{"id":397,"date":"2010-01-05T22:42:38","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T22:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/?p=397"},"modified":"2010-01-06T22:45:03","modified_gmt":"2010-01-06T22:45:03","slug":"dr-brinsley-samaroo-recovering-tangible-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/?p=397","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Brinsley Samaroo – Recovering Tangible Heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dr.<\/a>

Dr. Brinsley Samaroo<\/p><\/div>\n

On September 17, 2009, Professor Dr. Brinsley Samaroo, under the patronage of the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT), held a lecture titled, \u201cRecovering Tangible Heritage\u201d at the National Library and Information System Authority (NALIS). This lecture was meant to be an eye-opener to students of history as well as Trinidadians and Tobagonians in general, who may not be aware of the significance of some recent historical sites. The aim, in addition to general edification, is the preservation of these sites for further excavation and exploration for generations to come. Dr. Hollis Liverpool, Calypsonian and Historian chairs the proceedings and provides further details about the lecture.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Dr. Hollis Liverpool:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Dr.

Dr. Hollis Liverpool<\/p><\/div>Our main objective is a research institute for advanced study and research for critical thinking etc. and we have, over the years, been presenting these lectures. And these Senior Research Fellows have been doing research and giving us insights into the research. We have Professor Selwyn Ryan, we have Mr. Lawrence Scott etc., etc. and you have been coming from time to time. So welcome and thank you very, very much for coming out. And this evening we have Professor Dr. Brinsley Samaroo, a name that is well-known in Trinidad and Tobago for history.<\/p>\n

This lecture tonight will be based on recent historic sites in Trinidad and Tobago, \u201cRecovering Tangible Heritage.\u201d Just to give you an insight into the lecture, a major part of the process of national self-definition is the location, description and exposure to public gaze of physical structures which have shaped the nation\u2019s development and we have all these physical structures all over the place in Trinidad and Tobago. But the significance was missing. Many of us have not been exposed to the significance of these sites and the significance of these artifacts should not be undervalued. They are important reminders of plantation slavery and pointers to the creativity of our ancestors as they sought to reinvent themselves in the New World. In many instances, these artifacts represent the joint actions of peoples of different ancestries as they adapted to changing circumstances of their lives. These physical reminders of the past can be seen in the middens created by the first peoples and in the more substantial structures built by African and Asian labourers. There are also twentieth century structures erected during the First and Second World Wars. Many times, we pass these sites and many of us in Trinidad and Tobago, we discard them. It is a fact that many of us don\u2019t see them as historically significant and it is a good thing we have people like Mr. Samaroo to remind us of our sites that we have in Trinidad and Tobago.<\/p>\n

So this lecture tonight will examine, only a few we can examine, of the many prehistoric sites in Trinidad. Pre-Colombian locations have been the subject of considerable research and this lecture\u2019s emphasis will include nineteenth century sites such as the Five Islands off Trinidad\u2019s North West peninsula, the African American, Islamic and Baptists settlement at Hondo River in the Valencia forest, the cemetery managed by the slave-seller Louis Bicaisse at Rambert Village, part of the La Mont estate just outside of San Fernando, the temple in the sea at Waterloo Bay and the sugar remnants of Brechin Castle in Caroni. Professor Samaroo is examining these sites for us tonight and see how significant they are.<\/p>\n

For those of you who don\u2019t know him, Mr. Brinsley Samaroo has been one of our icon historians in Trinidad and Tobago obtaining his Bachelor of Arts and his M.A. in History from Delhi University and his Ph.D. from the University of London. Students from the University of the West Indies (U.W.I.), including myself, have passed under the hand of Brinsley Samaroo and he has published extensively on the history of Trinidad and Tobago with a specialty in working class movements, Indo-Caribbean history and political and institutional development. Between 1987 and 1991 he was a Minister of Government, he served as Head of the History department at the University of the West Indies (U.W.I.) St. Augustine and he has worked on numerous university committees. At present, he is a Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of the University of Trinidad and Tobago (U.T.T.) for Arts, Letters, Culture and Public Affairs.<\/p>\n

A few days ago, I was telling some of my students that whereas the sociologist looks at our way of life and anthropologist looks at our way of life etc., the historian looks at our development over the years. So as Professor Samaroo gives his lecture, think of our development over the years, of how these sites have helped to develop the people of Trinidad and Tobago; our own human development.<\/p>\n

So I bring to the microphone, Professor Brinsley Samaroo.
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\nProfessor Brinsley Samaroo:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Dr.

