Soldiers were dispatched in a longboat toward an Indian village for information. This landing party attacked some Caribs who approached in a canoe. A confrontation ensued, with at least one Spaniard and one Carib dying. Columbus, as a memorial to the dead Spaniard, named the site of the skirmish Cabo de las Flechas (Cape of the Arrows). Later, the Caribs would so harass the Spanish in Puerto Rico that they became a target for destruction and eventually retreated to other Carib communities on Dominica and Guadeloupe.
Columbus’ fleet turned north to explore the islands on the horizon. They sailed past Anegada and Virgin Gorda (the eastern-most of what are now the British Virgin Islands), past St. Thomas and St. John. The explorer was so impressed by the number of islands that he named them in honor of St. Ursula and her legendary 11,000 martyred virgin companions. He resisted the temptation to anchor, continued westward and finally landed along Puerto Rico’s west coast.
Though Spain claimed the Caribbean islands through Columbus’ explorations, she made little effort to colonize the Lesser Antilles because they had no mineral wealth. During the two centuries that followed, the Greater and Lesser Antilles were the scenes of battles between English, Dutch and French admirals, pirates and privateers, all attracted first by rumor of Spanish treasure and later by the region’s highly profitable products of cotton, sugar, rum, indigo and spices.
In the early 1640s, England and Holland were sparring over St. Croix. The English, farmers from the more settled island of St. Kitts, established a settlement around 1641 in the Salt River area of St. Croix. They would build a triangular earthwork structure to fortify their foothold. The structure, completed by the Dutch later, was called Fort Flamand (the Flemish fort) by the French. The Dutch West India Company also settled on the island around 1642. The English governor was killed and his settlers retaliated by killing the Dutch governor. The Dutch won, but allowed the English to remain. A few years later, the Dutch were forced out, leaving the English in control. In 1650, Spain would defeat and drive out the English. In 1650, the French surprised and defeated the Spanish garrison. The first French settlement was at Salt River; a later settlement was at the natural harbor on the north side of the island at present day Christiansted. They called it “Bassin.” From 1655 to 1665, the French Crown leased the islands to the French Chapter of the Knights of Malta. During that time, the island continued to produce cotton, indigo, tobacco, sugar and tropical foods. In the late 17th century, the French were forced to abandon the island. Then, all but deserted, the island was occasionally visited by pirates and smugglers. French war ships arrived periodically to maintain title for the crown. When the French abandoned St. Croix, English woodcutters from Tortola moved in and engaged in lumbering.
France sold St. Croix to the Danish West India and Guinea Company in 1733. Denmark took over as a Crown Colony in 1755. This struggle for control of the islands, St. Croix in particular, demonstrates how the Caribbean would ebb and flow, matching the battles that existed in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Blackbeard and other infamous pirates used St. Thomas to sell their plunder. St. Thomas continued to be the main port, and goods from the islands were shipped in and out by both legitimate companies and by smugglers and pirates. The coves and inlets of the islands proved to be havens for the smuggling of goods. By this period, sugar plantations and small farms had been established on St. John. With Charlotte Amalie’s superb harbor, St. Thomas soon found its destiny as a trading center. In 1764 the island was proclaimed a free port. Many of the present-day Charlotte Amalie shops were once merchant warehouses with back doors facing the beaches and the harbor.
The Danes had become interested in sugar cultivation; the Danish West India and Guinea Company was chartered to expand the sugar plantations and control the African slave trade. Plantation agriculture began on St. Thomas, using Danish indentured servants as laborers. The first shipments of African slaves arrived in 1673. In 1717, the Danes added St. John to their territory.When the French sold the island of St. Croix, Danish settlers from the plantations on St. Thomas sailed to St. John to farm. In 1733, a violent slave rebellion on St. John dislodged the Europeans for six months.
The Danish Era
On St. Croix, the Danes established the towns of Christiansted (named for King Christian VI of Denmark) in 1735, and Frederiksted (named for King Frederik V) in 1752. Friederich Moth, governor of the West India Company, designed the town layout for Christiansted and had the island of St. Croix surveyed into 150-acre estates. Moth encouraged settlers, who came from throughout the Caribbean, by offering tax benefits and reasonable land prices. Danish tolerance of ethnicity and religion also helped make the Virgin islands a melting pot, in which English eventually became the common language and Danish the language of the courts. Also spoken was a creole blend of Dutch, African, and later an English dialect, through which slaves and their owners communicated.
A Christiansted gallery
The rules and regulations put forth by the West India Company proved so rigid that the monarchy had to dissolve the company before economic growth could begin.The Danish crown purchased the charter from the West India Company in 1754 and moved the capital from Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas to Christiansted in St. Croix. Prosperity peaked in the second half of the 18th century with exports of sugar and molasses, rum, hardwoods and cotton. At one point, due to its prodigious agricultural output, St. Croix was called the “garden of the West Indies.”
Danish West Indian architecture is emulated in the territory’s elegant, sturdy, neo-classical buildings that are customized for West Indian weather. The second stories of these structures overhang sidewalks and create shady walkways called “galleries,” which provide cover from both sun and rain. Windows, doors and open spacious rooms take advantage of the tradewinds, and Gutter systems on roofs help catch precious rainwater. The Danes established and rigidly enforced a strict building code for fire protection.
For building materials, Danes and black workers who had purchased their freedom made use of what was available. Yellow bricks from Danish ship ballasts were incorporated in much construction. And plantations were built mostly with coral quarried from the sea.
The islands of the West Indies played a significant role in the development of North America. Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, who wrote the Federalist Papers, began his career on St. Croix in a shipping firm owned by a New Yorker. The wealth and social status achieved by prominent island families appealed to colonial families in Philadelphia, New York and Charleston. Close family connections and trade would eventually help develop a natural friendship between the islands and the continent. And during the American Revolution the neutrality and freeport status of the Danish Virgins were important financial assets to the rebellious thirteen colonies. It is hence not surprising that the first salute from foreign soil to American independence was fired from Fort Frederik, St. Croix in 1776. Perhaps it is only fitting that the Virgin Islands now rest under America’s Stars and Stripes.
Decline of Prosperity
In the early 19th century, the bright economic picture in the Danish Virgins dimmed. In 1803, as newly invented processing of beet sugar cut into the cane sugar market, Denmark formally ended the slave trade. Though the slave trade was over, slavery was not until those in captivity took action decades later. In 1848, dissatisfied Crucian slaves marched in Frederiksted demanding emancipation, and on July 3 Governor General Peter von Scholten, a man sympathetic to their cause, emancipated them. The governor’s actions were considered illegal by the Danish government, and von Scholten was tried in Denmark for dereliction of duty. Labor was hence regulated by a colonial labor law that was deemed oppressive; 30 years later, in 1878, it culminated in a riot that led to the burning and destruction of homes and plantations. Denmark attempted to remedy the problems, but never again would the island achieve the prosperity and glory of the “golden age of sugar.”As a result of economic decline, the population of the islands fell from 32,000 in 1829 to 14,600 in 1917. The capital city of the Danish West Indies alternated every six months between Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas and Christiansted, St. Croix, till 1917, when Charlotte Amalie was appointed the permanent capital.