A Jesuit Plantation and Church in the Caribbean Frontier: Grand Bay, Dominica, (1748-1763)

Steve Lenik Syracuse University

Abstract: Beginning in 1748 Jesuits from Martinique built a plantation and church on property acquired at Grand Bay, on the south coast of Dominica. Here the Jesuits built a plantation which used enslaved African labor to generate income to repay debts, and a church to serve their slaves and people from the surrounding region. While the Jesuits were in Dominica the island was a frontier, not officially a colony of a European state, but harboring a Carib population as well as people of Amerindian, African, European, and mixed ancestry. This paper examines life on the frontier by looking at the spatial layout of the plantation and church and considering how this site was part of the cultural landscape of Grand Bay Quarter. These data shed light on a poorly understood formative period in the eastern Caribbean when there were interactions among diverse peoples outside of the domain of direct colonial power.

Résumé: Commencement en 1748, les jésuites de la Martinique géraient une habitation et un église sur un bien-fonds à Grand Baie, sur le côte sud de la Dominique. Les jésuites construyeron una habitation avec les esclaves Africaines à générer revenu à rembourser dettes, et une église à servir les esclaves et les gens sur la région. Quand les jésuites habitaient à la Dominique, l’île n’été pas un colonie de nation européen, mais il y avait une population des amérindiennes, africaines, européenes et mixtes. Ce papier examine la vie sur la frontière par regarder le paysage de la habitation et un église, et un assemblage de période frontière. Les données révélent une période formative sur le Caraïbe à l’est quand il y avait interaction parmi personnes divers au-dehors les colonies.

Resumen: Desde el año 1748 los Jesuitas de Martinique operaban una plantación y una iglesia en una propiedad de Grand Bay, en la costa del sur de Dominica. Aquí los Jesuitas construyeron una plantación que usó africanos esclavizados para generar ganancias para pagar sus deudas, y una iglesia para servir a los esclavos y a la gente de la región. Mientras que los Jesuitas estaban en Dominica, la isla no fue una colonia de un país europeo, pero había una población de los Caribes y gente de nacimiento indio, africano, europeo y mezclado. Este ensayo examina la vida en la frontera, considerando el plan espacial de la plantación y la iglesia, y la colección de artefactos del período de la ocupación Jesuita. Esta información ilumina un período formativo en el Caribe del este cuando existían interacciones entre gente diversa fuera del dominio de poder colonial.

147 Archaeological and historical data show how a site owned by French Jesuits in the Commonwealth of Dominica was shaped by the variables present in the frontier and became a node in a network of interaction in Grand Bay Quarter. Several agreements between Britain and France before the start of British colonization in 1763 declared Dominica a “neutral” territory not to be inhabited by Europeans, thereby leaving the island as a refuge for Caribs. Despite these prohibitions, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries Dominica began to be settled by families of French settlers who owned African slaves, as well as free Africans and coloured1 settlers. It was in this context that Jesuits from Martinique acquired property at Grand Bay on the island’s south coast, where from 1748 to 1763 they owned a plantation and operated a parish church. My excavations at this site in 2007 and 2008 located remains of three buildings which were part of the Jesuit property, including the Catholic church. Combining data from the parish register with British colonial period maps and land transfer records reconstructs the spatial extent of the network of people served by the Grand Bay parish. A series of formal and informal agreements between Britain and France established Dominica as a neutral or a Carib island until it became a British colony with the Treaty of in 1763. I approach Dominica before 1763 as a frontier which sheltered diverse people living outside of direct colonial control, including the Carib, or Kalinago, Europeans, and both free and enslaved African and coloured peoples. White and coloured French settlers and their slaves, many from neighboring Martinique and Guadeloupe, began to permanently inhabit Dominica in the late 17th century in spite of agreements outlawing settlement (Honychurch 1995:40-60). Dominica’s mountainous topography and thick vegetation and rainforest limited pre-Columbian and post-1492 settlement to coastal areas, thereby shaping human occupation into a “patchwork of enclaves” (Trouillot 1988:27-30). In the mid-18th century when the Jesuits arrived, these enclaves were interaction zones where diverse peoples met during daily interactions in a dialectical process of creation and transformation. The unique set of historically situated variables in each frontier setting must be understood (Cayton and Teute 1998; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991:265-288; Elliott 2006:255-291; Guy and Sheridan 1998; Lightfoot 2005; Lightfoot and Martinez 1995; Parker and Rodseth 2005; Parker 2002, 2006; Weber 2005; White 1991). Grand Bay was attractive to the Jesuits because of its proximity to Martinique, the Catholic population, and the invitation of Jeannot Rolle, a Catholic settler who had placed a stone cross on the beach of Grand Bay in 1692. When the Jesuits came to Dominica they shared specific ideas about building a plantation, designing a church, and organizing enslaved labor. These traditions were based on local experiences in French West Indian colonies and frontiers, as well as on a broader set of goals shared by all Jesuits. But these traditions were not simply imposed upon the landscape, as this ideology interacted with the specific frontier context in Dominica. By reconstructing settlement locations in Grand Bay Quarter it is possible to understand spatial aspects of the negotiation between Jesuit traditions and the frontier. Thus the religious function of the site contributed to its development into a node in a network of social relations by which people traveled to the site or priests traveled to visit frontier settlements. Local oral history traces the origins of a Catholic presence in Grand Bay to 1691, when a free man of color from Martinique named Jeannot Rolle bought land from the Carib living there in order to start a small estate. After a series of conflicts with the Caribs over the display of wooden crosses, Rolle erected a stone cross and asked for a priest from Martinique to start a

1 This term is used because in Dominica the term “coloured” refers to people of mixed ancestry (Trouillot 1998:98- 100; Honychurch 1995:54).