Dr. Brinsley Samaroo<\/p><\/div>Thank you very much Dr. Liverpool. Let me say first of all, that I am not going to talk about pre-historic sites. I am going to talk mainly about nineteenth and twentieth century historic sites in Trinidad. We don\u2019t have enough time to go into Tobago. Possibly we can organize a lecture in Tobago to talk about those historic sites.<\/p>\n

I want to begin by giving three important reasons why we should be looking at these historic sites in Trinidad and in Tobago, why it is necessary for us to preserve that tangible heritage. So I will give you three reasons, and the last of these three reasons would be, to my mind, the most important. So I would talk about it here, at the beginning, and I would conclude with the last of these three reasons using as my major support, Derek Walcott.<\/p>\n

First of all tourism<\/em>:<\/p>\n

I think we ought to be following the example of places like Jamaica, Barbados, Belize, the Windward Islands in which there is very little oil and gas – and in our own situation we have diminishing reserves of oil and gas – so it is necessary that we should widen the economic base of this country. And I want to suggest that we are very rich in the tourist potential and that is an area that we ought to develop as quickly as possible. The other Caribbean areas that I have mentioned are way ahead of us; they had an early start. We are way behind, but I think it is better late than never.<\/p>\n

And then the second reason is that looking at these tangible memories of the past, these tangible artifacts are increasingly becoming important in our education system. I can say that the three universities based in Trinidad are increasing their teaching and the demands of their students, that is, UWI, UTT and University of the Southern Caribbean in a lot of their courses which now focus on these tangible physical artifacts, and then those who are doing Cape examinations. I know for a fact that an important component of the Cape projects consist of doing a short research essay on one of these areas. And I have been quite often approached by teachers and the two subjects that they seemed to be most interested in is, first of all, the Merikans of Moruga and the other one that seems to be attracting a lot of attention, the Temple in the Sea.<\/p>\n

But I think the most important reason is the development of a sense of identity; a sense of self-worth. All people in all civilizations ask these questions. How are we constituted? Where are my roots? What relics of the past can I use to anchor myself in the culture to which I belong? What are the achievements of my ancestors? I want to suggest that the emergence of China and India as two leaders in the world stage has very much to do with this strong sense of self; this strong sense of identity. In other words, I am suggesting to you that culture and commercial enterprise are inextricably linked. We must talk about that a little later this evening.<\/p>\n

Every morning when I am walking at quarter to six next to the St. Augustine Senior Comprehensive School that is now being reconstructed, I see Chinese workers, twenty-five or thirty of them taking work at six in the morning and they do a full day\u2019s work ending at 3 p.m. I ask, why it is that there is this addition to work by people like the Chinese? So I repeat the statement that culture and commercial enterprise are inextricably linked. I\u2019d mentioned quite a number of areas but I will concentrate on four of them. So let me talk generally about what the various kinds of artifacts [and] physical remnants of heritage that we have in Trinidad. First of all, the Five Islands. And I think one of the major things you must remember about the Five Islands is that in 1802 on Nelson Island was built the first concrete brick and mortar structure built in Trinidad. There were a number of other such buildings built in Tobago before that, but that 1802 building James Roday, I have a photograph I will show it later on, is very important. But that is just one of the things I will be talking about in relation to Nelson Island.<\/p>\n

I would be talking this evening about another rich area of research and knowledge and sensitization that ought to be done and that is centers of slave resistance in Trinidad. I don\u2019t know how many of you have heard of Terre Breulle (Burnt Earth) which today corresponds to the area that\u2019s called Water Hole in Cocorite behind the Seven Day Adventists. That whole hill was called [Terre Breulle] for more than a hundred years; it was only in the 1920s and the 1950s that the British changed the name from Terre Brulee to Cocorite. Terre Brulee, Burnt Earth was where the slaves and free Africans constantly revolted. Brigan Hill on the road beyond Sangre Grande towards Manzanilla still exists. Called Brigan Hill because it was one of the areas to which Africans went and became Maroons\u2026 that is why it is called Brigham Hill. The caves of La Seiva, there is a whole honeycomb of caves in La Seiva when you go up the hill facing Shodo Island on the one side and the road to Maracas on the other. That is a most interesting area because here you had Africans, mainly runaways, in these caves and as the British tried to ascend to deal with them, they licked them down with stones and boulders all the time and that is how La Seiva was left alone.
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\nCemeteries:<\/em><\/p>\n

That should be an important source of information. Cemeteries in Trinidad and Tobago, they are very useful. For example, sometimes I am doing a biography of somebody and nobody knows when he was born, when he died. I go to the cemetery. That is a very useful resource and this evening I want to talk about one particular cemetery, a very neglected cemetery. That\u2019s the cemetery of Louis Bicaisse who was a slave seller, a slave trader from up the islands and he brought slaves to Trinidad on the La Resource Estate.<\/p>\n

And then there are a number of major plantation sites in which there is the African, the Indian, the Portuguese, the Chinese input, all of them functioning on these plantation sites in different roles, as labourers, as entrepreneurs. The Portuguese, as shop keepers, the Chinese, and then the Indians and Africans of course as labourers. Centers like Brechin Castle, Usine St. Madeline, the Sugar Research Station at Waterloo which is a treasure trove of industrial equipment which we are hoping to locate in a sugar museum at Brechin Castle. And then there are the religious sites such as the wooden R.C. Church in Tortuga (a scene of a lot of events), the East Indian terrat (terrat is a Hindi word for place of pilgrimage), the Temple in the Sea or very close by the Dattatreya Yoga Center. So I will be talking a little later on about the Temple in the Sea, then African-American settlement, the Islamic settlement in the Hondo River which will be the first item I will be dealing with. And there is also a very old Hindu Temple in Tableland on the main road built in the 1880s and filled with mementos of that time. Quite a number of tourists in passing look at it and I was able to locate a Christmas card in the 1940s highlighting that particular temple in Tableland. And then there are the railway sites, part of the vanishing heritage. There was a very good lecture given by Glen Vidan on the 8th July this year and at UTT; a very good lecture by Korane Camaroon who has done a very good Masters Thesis on the railways of Trinidad, a thesis at Bristol University and she continues to work as indeed our colleagues in the History department in U.W.I. continuing with the project to develop the sites and record them and talk about that vanishing railway-scape on the horizon.<\/p>\n

