Bar-ba-ba-ba-ba-dos part 3 (!!!)

I’ve been learning some history these past couple of days with Sherwood. He has been a really great travel guide for me, I must point out. I never thought learning history could be this fun.

The first settlers on Barbados were American nomads. Three groups of emigrants, the first was the Saladoìd Barrancoid, which were mostly farmers, potters and fishers who had arrived in canoes from South-America about 350 years AD. The Arawak-people was the second group who emigrated from south-America about 800 years AD. They settled around Stroud Point, Chandler Bay, Saint Luke’s Gully and Mapp’s Cave. 

Around the 1300-hundreds the Carribeans arrived at the island from south-America as the third croup. They dislodged both the arawakes and the soladid-barracoid people. Over the next century the Carribeans lived, like the arawakene and saladoid-barranoid-people had done before them, isolated on the island.

The Spanish arrived in the beginning of the 1500^th hundred and Conquistadors arrested many Carribeans, took them with them and used them as slaves on plantations. Other Carribeans eloped from the island.

British sailors who arrived around 1620, found the island almost uninhabited.  From the British first arrivals 1627-28 and all until the independence date in 1966 was the Island under uninterrupted British control. However in the meantime, Barbados had relatively much self-government.

From around the1620s it was sent some black slaves to the island. 5000 of the local inhabitants died of fever 1647 and hundreds of slaved was executed by the British during the English civil in the 1640s, since they were afraid at the “Levellers” could spread to the slaves at Barbados if the Parliament took control.

In 1659 the English sent lots of Irish and Scotts too Barbados as slaves, and the king Jakob II and other kings of the Stuart-dynasty sent Scottish and Englishmen to the Island. The living descendants of these originally slaves are often referred to as the “Redlegs” or locally the ‘ecky becky’ and are among the poorest on Barbados. There have been several marriages between Scotts, Irish and Africans on the island.

I had such luck with this trip. I didn’t know that today (30.september) was their national day. So when walking down the streets hearing a band playing as we do on our national day, I couldn’t help myself but running towards it.

By the way, I hadn't seen their flag before today. It is a bit special and reminds me a bit of Sweden, but oh well. The trident centered within the flag is a representation of the mythological Neptune, the god of the sea. The trident in its original unbroaken form was taken from the former colonial seal, which itself was replaced by the current coat of arms.  Used within the flag, the left and right shafts of the trident were the desgined as broken representing the nations of Barbados breaking away from its historical and constitutional ties as a former colony.