148 parish. Finally in 1747 a Jesuit priest named Père Antoine de La Valette arrived to bless the cross (Boromé 1967:10, n. 4; Gordon 1942:77-78; Honychurch 1995:56-58; Moris 1926a:187, 1950:187). This cross has since been moved to the Grand Bay parish cemetery [Figure 1]. Why was it a Jesuit priest who came to Dominica? The had operated a plantation and a church in St. Pierre, Martinique since 1640, and the Jesuit missionaries there were aware of Dominica and its Carib inhabitants who for centuries had resisted Christianity. The impetus for expansion to Dominica occurred when Père La Valette was promoted to procureur , or financial manager, in 1746, and was faced with the need to repay Jesuit debts and to repair the Martinique property. His activities as financial manager show that La Valette had learned much about eastern Caribbean economics as he had lived in Martinique since 1743: he ran a money changing scheme to restore the full value of colonial currency; he borrowed money in the West Indies and Europe to improve the Martinique property; he acquired land in Dominica to build a plantation; and he bought slaves on Barbados to work on this estate. La Valette claimed Grand Bay was a mission among the Carib, and a parish church for free and enslaved people was consecrated in late 1749. But La Valette was more interested in the frontier site’s economic potential. A large factory building was built and enslaved African laborers worked to produce coffee, chocolate, cassava, provisions, and other cash crops from 1748 until the early 1760s (Boromé 1967; Honychurch 1995:56-58; Moris 1926a-1926e, 1950; Pastor 1950:371-504; Rennard 1954; Thompson 1976, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1996; van Kley 1975, 2006). Thus Grand Bay was a plantation where Jesuits used enslaved African labor to provide income for the construction and upkeep of their properties and the daily welfare of the missionaries. It also included a parish church to serve the local population [Figures 2 and 3] rather than a mission aimed at the Carib of Dominica. Economic production was permitted for religious Orders as long as goods were used internally, or sold at a fair price not significantly more than their value. Commerce which would generate excess profits was forbidden to religious Orders (Harney 1962:293; de Rochemonteix 1907:152-159; Thompson 1996:208-215). While Grand Bay functioned as a plantation since 1748, problems began in 1755 when a shipment of the Jesuits’ West Indian products meant to repay debts in Europe was captured at sea. This caused the bankruptcy of one of La Valette’s major lenders in , which led to many lawsuits in France as creditors sought repayment. This exposed La Valette’s activities which appeared to violate rules prohibiting commerce. Eventually these cases were brought before the Paris parlement, which ruled that the entire Society of Jesus was responsible for repaying over 6.2 million livres. Unable to pay the full amount, the French Jesuits were dissolved in 1764, which was part of a world-wide Suppression of the Jesuits culminating in the dissolution of the Society in 1773 (Honychurch 1995:56-58; McManners 1998:345-455; Pastor 1950:371-504; Rennard 1954; Thompson 1976, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1996; van Kley 1975, 2006). Consequently the Jesuits had to abandon their plantation in Dominica, and to repay creditors their properties were assessed and sold. Evidence of the former Jesuit property was found during road construction in 2001, when historian Dr. Lennox Honychurch observed remains of three structures (Lennox Honychurch, personal communication, 2007). After the Jesuits left, the industrial and religious activities that had formerly take place at the site were moved elsewhere, as later plantations in Grand Bay were located farther inland at Geneva Estate and future Catholic churches were placed farther south. Therefore, a frontier period data set was recorded in 2007 and 2008 when excavations traced the edges of three buildings and sampled occupation layers dating to the 18th century. Figures 2 and 3 show recorded remains of the church. The site’s location, maps, and collected artifacts indicate