So the four areas that I want to focus on, first of all the Hondo River settlement, secondly, Louis Bicaisse, that slave seller, the Temple in the Sea and then finally the Five Islands, and even in discussing these I will be very brief and just skim the surface. I hope that you have questions afterwards because I think I do know a lot about each one of these. So first of all, the African-American settlement on the Hondo River. Let me just take about five minutes and talk very briefly about what it was all about and then we will go on to a film in which you will have an idea of the forested nature of the place and the sort of work we did and are continuing to do at Hondo River. So if I say African-American site in Valencia, if you hear people talking about the Hondo River Settlement, if you hear people talking about the Quarry River Settlement, these are all names that they use interchangeably. So the settlement consisted of a very motley bunch. First of all, African-Americans who had fought on the British side in the war of 1812 to 1815. The British having lost their colonies, their thirteen colonies in the American revolution decided that they were going to make a second attempt to retake these colonies and that is the Anglo American war of 1815. And so they went on the towns and the settlements of the east coast of the US, that is the British, and induced Africans, some slaves, some free, to join their forces in fighting against erstwhile masters. So that is one group of people from whom the forest settlement is derived. The other group are disbanded soldiers from the British West Indian Regiment which have been formed out of Blacks in the Caribbean, some of them bought, some of them rescued from slaveships after the banning of the slave trade in 1806. And these have fought in the Napoleonic Wars (1799 to 1815) when Napoleon sought to take control of Europe. A number of these British West Indian Regiment soldiers had been recruited directly from Sierra Leon so that\u2019s the second group.<\/p>\n

So the British American war is over in 1815, Napoleon meets his Waterloo in 1815. So you have thousands of these Black soldiers; what do we do with these soldiers? We can\u2019t take them back. Well those that assisted the British against their erstwhile masters couldn\u2019t go back to the East Coast of America because they would be hanged from the nearest tree. And then what are you going to do with all of these Sierra Leonians and freed slaves and bought slaves who have fought for you and they can\u2019t go back into slavery. So what are we going to do about them? And so the British government asked all the Caribbean governments, \u201cWill you take these people?\u201d It is the same thing happening now at the end of these wars, and only two West Indian colonies agreed to take people and these two were Trinidad and British Honduras. And the people who came, these demobilized soldiers from which ever of the various sources I mentioned, were Baptists, Black Baptists as well as Muslims. Most of the Baptists settled in the south in what is called the Meriken villages and a few Muslims settled in the south also in the area that bears the name of those people, Mandingo Road – Mandingo Settlement, which is just south off Princess Town. So a small number of Baptists also went into that Hondo River Settlement but the majority of the people, it appears, were Muslims who did not want to be part of these Christian settlements either in the south or anywhere else. And so these Muslims gathered together under their leader, Abu Bakr, and settled in the area of the Hondo River. So I think I\u2019ll stop there and then we will look for a few minutes at the film where we went into the village and did some exploration and I will continue afterwards. (Film shown.)<\/p>\n

That gives you an idea of the location of the place under heavy forest and one of the early leads I had was an article by Mr. Lawrence, who is here this evening, on these settlements. And taking off from that, I kind of combed through the records at the public records of London. I found these two very important documents: one from the Imam of the settlements Imam Abu Bakr and the other from Reverend Hamilton. Abu Bakr was asking Governor Woodford, \u201cYou all brought us here, you\u2019ve set us up here, we are producing so much of produce and the bridge on the Quarry River has broken down.\u201d I found that very interesting. And then I came across a letter from Reverend Hamilton saying that these Mohammedans, followers of evil in the place, [saying that] we have to get rid of them. And so with those leads, it must have taken us about six or seven years, and I was very delighted that Sharif Hosein, who is here this evening, was able to trek with me through the forest\u2026 and it\u2019s really a very heavy forest. You know sometimes when you are looking at a film and you see [a] stunt that says, \u201cDon\u2019t try this at home.\u201d I want to tell you don\u2019t try this on your own, this trip into the forest, because it\u2019s filled with mapepire, a lot of snakes. People tell me that those are the spirits of the African Ancestors guarding the place. These mapepire have got rid of all the other snakes. I think they have eaten up the other snakes and they are large and they are ferocious. Mr. Sharif Hosein is not scared of mapepire. He would say, \u201cDoc. stand up, stand up, go back, go back,\u201d and he would take his cutlass and go and you would hear, \u201cPling\u201d and the Mapapee head gone. So I am saying if you are going there you have to be very careful because it is a haven of some of the most beautiful and the largest mapepire I have ever seen.<\/p>\n

