Bequia history
Bequia's earliest inhabitants, dating back to the first centuries of the first millennium AD, were pottery-making Amerindians whose origins lay in the northern coastal regions of South America. Travelling in large dug-out canoes, they came in successive waves of migration up through the islands, with the smaller islands such as Bequia being the last to be occupied on any meaningful or permanent basis.
Much evidence of pre-historic life has already been unearthed on Bequia, with doubtless still more to be discovered. The new Annexe at the Bequia Heritage Foundation's Bequia Heritage Museum at St. Hillary now includes a significant and informative exhibit of both Amerindian and European-era artefacts which augments the original display of Bequia's maritime history at the existing Bequia Boat Museum at the same location.
Around 14/1500 AD there was a final wave of migration into the region, this time bringing what are now known as the Island Caribs or Kalinago, who assimilated themselves into the existing indigenous population and absorbed most of their culture. It was these same Caribs in the Lesser Antilles who later tried to resist the onslaught of European colonization in the Antilles in the 16th and 17th centuries; driven out from other islands in the Antillean chain, they finally made the island of St. Vincent their homeland.
By the mid to late 1600s, the population of indigenous ("Yellow") Caribs in St. Vincent had been considerably augmented by runaway or shipwrecked Africans especially on the Windward side of St. Vincent, giving rise to what became known as the Black Caribs or Garifuna. So determined 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 in peace, despite both countries' desire for further colonisation of economically promising 'new' lands. (Less promising were the Grenadines: A 1659 account of the French Antilles describes Bequia itself as being "too inaccessible to colonise", and used only by Caribs from St. Vincent for fishing and for "cultivating little gardens").
But by the early years of 18th century, the French were showing renewed interest in the lush volcanic mountains, valleys and plains of St. Vincent. After developing if not an alliance, then at least a working accord with both the Black and Yellow Caribs, the French were permitted to develop small settlements there, most notably on the leeward side.
It was a different story though for Bequia and the other small Grenadine islands which at this time were administratively part of French-owned Grenada and very much under French control from Martinique. Whilst considered ideal for careening, (Blackbeard's notorious Queen Anne's Revenge was fitted out in Bequia using a French merchant ship captured off St. Vincent in November 1717), illicit trading, turtle fishing and as a source of lumber, Bequia remained an otherwise unsettled and undeveloped outpost. Nevertheless, certainly from the early 1740s onwards, British ships were actively banned from setting ashore for wood, water or other supplies and French ships rigorously patrolled throughout the Grenadine waters.
As Grenada's economy become more sugar-based, sugar began to overshadow the less labour-intensive production of indigo, cocoa and cotton, first Carriacou then the more distant Bequia slowly became potential alternatives to people with more modest aspirations. Small numbers of French adventurers from both Grenada and Martinique, who had not found success in the bigger islands and had only limited financial and labour resources, found themselves drawn to the possibilities presented but these small, less-frequented islands - excellent protected bays, some reasonably good flat land and above all, far from the watchful eye of the centres of government.
By about 1750, a handful of French families and their enslaved workers, probably numbering no more than about 40 people in total, had started to settle in Bequia. In the following decade land was granted and cleared, indigo, cocoa and latterly cotton were planted, turtles (much valued for their shells) were fished and lime was processed. The island’s tiny population was then made up of a few “French whites”, some "free coloureds", a relatively small number of enslaved workers and perhaps a few resident Black Caribs. Traces of French works and roads can still be found on parts of the island, and, as in St. Vincent, many locations - and indeed families - still carry French names.
The turning point in the colonial history of both St. Vincent and the Grenadine islands lying south down to Grenada, 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, both previously 'neutral' St. Vincent, and the formerly French-controlled Grenadine islands were ceded to the British, along with Grenada, Tobago, Dominica and Canada. In return, British-captured St. Lucia, Guadeloupe and Martinique were returned to the French. Although interrupted briefly by a short-lived French seizure of St. Vincent in 1779, the long period of British development and colonial rule of St. Vincent and the Grenadines had now begun.
In the years immediately following the Treaty of Paris, whilst the existing French settlers on Bequia were at least allowed to retain the acres they had cultivated and cleared (if they could prove title), the lion's share of the island's prime land was typically acquired either by the British elite involved in surveying the island, or by existing landowners or merchants based elsewhere in the British West Indian islands. These first “investors” in Bequia, French and British, either quickly expanded and developed their land into working sugar plantations, or sold on their allocations to others who were eager to capitalise on the wealth they believed owning a sugar plantation in the “Ceded Lands” would bring.
Much smaller tracts of land - nineteen in total and by definition considered unsuitable for the cultivation of sugar - were offered as approximately 30-acre grants to less fortunate British subjects, (so-called "poor settlers") with a view to urgently encouraging the establishment of a viable community which would support and function alongside the sugar production that was getting underway on the island.
You can continue to read about Bequia via this link https://www.bequiatourism.com/history.htm
