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VOICE ONE:
This is Nicole Nichols.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English programEXPLORATIONS. Today we tell about discoveries of the past on theisland of Saint John, in the United States Virgin Islands. SaintJohn covers forty-nine square kilometers of land between theCaribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, east of Puerto Rico.
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VOICE ONE:
When many people think about the Virgin Islands, they think of abeautiful holiday place with bright sunshine and clear blue seas.But serious science is also taking place on Saint John.
Archeologists have uncovered a ceremonial center near the watersof Saint John’s Cinnamon Bay. A tribal people called the Taino(Tah-EE-no) created the area. The Taino may have used this place forreligious purposes hundreds of years ago. Near the ceremonial site,archeologists have found evidence of a fire from a slave rebellionthat took place in seventeen-thirty-three. Another archeologyproject has just begun around Saint John — a search for sunkenships. National Park Service archeologist Ken Wild designed theprojects.
Investigation into the island’s past has become a communityeffort on Saint John. Thousands of volunteers from the island andthe United States mainland give their time to help.
VOICE TWO:
Some experts say the Taino were the first people Italian explorerChristopher Columbus saw when he came to the Americas in thefifteenth century. The Taino are believed to have lived on a numberof other islands including the Bahamas, Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Columbus led explorations for Spain in fourteen-ninety-two andfourteen-ninety-three. He wrote a record of his travels. He probablyfound the Taino people when he landed on an island in the CaribbeanSea, in what is now called the West Indies. It is unclear whichisland this was. However, many experts say it was in the Bahamas orTurks islands.
Columbus said the Taino werefriendly. He said they helped guide his crew around the islands. Healso commented on the fact that they wore few clothes.
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VOICE ONE:
Work to uncover the Taino ceremonial area began innineteen-ninety-eight. That was three years after a huge ocean stormstruck the island. The storm removed some of the sand between thearcheological site and Cinnamon Bay. Experts recognized that thewater would someday cover the site. Sand on the beach is continuallybeing washed away.
The ceremonial area contains levels of animal remains and claycontainers for food. Some pieces of pottery have round holes in thebottom. Among some tribal groups in the Americas, this meant thatthe people had opened a space for the spirit to escape.
VOICE TWO:
Mister Wild says objects were placed in the ceremonial areaduring hundreds of years. He believes they were offerings to Tainoancestors or to very powerful gods. A road built by planters in theearly eighteenth century over the area protected these objects foralmost three-hundred years.
Each object appears to be where someone placed it centuries ago.Objects closer to the surface have images with more detail thanthose below. Images on the pottery have noses similar to a bat, ananimal that looks like a mouse with wings. The Tainos are thought tohave considered the bat a holy creature. They believed it containedthe spirits of the dead.
VOICE ONE:
The discoveries in Cinnamon Bay mark the first time a Tainoceremonial area has been recognized in the Caribbean. Historians andarcheologists say the Taino raised crops and fished. They lived inround houses. They traveled between islands in huge canoes made fromtrees. The Taino appear to have had a well organized governmentsystem.
Before Spanish settlers arrived, the Taino had a legend, a storyrepeated over time. It said people covered with clothes wouldsomeday make them slaves.
Sadly, the legend came true. Colonists from Spain made theislanders work very hard and fed them little. The Spanish may alsohave brought diseases to the islanders. The native people died veryquickly from these diseases. The protective systems of their bodieshad no defenses against European diseases.
VOICE TWO:
Not many years after Columbus sailed into the area, the Tainopopulation had sharply decreased. Spain gave independence to theisland people in fifteen-forty-two. But by that time, few Tainoremained alive.
Some experts believe the Taino people disappeared several hundredyears ago. Their population died out in Haiti, the DominicanRepublic and Cuba. But some Taino live today in Puerto Rico and thesouthern Caribbean islands near South America.
Members a tribal group in Puerto Rico say their genetic materialproves they are Taino. They live in a very large central mountainterritory of the island.
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VOICE ONE:
An environmental activist from the state of Connecticut helpedlaunch the archeological exploration at Cinnamon Bay. Investmentbanker S. Donald Sussman gave two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars fora year of digging.
Most project money today comes from gifts. An organization calledthe Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park helps thearcheology. So do an island gift shop and other businesses.
After a short training period, community volunteers from SaintJohn help find and clean objects from the past. So do visitorsspending a holiday on the island. School children and people of allages aid in the work. Volunteers give an average of aboutone-thousand hours a year to the archeology projects.
VOICE TWO:
Students from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York recentlycompleted an intensive course in archeology on Saint John. Theystudied objects from the remains of an early cotton farm. Thisseventeenth-century plantation is near the site of the ceremonialarea. In the eighteenth century, sugar grew on this same land.Working on the site gives students a chance to study therelationship between African slaves and European plantation owners.
Several years ago Syracuse students uncovered the remains of ahouse for laborers. They also discovered a building that served as ahome and storage area for the plantation owners. One level of thearea shows evidence of a fire. The Syracuse experts say the burningtook place during the Saint John slave rebellion ofseventeen-thirty-three.
VOICE ONE:
After Christopher Columbus explored the area, people fromEngland, France and Spain all fought to control Saint John. Inseventeen-seventeen, settlers from Denmark bought the island fromFrance.
In seventeen-thirty-three, more than one-thousand African slavesworked on Saint John under Danish control. They worked onplantations that grew sugar, cotton and other crops. Lack of rainhad caused a food shortage. The slaves raised their own food. Butthe crops failed. The people were starving to death.
Their owners feared the slaves might rebel. So the ownersestablished extremely restrictive and cruel laws. These lawsthreatened terrible punishments for even the smallest violations.
VOICE TWO:
The slaves were caught between starvation and the cruelty of thelaws. They decided to fight back. They attacked and captured thelocal fort. They held out for six months. But finally, the Danishgovernor brought in additional forces from the French West Indies.They crushed the rebellion. Some of the slaves who were not capturedkilled themselves. They did so to prevent being tortured to death.Denmark owned Saint John until nineteen-seventeen. Then the UnitedStates bought the island.
VOICE ONE:
Syracuse University officials say the archeological work atCinnamon Bay marks the first study of settlement in the area. Theysay the effort will add to increasing research about relationsbetween Africans and Europeans in the area. Later this month,students from the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine,also will work on Saint John for one week. They will begin acomparison study of cultural changes in native Americans over theyears.
A recent visitor to Saint John said he went to the island to swimand enjoy the sunshine. But he said the most interesting part of hisvisit was seeing evidence of the island’s past.
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VOICE TWO:
This program was written by Jerilyn Watson and produced by MarioRitter. This is Steve Ember.
VOICE ONE:
And this is Nicole Nichols. Join us again next week for anotherEXPLORATIONS program in Special English on the Voice of America.