So in the clearing of the settlement there is a very interesting interaction between the African Muslims and a few Baptists and the Nepoyo people from Arima who were hired by the British Government to assist in clearing the place. I suppose these people knew how to deal with mapepire and so on and so they cleared the place. And from the records I have seen, the Nepoyo people were very helpful and very corporative and they did not regard the Africans as interlopers – people just coming and taking over the place. As far as they were concerned, the earth belonged to everybody and not to us alone, so if you want to come here why not? Each single male was given eight acres of land; each couple given sixteen acres. They had to pay rent at one dollar and fifty-six cents per year. They were given plants and they were given tools. The Imam Abu Bakr was a senior sergeant because he had come, as most of these African American Muslims had come, from a military background. He was a senior sergeant headman and there were three other sergeants so there were four in all, Abu Bakr and his three lieutenants and four corporals. What are the numbers of people who came to this settlement in the forest? June, July 1819 two hundred and thirty-three men from the Third British West Indian Regiment, forty women and twenty-six children: a total of two hundred and ninety nine. February 1825 three hundred and seventy-six men, thirty-five women, thirty-four children. And in 1825, we will talk about the production later on with the various years, four hundred barrels of rice. These Africans were the people who introduced rice in Trinidad and Tobago. So they are producing rice, most of it was hill rice. But there was also some swamp rice because you know a number of African slaves were especially requested, the Guinea birds they call them; slaves from Guinea, because the slaves from Guinea, the Guinea birds had particular skills in planting rice so they were in high demand on the estates, on the plantation on the east coast in fact right down to Georgia.<\/p>\n

So these Africans brought those skills in rice, coffee, cocoa, yam and then the men complained there was a gender disproportion – too many men. And so in 1821, fifty-two liberated women from Antigua were brought, and the word is that they were distributed among the men. So Reverend Hamilton from Tacarigua decided that he was going to work on the community. And in one of his letters in 1841, he says that he conducted eighteen marriages and fourteen baptisms meaning converting people from Islam to Anglicanism. Then in 1840, another letter from Abu Bakr complaining about the conditions of the roads.<\/p>\n

So I want to end on this section now to talk about the significance of this Islamic Settlement with a few Muslims and Baptist brethrens. They are among the first producers of agricultural produce for Port of Spain, Arima and Sangre Grande: rice, yam, ginger, corn, peas, cassava. They were very instrumental in opening up an area that the British wanted to open up, that whole eastern coastal area. When these Muslims left the settlement they went and they settled in areas like La Seiva, Toco Road and along the Manzanilla Road. So they assisted in the opening up and peopling that area. They were among some of the Anglican converts in Trinidad and I think what is equally important is that these were the people who formed the beginning of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Force. Because of the fact that many of them were soldiers, they had military training; they had military discipline. They were first lured out of the forest settlement to be guards, to be policemen for the Stipendiary Magistrates who had to travel throughout Trinidad and Tobago to look at how the slaves laws were being operated and to which advantage was not taken over Africans. It was particularly after 1838, these people were the logical choice because of their military background. So in a significant sense, we can say they were the early core of the Trinidad Police Force.<\/p>\n

But I just want to focus on Louis Bicaisse. By 1810, he and his brother-in-law had bought the whole of the La Resource Estate which means the whole of Philippines, most of Palmiste Village, going into Rambert Village – two hundred and fifty-six acres which they planted in cocoa, coconut and sugar. And then, shortly after he died, buys out his brother-in-law and becomes the sole owner. It was a very large La Resource Estate. He became very wealthy. I just want to give you an example of one of his sons, Nelson, whom he sent to be educated in England [and] who used his father\u2019s wealth to buy ships and captured slaves in West Africa and bring to the Caribbean. Like father, like son. And when the French abolished slavery in 1848, Nelson Bicaisse was able to retire as a multi-millionaire in Belgium. In 1892, the descendants sold the estate to Norman La Mont and since after that, it was taken over by the various La Mont sons.<\/p>\n

There is one very interesting story I have and that is about the death of Sir Norman La Mont who was killed [by a] prized bull in 1949. They had gathered his family. They all wanted to have an evening of photographs and they got Mr. Wong, who was the main photographer in San Fernando. And Mr. Wong came and Mr. Wong had his camera and he had his red cloth over his head. And you know a red flag before a bull! And so Mr. Wong, when I was interviewing him, he told me in very perfect Chinglish, \u201cMr. Brinsley, when me see bull coming, me run long long.\u201d So he was able to run. But Norman, an aging gentleman was not able to and so he was quickly snatched by that prized bull.
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\nSo today, just north of Rambert village, there is that cemetery where Louis Bicaisse [and] all his relatives, the wealthy French Creole community, are buried. Not the slaves, they didn\u2019t put slaves in respectable Christian cemeteries. They simply buried the slaves like a dog or an ox anywhere on the plantation, so I can\u2019t tell you that there are slaves buried there. That is Louis Bicaisse\u2019s grave stone. One of the women whom I met there said she saw a weeping stone. My own research tells me there were just three weeping stones made and one came to Trinidad. And it was on this estate the lady said she saw it, but of course, it must be safely in somebody\u2019s home. So what does this epitaph say? \u201cLouis Bicaisse, a native of St. Vincent who died in Trinidad on the 13th of September 1838, at the age of sixty-two. During his life he was a good son, a good father, a good friend, a good parent, a good brother. All of these good qualities, these excellent qualities that he possessed, came straight from his heart regretted by all of those who knew him.\u201d<\/p>\n

