William’s correspondents in Zealand, and concerted, no doubt, between him and his brother Sir Peter, probably the intelligencer, for he lived and died in Holland.”  He believed a French document introduced the idea of chance. [42]

27.  Edmundson, 1901.  659

28.  Edmundson, 659.  His source was a petition made by Powell in 1660.  Spelling modernized; the original is “having lefte the aforesaid servants upon this Iland I proceeded in my voyage to the Maine to the river of Disacaba, and there I lefte eight men and lefte them a Cargezon of trade for that place.”  “Disacaba” is a different transcription for “Essequibo.”  Edmundson adds “‘cargezon’ is a technical Dutch word for goods sent out to a trading port for bartering with Indians.”

29.  Edmundson, 1901.  656.  Scott wrote: “if they did not like the country they should be sent back at the expiration of two years with a reward of 50 pounds worth of axes, knives and other goods.”

30.  Edmundson, 1901.  656.
31.  Edmundson, 1901.  656.

32.  George Edmundson.  “Early Relations of the Manoas with the Dutch, 1606–1732.”  The English Historical Review 21:229–253:1906.  238–239.

33.  Edmundson, 1906.  232.
34.  Edmundson, 1901.  661.

35.  Ian A. Robertson.  “Dutch Creole Languages in Guayana.”  Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 23:61–67:December 1977.  61.

36.  RCraig09.  “Global Average Temperatures.”  Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 8 March 2020 and included in “Little Ice Age.”  Wikipedia website.

37.  Davis.  27, 30.

38.  Axel Orlik.  “Epische Gesetze der Volksdichtung.”  Zeitschrift für Deutsches Altertum 51:1–12:1909.  Translated as “Epic Laws of Folk Narrative” by Jeanne P. Steager.  131–141 in The Study of Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965.  133–134.

39.  Fernand Braudel.  Le Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéan à Epoque de Phillippe II.  Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1966 revised edition.  Translated as The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II by Siân Reynolds.  New York: Harper and Row, 1972.  1:499.

40.  “George Edmundson.”  Wikipedia website.
41.  Davis.  29.
42.  Kippis.  4:326.