2 Early History and Demography of the Virgin Islands

To use a traditional opening, in 1493 Columbus gave the Virgin Islands their present-day name and met some Amerindians on St. Croix. The St. Croix Taínos were subsequently decimated by genocide and epidemics (see Sale 1991, Taylor 1977). A more comprehensive work on the Taínos was produced by Rouse (1992).

From 1600 onward the islands were being populated by Europeans of various descent and slaves imported from Africa. The year 1653 marked the founding of the Danish West-Indian Company, and hence the (late) entry of Denmark into the European colonizing efforts.

In 1665 the first attempt was made by the Danish to settle on the island of St. Thomas, the most sought-after of the three Virgin Islands because of its natural harbour, but it was without success. In 1671 the Danish West-Indian Company obtained a monopoly over St. Thomas, and in 1672 the Danish colonization proper of the island began, with 113 inhabitants. The Danes surely were not the first European settlers of the island, but we lack precise information on what happened before their arrival. The island seems to have been abandoned and uninhabited when the Danish settlers arrived.

The English had been raiding, among others, the Dutch Windward Antilles since 1666. Shortly afterwards a group of Dutch planters, who had fled from St. Eustatius to escape from the English (Goslinga 1971), settled on St. Thomas. According to Goodman (1985), they possibly brought a Dutch pidgin or creole with them, spoken by their slaves, although Sabino (1990) argues that the number of slaves brought along was probably very limited. It is also not unlikely that a pidgin or creole based on African, Dutch and other languages was used around the European forts on the West African coast (see Tonkin 1971). There the slaves were held in confinement by Dutch and other slave traders for some time up to six months or longer, until enough were gathered to fill a slave ship for the Caribbean. There are reports of West Africans who had learnt English and Dutch (Ardener 1968). However, no data of a possible Dutch-influenced contact language in West Africa have been found yet. At the height of Dutch activity in West Africa, the lingua franca was an already extant Portuguese pidgin. It was only replaced by West African Pidgin English when the English became dominant.

Now consider for a moment the constitution of the European population of the Virgin Islands in what is taken to be the formative period of Negerhollands. In 1688, when the first official census was held, there were 422 slaves in St. Thomas, as noted above, and 317 whites, among which there were (see Arends & Muysken 1992, and for an inventory based on slightly different figures Stein & Beck forthcoming):

These figures show that the slaves were faced with a potentially very heterogeneous primary ‘target’ language, dominated by Dutch (mainly in Zealandic and Flemish varieties). We can also expect English and Danish (lexical) influences, and those turn out to be there as well.

On the basis of archival research, Sabino concludes in her dissertation (1990) that in 1692 already a fifth of the slave population consisted of children born in St. Thomas. This is a relatively fast development, especially when considering that in Suriname for instance there was only a large group of locally born slaves after one century of colonization.

We should also consider the homogeneity of the slave population of that time. Often they were abducted from various places far away from the West African coast. According to Feldbaek & Justesen (1980) the large majority of the slaves imported in the period between 1672 to 1739, the formative period of Negerhollands, consisted of Twi-speaking Akan. Nevertheless we do not find clear traces of this Akan influence.

In fact, Sabino (1988) hypothesises that Ewe-speakers constituted the most important group in terms of African lexical substrate influence.

One might assume that Negerhollands would become a creole language diverging rather strongly from Dutch, judging by the relatively short period between colonization and the emergence of a locally born slave community. There was no time for a very gradual acculturation of the imported slaves to the colonial languages and cultures. We should point to the fact, however, that apparently the natality figure (the number of children being born) of the population was so high (which also transpires from Sabino's data) that a creole emerged which was quite close to Dutch. It must have been the locally born slaves who created Negerhollands, and they would have learned better Dutch than the newly arrived.

If we accept the theory of Goodman (1985) that Negerhollands perhaps emerged gradually in St. Eustatius before being taken to St. Thomas, then it is clear that internal migration (i.e. inside the Caribbean) played an important role in the genesis of Negerhollands. The sudden impulse of an established group of Negerhollands-speaking slaves at the beginning of the Virgin Islands colony could have been the decisive factor.

We saw above that in 1688 the slave population in St. Thomas outnumbered the white population. In 1725 their number had increased to 4490. In 1717 St. John came under Danish occupation, but by 1721, 25 of 39 planters on St. John were Dutchmen, and only nine Danes (Hall 1992:11). It was reported quite soon that the slaves on that island also spoke Negerhollands, which is perhaps an indication that the creole must have already existed early in the 18th century.

In 1733 St. Croix was bought by the Danes from the French, but by 1741 there were already five times as many English on the island as Danes (Hall 1992:13). The Danes asked the Herrnhut missionaries to participate in the colonization of St. Croix, but they were unable to do so; the majority of the settlers in 1733 were Moravians, but many became ill and soon passed away due to the climate. Thus, Negerhollands came to be used much less here than on the other two Danish Antilles, and an English creole emerged. Nevertheless, there are a few Creole slave letters from that island (see II, 1.2.6).

Some decades later, the resulting language situation in the three Virgin Islands was summarized (in Negerhollands) by the Moravian missionary Auerbach (1774) as follows:

Die hab well twee drie onder die swart Volk, die sender a leer voor verstaan beetje van die hollandisch Taal, as sender woon na die Stadt, en hoor die ider Dag van die Blanko, maar die Plantey-Volk no kan vor verstaan die soo. Doch, die no sal maak een Verhinder, as die lieve Broeer will skriev eenmaal na sender, maski die ben Hollandisch of na die Hoogduytsch, soo die sal maak sender moeschi bli, en ons sal lees die Brief voor sender na Creol. Na St. Croix die hab meer van die Negers, die sender kan verstaan English, as na St. Thomas en St. Jan, maar doch sender English Praat ka mingel ook altoeveel met die Creol- en Guinee-taal... Da Neger-English die ben.

‘There are some among the black people who have learned to understand a bit of the Dutch language, as they live in town, and hear it every day from the whites, but the plantation folk cannot understand it. This should not be an impediment if the dear brethren will write to them some time, albeit in Dutch or High German, for this will make them very happy, and we will read the letter for them in Creole. On St. Croix there are more blacks who can understand English than in St. Thomas and St. John, but still their English speech is mixed very much with the Creole and Guinea languages. It is Negro-English.’

We conclude our historical sketch at this point as the Negerhollands language is definitively established and documented. The history of the Virgin Islands after the formative period will be detailed in various places. It is related to the sociolinguistic development of Negerhollands in sections 5 and 7.4. It is also dealt with in relation to the history of the missions and their consequences in section 6. For further reading about the history of the Virgin Islands, we refer among others to Brøndsted (1953), Degn (1974) and Hall (1992).