So that cemetery remains. It is used by the people in the area there, the grave stones, as a post for tying their animals. But it is a significant historic site and I think it is one to which we should pay increasing attention, this cemetery of Louis Bicaisse, that slave seller who became so wealthy by selling slaves in southern Trinidad.<\/p>\n

I want to talk next about the Temple in the Sea, so this is the first version, the original temple (he demonstrates via slideshow). Let me talk about Siewdass Sadhu (1901- 1971). He came to Trinidad at the age of four with his parents who were indentured coolies on the Waterloo Estate and they came from Banaras, one of the holiest cities of India. They were assigned to the Waterloo Estate where the father died shortly after he had taken up his occupation. And the mother and the son, the mother finished her five years and a repatriation fee was due to her for that five years and to the husband who was dying while serving his first five years. So mother and son took advantage of that repatriation passage and went back India. But they were not welcome in India. Once you have crossed water you have lost caste; and then they had picked up a lot of West Indians habits which didn\u2019t go down so well with their kith and kin in India. So they returned to Trinidad aboard the Ganges; mother and son, that is. On the 11th November, 1911, and once more, the mother indentured herself and the son who was of age also indentured himself. And then they both worked out their indentured term, got a second repartition grant and returned to India in 1919. Indentureship ended in Trinidad in 1920. The last consignment of Indians came in 1917. So in 1919, mother and son go back to India where the mother spent the rest of her years, but Siewdass returned with his brother both as free persons, laborers, in 1926. He married and had eight children and a shop in Waterloo. The site of the shop is still there.<\/p>\n

He made a number of trips to India, because he did well in the shop, and it is said on one of the return voyages from India during the Second World War they had a narrow escape with the ship having being targeted by a German torpedo. And it is said by Siewdass’s friend that he made a promise to God that if God got him through this, he will build a temple; that\u2019s what his friend says. But once he returned, he sought to have this temple established. And so he went to the manager of the Caroni Estate, Mr. Mc Millan, who granted him a piece of land near Waterloo Bay. It\u2019s quite close by; if you want me to tell you exactly where it is I could tell you. It was a simple temple with murtis, the images, the icons and pictures. But then he had a problem with the Caroni animals who were coming in his temple and eating all the plants, all the flowers, whatever he planted, all the vegetables he planted around. And so he complained to Caroni, but the sugar company did not find this funny and in 1952 ordered him to demolish the temple. And he said, \u201cI didn\u2019t build this temple, God built the temple, so if you want to demolish it, you can.\u201d He was arrested for trespassing, fined five hundred dollars and jailed for fourteen days. During the time that he was in prison the temple was demolished so when he came back, once he returned from the prison, he decided that he was going to build the temple, not on property that man owned, that people owned, but on property that was in the sea. It is said that Siewdass, then known as Siewdass Sadhu, first built a long walkway using broken bricks and stones to take him to the site of the temple five hundred feet into the sea. When the bridge was completed he began the construction of the temple. For the foundation, he used empty steel drums that came from Lever Brothers which he secured with steel. He filled the empty drums with cement which he painstakingly carried bucket by bucket, come rain or sun, seven days a week, from sunrise to sunset. In this task he had encountered much difficulty for he had to work with the rise and fall of the tides. He brought a truck, some say he rented one, but at any rate, it did not last long. One day, while dropping off bricks for the construction of the walkway, the truck got caught in the high tide and was no longer functional.<\/p>\n

But this did not deter Siewdass Sadhu. That\u2019s him there (pointing at him in a picture). He continued to build. The temple, once it was built, began to serve as a place of worship and pilgrimage for many in the village and throughout the island. It is said that Sadhu spent many happy hours in his mandir. When he was seventy he made his final pilgrimage to his homeland in the holy city of Banaras. Shortly after that, he returned and died at the age of seventy and was buried close to the Temple in the Sea.<\/p>\n