149 that the remains of these structures are part of the Jesuit property. Data from documents and maps allow reconstruction of settlement locations in Grand Bay Quarter which were contemporaneous with the Jesuit site. In this manner the Grand Bay property can be situated within the frontier landscape. Two published sections of the Grand Bay parish register from 1748-1755 and 1780-1782 (Proesmans 1943a-1943e) list free and enslaved people in Grand Bay Quarter who used the church for baptisms, marriages, and burials. The 1748-1755 portion of the register is most important because it lists people served by the church during the frontier period. Most individuals in the register are enslaved Africans. My analysis counts 250 slaves, at least 109 of whom were owned by the Jesuits. The register sorts the list of slaves by owner’s names, which are compiled in Figure 4. Virtually all the names in the 1748-1755 list are French (Proesmans 1943a-1943c). Since some of the French names from the frontier period appear in British colonial period records these surnames can be linked to specific locations. When official colonization of Dominica began in 1763 the British needed settlers as a tax base. French settlers already living on the island were allowed to stay if they took a loyalty oath, leased their land from the Crown, and submitted to a few other conditions (Atwood 1791:3-5; Honychurch 1995:73-75; Murdoch 1984:556). The 1780-1782 parish register and British land transfer records show some of the French family names, which indicates that these individuals and their descendants agreed to the conditions and remained in Grande Bay Quarter, or St. Patrick’s Parish as the region was renamed. As the British took control of Dominica in the 1760s they ordered surveyors to make maps recording locations of settlements, points, rivers, and bays. Probable frontier settlement sites in Grand Bay Quarter are illustrated in two British maps [Figure 5]: an anonymous 1760s map (NA MFQ 1/1173) and the 1765 map from Jefferys West Indian atlas (NA CO 700/ DOMINICA5). Numbered on the maps in Figure 5 are named waterways, headlands, bays, and settlements. The villages of Petite Savanne and Colibri and the name Baquier are listed in the 1748-1755 register. As the British colonized Dominica they had to distribute and sell land since the French population was small. Enabling the distribution of land was a survey which divided the island into plots for sale, which was published in Byres’ 1776 map (NA CO/700 DOMINICA6). Little relief is provided and some plots exist only in the mapmaker’s imagination as they are drawn on mountain tops or steep slopes. But other plots coincide with settlements seen on the two maps from the 1760s and indicate continuity of settlement locations from the frontier to the colonial period. Moreover, a list of Freeholds and Leased lands accompanying the map provides a spatial reference since the land plots are numbered. Names from the 1748-1755 register present in the Byres list include Antheaume, Dubuque, Hirriart, and Pacquet. A third source is the list of Grants, Conveyances and Leases for St. Patrick’s Parish (NAD) which is a record of land transfers which were kept as the Crown granted, sold, and leased land to the French already there and newly arriving British settlers. This list contains several of the French surnames present in the 1747-1755 parish register. Figure 6 overlays the data described above on the Byres map to represent the frontier period cultural landscape in Grand Bay Quarter/St. Patrick’s Parish. This illustrates probable frontier period settlements and the approximate locations of families when a specific site is unknown. These data show the cultural landscape of southeastern Dominica as the parish church at Grand Bay became a node of social relations among enslaved and free people in the frontier based on the Roman Catholic faith they shared. The parish register combined with the spatial

150 data show the spatial extent of the network of enslaved and free people who used the Grand Bay church for baptisms, marriages, and burials. Individuals and families either traveled to the Church, or the parish priest visited sites to perform sacraments. These types of interactions would have led to a variety of social relationships, such as godparents for children and adults who were new Catholics. Mass also would have been conducted at the church, thus bringing a weekly structure. The Jesuit site at Grand Bay illustrates interaction between southern Dominica and northern Martinique, which continued inter-island relationships common throughout human settlement of the West Indies. Grand Bay also represents a significant investment of capital by an evangelical religious Order, in a frontier island which was not yet subject to the type and scale of industrial and sociopolitical development which typified colonies in the West Indies. The Jesuits contributed to shaping social relations on the frontier as the Grand Bay site combined economic interests with the spiritual needs of people living in southeastern Dominica. At Grand Bay the Jesuits owned a multi-crop plantation which engaged in a level of production and profit-making forbidden to their organization, while at the same time they started a parish which served the free and enslaved people, of French, African, and Creole ancestry in the region. By combining these different elements, the Grand Bay site was not purely a mission, nor was it simply a parish church or a plantation. The materialization of these ideas in the form of a church and a plantation did not occur within an unstructured space, as the Jesuit property’s location was determined by the stone cross built by Jeannot Rolle and the wider landscape of settlements of French and coloured families. The plantation, which for the Jesuit La Valette was perhaps the most important reason for investing in this property, was placed adjacent to and behind the church so as to deemphasize its importance. The church and stone cross were placed in a conspicuous location near the coast in order to display the religious function of this property to those passing by on land or at sea.

151 Bibliography

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152 California Frontier. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

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153 1943c The Slaves of the French Were Also Catholic and French. The Dominica Chronicle XXV(85):7. 1943d The Slaves of the French Continue to Be or to Become Catholic and English Planters Seem to Follow the Lead of the French. The Dominica Chronicle XXV(86):7. 1943e The Slaves of the French Continue to Be or to Become Catholic and English Planters Seem to Follow the Lead of the French. The Dominica Chronicle XXV(87):5-6.

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Figures

Figure 1: The stone cross in the Grand Bay Parish cemetery, July, 2009.

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Figure 2: Plan view of foundation of church at Grand Bay, Dominica.

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Figure 3: Intact portion of the west wall of the Grand Bay church.

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Figure 4: Owner’s Names in the Grand Bay Parish Register (from Proesmans 1943a-1943e).

Figure 5: Grande Bay Quarter in two British maps (The National Archive).

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Figure 6: Frontier period settlements and surnames on the Byres 1776 map (CO 700/DOMINICA6).

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