The temple was in ruins for many years but was restored in 1995. Today, it stands as a national monument, and close by is the Isaac Yankaran Cremation Site. It is used as a cremation site. It is used as a place where people from abroad come to have their weddings, have their various ceremonies. [He shows the audience a painting] This is a painting of the temple done by a friend of mine. I think it is a very nice painting which is current, which tells you the Temple in the Sea at the present time. To my mind, the greatest significance of the Temple in the Sea is that it is an act of defiance by one individual who decided that he was going to defy both the elements and an arrogant Christian elite in the country who owned Caroni Estate, and they were insisting that this symbolism of heathenism must not be there. His first attempt was broken down; it was destroyed. He was jailed and he decided that he was going to build a temple, the Temple in the Sea – a centre of pilgrimage in defiance of all of those who sought to prevent this relic, this monument, this symbol of his religious belief in this country.
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\nSo I want to talk finally about the Five Islands. As you will see in the next slide, they are not five islands, they are six islands. In fact, these six islands, we can say, stand as Trinidad\u2019s Ellis Island. A gateway to Trinidad, the point from which Trinidad was defended by various European regimes, immortalized by Cazabon as Lawrence Scott has told us a number of times. Cazabon was a friend of Lord Harris and Lord Harris spent his first honeymoon on Craig Island. Eric Williams was also married on Caledonia or Stuart Island, one of the Five Islands, one hundred years later. One of the early histories of these Five Islands\u2026 first of all it was a stopover point, the six islands. A stopover point for Amerindians, particularly the Warao, who used it as a trading point, as a stopping stage, on the journey to the trading station at Cumo Mucurabo on the mainland where most of the people lived. They would bring their parrots, their hamakas, their dried fish, precious stones, set them out on the islands and then, when it was convenient, come across to Trinidad at Cumo Mucurabo, the place of great silk cotton trees. That is the meaning of the Amerindian word ‘Cumo Mucurabo’. When the Spaniards took control of Trinidad they used these islands as an outpost, as a line of defense. And if you look at the escarpment at the southern top of Nelson Island you will still see the Spanish battlements. The Spaniards found hundreds of parakeets\u2026 that was their name for the place, Las Cotorras, a place of the parakeets.<\/p>\n

Upon capture in 1797, the British decided initially that they were going to use this as an output fortification. They started to put solid buildings and this is the building I mentioned earlier on built by African slaves (he points to an image on slideshow). African slaves owned by the government, we can say the early CEPEP, were brought here to work. They used the limestone that they used to dig from the area, they used building blocks from mainland Trinidad, used the limestones with shells as mortar and if you go and you see the walls just as you come into Nelson Island, those walls built by African slaves are still as strong as ever. It was those African slaves who also built this major building here: the oldest concrete and mortar structure in Trinidad, in the year 1802.<\/p>\n

After some time, the British decided that Nelson Island and this building was not going to be their major fortress so they moved the fortification over on this side, to mainland Trinidad, to Fort George. That\u2019s how Fort George came to be developed, when they decided that Nelson Island was not that strategically important. And then from that time, the early nineteenth century, let us say from about 1806 afterwards, it became the place of rest and recreation for the rich and wealthy of Trinidad: plantation owners, professionals, people who worked on the customs, the docks in Port of Spain. They got leases on these islands and that is why these islands\u2026 the names change so often because they took the names of their owners. The biggest island is owned by Dr. Neilson who practiced here in Port of Spain. Later on, it got changed to Nelson Island, so that right up to the 1860s, it was like a resort for the rich and then from 1866 it gets a completely different and new use.<\/p>\n

When Indians started coming here, when they started being brought here in 1845 and they would be placed in Port of Spain just where you have the Light House. A lot of them would have been taken straight from the docks to the hospital and then the rest of them would gather in Tambarind Square, gather in this area that is now downtown Port of Spain. There were no toilet facilities, no water facilities so you can imagine the condition of the place. In 1865, the government decided that they were going to convert the islands into a Coolie Depot and in 1866, the first set of indentured labourers came there. My own calculations is that about a hundred and fourteen thousand Indians were brought from 1866 to 1917, and that is where they spent their first fortnight. In this building, the top part of the building there is a very big hall where the women and children slept, and down below and in the adjacent buildings, the men slept. They had their cooking facilities and the registration centre and so on. The rooms are still there. So the last Indians were brought there as indentured labourers in 1917 but the place continued to function as a receiving, as a holding centre for Indians, not only from Trinidad, but from the rest of the Caribbean who were demanding their repatriation fee to go back to India. So right up to the 1930s it was a repatriation centre where you brought Indians from various parts of the Caribbean and housed them until you found a ship; until you had a sufficient number of Indians to be taken back to India. There is a particular novel, Jumbie Bird by Ismith Khan, which talks about these Indians coming and taking time off from Nelson Island and staying in Port of Spain and talking about why they were going back to India. Ismith Khan had indicated to me that he had interviewed a number of them and that is well portrayed in that particular novel.<\/p>\n

But then, from 1937, the place assumes a different use and that is, it becomes an incarceration centre for Uriah ‘Buzz’ Butler, and right now, that house where Butler stayed that has been restored. So he was incarcerated there twice: in 1937 as a result of his leading role in the riots and disturbances, and then during the Second World War when he was considered a threat. Incidentally, during the long period that the Indians were on Nelson Island in 1845 and then we can extend that right into the 1930s, if an Indian died on Nelson Island or one of the Five Islands, he could be cremated. If an Indian died in Trinidad he could not be cremated legally until 1952. The Cremation Centre is still there. So during the 1930s and 1940s, during the 1940s, during the Second World War 1939 to 1945, it was used by the Americans as a beacon point. The beacon point is still there on Nelson Island and the Americans also housed their soldiers on these islands. In fact, there was a walkway built from Nelson Island to Rock Island. Some of the remnants of that walkway are still there, used then by the Americans as a staging point, as a centre for their beacon, as well as for the incarceration of people who lived in Trinidad, mainly Jews, who had Polish or German passports\u2026 many of them were fleeing from Hitler. They were running away from Hitler because of the Holocaust and so on and had come to Trinidad to escape Hitler. But then their passports were still German and so it was an incarceration point for them. Stetcher for example; he is still alive and was one of those incarcerated during the Second World War. After the war, it was used as a youth camp by the Ministry of Community Development which they abandoned in 1970. During the 1960s, used by UWI as a field camp for Marine Biology and then after February Revolution in 1970, a centre for detainees, all of whom have now become very famous.<\/p>\n

I myself had an experience of going there in 1970. I had taken up a job as lecturer in history at the University of the West Indies and a number of those who were there were my students, and they demanded they be given the right to write the exam. Who else did the University choose but me, with two policemen on either side in a boat with the examination papers and scripts for them to write. I was so happy to be reunited with some of my students on Nelson Island. I am pleased to also report, that possibly because of the long time they had in Nelson Island to discuss their work and to read, they all did very well in the exams. At the present time, there is a great deal of restoration work that\u2019s being done on Nelson Island and I want to suggest to you here this evening that it is a prime location, mainly Nelson Island but the other islands are equally interesting.<\/p>\n

So I want to end as I started: that there is a search amongst peoples in the Caribbean for roots. People want to get their ancestral moorings, now that Independence has been won. All of us, not only in the Caribbean, but I think worldwide, particularly in post-colonial societies, societies that got their Independence, they want to give some meaning to that Independence, that sense of nation. And I want to end by bringing in support of that contention Derek Walcott, who in a 1992 Nobel Prize acceptance speech he talks about this yearning, this search by Caribbean people for their antecedents, for the springs of their nativity. And so he speaks and I quote, \u201cOf a memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the God.\u201d And here he is referring specifically to the Hanuman God that he saw in Felicity at the Felicity Ramleela. He goes on to talk about our ancestral cultures as a beautiful vase; beautiful because it\u2019s round, it\u2019s continuous, it doesn\u2019t end and then beautiful because it contains so many of our ancestral secrets. So I go on to read, \u201cBreak a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I just want to make a plea as I end that I haven\u2019t dealt with all of the historic sites that one could have dealt with. These are just a few, possibly some of the more significant. But I think all of us should use whatever kind of leverage that we had in society to make sure that this precious living heritage, this precious material heritage, does not go the way that it seems to be going and that is to be totally absent in this country in the next fifty years.
\n
\nDr. Hollis Liverpool:<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Ladies and gentlemen, we have been seeing what history does to us. Our spirits have been transported from 2009 and back into the world of yesterday. We get to live in both worlds. Tonight, we journeyed through Hondo River, the Valencia Forest, the Louis Bicaisse Cemetery, the temple of Siewdass Sadhu and also the Five Islands, the gateway to Trinidad. We have seen the significance of those sites and I am sure with your questions you can see more, so the floor is yours.<\/p>\n

DR. KIM JOHNSON, writer and journalist:<\/b> Brinsley, why did the Muslim Settlement decline?<\/p>\n

PROFESSOR BRINSLEY SAMAROO:<\/b> Let\u2019s just get a few questions.<\/p>\n

BRIAN RAMSEY:<\/b> I have two questions for you. You called the settlement the Hondo River Settlement and then you also referred to it as the Quarry River Settlement and I am wondering why are there two names?<\/p>\n

The second question is that somewhere along the line, I heard that in the British West Indian Regiment that one of the ships bringing one of the companies to Trinidad got into some sort of difficulties and the ship never actually made it to Trinidad and that particular company actually settled in Tobago. I am trying to out if that is actually correct?<\/p>\n

MICHAEL ALI:<\/b> I want to congratulate you, Brinsley, again for the work you have done and seek to continue to do in preserving our history. It is very much needed in our society, and along with that, I like the fact that you have identified some personalities like Siewdass Sadhu and like Butler. I don\u2019t think we know enough as personalities because I think the more we know about them they could be the inspiration not only the things they stood for – like symbols of defiance and hard work – but it would be the sort of thing that could be even sometimes romanticized by our artists, our poets and make it much more inspiring for the young people. Along with the history you are doing I am hoping that you have encouraged people to do even more and inspire our artists, and the ones who can really shape these personalities into persons who are symbolic of the good things we are.<\/p>\n

And to what extent are you as a lecturer, a professor at the university, actually encouraging your students? I know when I went to school, history was about learning facts and figures but I would like to see history being more like research projects, even very simple things so that the student can go out and build on what you are doing and eventually develop the kind of information that we want, so that again we inspire our artists.<\/p>\n

PROFESSOR BRINSLEY SAMAROO:<\/b> Let me just answer Kim\u2019s question, why did the Hondo River Settlement decline? First of all, because of neglect. One can say that by the 1840s the state ceased giving it the required subsidies. And that was one of the complaints of Abu Bakr and that continued because the state just got fed up; they just got tired of them. It used to be a burden; we don\u2019t have money\u2026 so lack of state support. The bridge, for example, was broken down and this man (Abu Bakr) is complaining all the time. We are producing all these things all the time but we can\u2019t let our donkey and so on go through, we have to take things on our heads and walk through the river [to carry them] on the other side. So state neglect.<\/p>\n

The other I think is Christian pressure against Islam, epitomized by Reverend Hamilton who would always say rather silly things about these Mohammedans. So state neglect [and] Christian pressure to convert. I have to say that the descendants of Abu Bakr took a very good Christian name and became very wealthy, Abu Bakr to Brook. It is quite unlikely that the Brooks would have become so prosperous had they remained Abu Bakr. So that kind of pressure, that Christian pressure to convert from Islam to Anglicanism, and thirdly the fact that these people were in high demand because they proved to be very good policemen, very good protectors, Stipendiary Magistrates and when police stations were being opened in rural areas these were the people who were recruited from the area and made into policemen.<\/p>\n

Why do we use different words? Because the whole geographic area, the Quarry River is the big river in the area where they got most of their water and then there are other tributaries of the quarry like the Hondo River, like the Quadrahorn River, all of which flow into the Quarry River. This particular settlement starts on the Hondu River. Most of it is located in the swing of the Hondo River before it joins the Quarry River. That is why it is sometimes called the Hondo River Settlement but it extended southwards to the Quarry River and some people say Valencia Forest. That is also true because the whole area is the Valencia Forest.<\/p>\n

On the second question, the journey of Baptists. That is the second company – my reading tells me it was lost at sea so they never arrived. So there\u2019s no village. I don\u2019t know that they went to Tobago. My own impression would be no, but I would certainly check that out. One particular set of Baptists came and settled in a place called Williamsville and they did not call it Williamsville, they called it Hard Bargain. It was a very rough area, only rock and dry land and so on. And so they complained. That\u2019s how the place got it\u2019s name as Hard Bargain and the government said, \u201cWell don\u2019t worry, we will give you a new grant.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Dr. Ali, we teach a lot of this at the University of the West Indies, all of what I have said here. We teach this and more about the other sites but I suppose university population is not sufficiently large to carry the message abroad as we would like to see. That is why the public like yourselves should become a little more history conscious and do things to revive this heritage.<\/p>\n

UNKNOWN SPEAKRER:<\/b> As you have been talking, and I know this is an area you have been passionate about for a long time, I was wondering if you had thought of an articulated set of ideas about how do we begin to construct tourism around this kind of distributed set of heritage sites as a way which we create and preserve that layer of history?<\/p>\n

PROFESSOR BRINSLEY SAMAROO:<\/b> Well certainly, I have been doing that for the last ten, fifteen years. I am a member of a group called Friends of Nelson Island and I have been writing. We presented an excellent proposal to the government for the refurbishment, rehabilitation of Nelson Island and so the others are now working on the Caroni records. We keep presenting and the government has been very promising, always promising (audience laughs). I can tell you now, frankly I am fed up and if I didn\u2019t have the support of the UWI, all the development that has taken place on Nelson Island and Hondo River would not have taken place without the University of the West Indies, who was in full support. Some of you should come sometimes to the archeology center and see all of the artifacts. Truck-fulls of artifacts we have taken from the Hondo River site and we now have at the university: guns, bayonets, cooking pots etc. that these African-Americans used. That\u2019s because the university decided to give the necessary support. Right now, the quarrying has reached the settlement. I think in another year or two, there will be no settlement. I have written the government many times, spoken to the politicians who were my friends\u2026 not my friends anymore\u2026 and they keep promising. That is one thing I must say about them, they are promising, very promising. That\u2019s the end of the story; I am not going to kill myself out again but I hope people like you, not having been rebuked so many times, may make some efforts.<\/p>\n

PROFESSOR ARTHUR MC SHINE:<\/b> I have a difficulty in history on one particular thing I do not think has been resolved. I am putting it forward to you. It has been said and claimed that the United States Treaty of Chaguaramas has officially been put to rest. In 1973, I went to the Smithsonian institution and called up for whatever documents were available. And to my surprise, in 1973, a treaty covering the Five Islands still exists and existed under President Eisenhower who was a post-war President. So I am asking you whether maybe the British archives, foreign government office, had opened up that period and whether there is a way to confirm what treaties exist? What powers [does] the United States have over the Five Islands and maybe what powers, residual they may be, the United States has over Chaguaramas?<\/p>\n

PROFESSOR BRINSLEY SAMAROO:<\/b> Well, what I can tell you is the United States no longer has any jurisdiction over the Five Islands. I have seen the documents. It\u2019s not, well I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s in the US, but I\u2019ve checked in England and there is in fact a document where Americans have given up any rights to Nelson Island and the Five Islands. I cannot speak similarly about Chaguaramas but that is something I can check. I am sure about the Five Islands that the United States gave up the jurisdiction and in fact said to Trinidad and Tobago, you can take it back. So there is no impediment whatsoever to our development of these islands, all of which are treasure troves of our living heritage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On September 17, 2009, Professor Dr. Brinsley Samaroo, under the patronage of the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT), held a lecture titled, \u201cRecovering Tangible Heritage\u201d at the National Library and Information System Authority (NALIS). This lecture was meant to be an eye-opener to students of history as well as Trinidadians and Tobagonians in general, who may not be aware of the significance of some recent historical sites. The aim, in addition to general edification, is the preservation of these sites for further excavation and exploration for generations to come. Dr. Hollis Liverpool, Calypsonian and Historian chairs the proceedings and provides further details about the lecture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,1],"tags":[111,114,112,115,113],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}