CHAPTER 1- MURDER! ... AT A PLACE CALLED SOLITUDE: THE EMPIRE OF

THE LAW V. 'BRITISH GUIANA'.

The Amerindians: 1

Hannah. the Victim, did languish. and languishing did live for and during the space of two hours or thereabouts, at which said time. on the same day and year aforesaid, she the said Hannah of the mortal wound aforesaid died.

Billy William, The Prisoner, pleaded Not Guilty.

William Maltis, father of the Prisoner, (through an interpreter, William Hilhouse) has an invocation to the supreme Being, which he considers binding on his mind to induce him to tell the truth; the two laid hold of a stick, and the Indian repeated a form of invocation after the interpreter, ''/ swear to the Great God above; it is true that 1 say. If 1 fie, Great God destroy me." "We are Arawaks; a man catching his wife in adultel)' may by right kill the woman, but 1 would not do it myself; I have heard prisoner say he had suspicion, but 1 don't know, as I have been living at Capacy; I have heard of instances of Indians killing their wives for that crime, but I don't know of them myself " [He runs away.]

The Slaves: Janet: Understands an oath. "I belong to Mr. Alstein ... l know prisoner; I have heard him called Billy William. f know a buck woman named Hannah; she is dead; she died 111 our place, in my presence .... the buck struck her with a knife in the back; he hauf'd out the knife and wiped it on his shirt sleeve; she gave a haloo, and clapped her hand on her back; the buck went away; 1 and some others lifted her up and carried her under the Iogie; she bled bad; she never said a word, she only cried ... My master ... is a coloured man, and is married... I never saw my master playing with her; 1 never saw my master and the buckeen any way talking together; my master gave him two glasses of falerium; they were little glasses, not a tumbler ... the bucks are jealous of their wives;./ think he must have talked in his heart, when he was laying in his hammock to make him kill his wtfe ...

Phillis: Does not understand the nature of an oath; sent away.

Aurelius: I belong to Mr A/stein; ... I know prisoner ... his buck name is Jamma . .. . 1 can't read; can't tell figures on the clock; ... it was 12 o'clock when the buck struck her; my master did not tell me it was 12 o'clock; I know it was; ... / knew it by the sun; ... my sister[ s] was there. Phillis and Jeannette; Phillis has been christened; I cannot say if she can say her prayers; ... the buck is of the

The Colonists: John Alstein: 1 live at Tapacouma in the Creek, it is a branch of the Pomeroon River; it is about eight hours pulling ji'om my place to the coast by the canal; I generally square timber or .1plit staves ... my place is named Solitude.... I told him I could not let him have the gun ... my brother had a grant of my place Solitude from the Governor ... My brother has had the grant about three years; there was a small house there at the time; we had the Iogie built by indians; we paid them for it ... the bucks are in the habit of visiting us, when so, they swing their hammocks in the Iogie; sometimes they stay for a couple of days ... we had at this time about 18 slaves ... she was wild in the face; she was a nice looking woman for a buckeen ... She was not prisoner's wife ... / was the only free person at my house that day; my wife had been in town 10 or 14 days ... the wound was examined by the buck; there was a great loss of blood; when she wished to speak, 1 think the wind came out accompanied with blood .... no lines were run to make the boundaries of our grant.

Arrindell: The court has never taken cognisance of any offences of Indians.

William Hilhouse: 1 have been in this colony sixteen years; the last eight years 1 have had an exclusive household of Indian domestics .... they have customs, but no code of laws, but have the lex taliones, where white mediation does not step in to buy off the murder by pecuniary consideration... the Caribbees always punish adultery with death ... adultery with a negro, or the descendant of a negro, is punished with death ... there have been so many instances of incontinence with white

The Colonial Officials: Charles Wray: [President of the Honourable Court of Criminal and Civil Justice of the Colonies of Demerara and Essequibo.l With regard to the pmver of the court the argument will resolve itself into the consequences that follow from the fact of the ~pot where the act was committed being within the territory of Great Britain.... Their position appears to me to be that of a conquered nation, or more accurately speaking, that of a nation whose lands the Dutch, our predecessors, occupied, peopled and governed by their own laws and instructions, without any resistance from the former inhabitants; but the mere fact of non-resistance cannot change the character of the possession, nor the situation of those from whom the territory was taken, it is still a conquered country; these foreigners, then so conquered, have chosen to continue within the territory, have never disputed our rights, and have adopted our institutions formed for their express comfort and protection. Are they then not in the situation of any other foreigner who came into another nation's bounds, or remain in and domicile themselves under the new Government when a conquest is made, and de they not bind themselves thereby to obey and conform to those laws that the new community has thought proper to establish? In my judgement they do.

The Court finds the Prisoner Guilty.

D'Urban: [Until July 1831, Lieutenant Governor of the

1 Excerpts from Fiscal v. Billy William (an Indian) 1830, contained in Papers Relative to the Aboriginal Tribes in British Possessions, in Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP) 1834, vol. xliv. pp. 509-571.

Chapter 1 I 18

Armmak nation; he spoke in Arawaak to his wife, I understood it but very little ... Hannah was not quite a handsome woman, at first she II' as quite handsome ... mr master never had anythinR to do with these buckeens ... never knew people make the bucks drunk to hm·e their wives ... prisoner lick his wife I think for jealousy; jealous of everybody, nobody in particular; he was jealous of master because he think master have his wife ... there is rum in falerium .. .I was there the 1vhole time the buck was in the hammock; I was cleaning a gun and the lock ... he held his eyes open watching me; I suppose he think J go take his wife; I never was employed by my master to get the buckeen or any other woman; ... I am a house boy ... she only ha/looed; she did not say what her husband kill her for ...

persons .... in all the nations the descendalll, holl'ever remote, of a neJ?ro. is still classed as a negro ... if prisoner 1rere acquitted I do not think the Indians would spare this man unless the Governor or some other person arranged compensation for the death of this woman, otherwise the avenger of her death is 11011' in this room; if the prisoner were convicted and executed, his relations would not have recourse to the lex taliones, for the public executioner taking his life, it would easily be explained to them ... in their native towns the Indian's nick-name is Yarike ... the moment the reason was explained of the prisoner's death, if executed, the lex taliones would cease ... I know froriz tradition a treaty has been made by the colony with the Arawaks. Warrows and Caribbees; I have only understood the treaty to be as retaining them as soldiers in the defence of the colony ...

Gerrard Timmerman: I am 77 years old two days ago; have been in this colony 61 years ... I have never before this heard of death for adultery from man to wife, but from man to man; never before this knew of an Indian tried before the court for an injury to another Indian; I have often seen the prisoner with his family; have seen his wife, she was a very fine woman for an Arawak; he came to my house; I told him to stop and I would protect him, and send him to the Governor, which I did with a memorial; I did so because the father [Anthony] of the wife called on me to give him up, the buck, as he wanted to kill him; he said he would kill him in three days; I sent him up to protect him from the buck; I did not send him to be tried, for I did not think he would be tried; as protector I act to settle disputes; I am a protector of Indians; if an Indian had done wrong and I sent for him, and he did not some, I would send other bucks for him; I have no instructions to send a dunaar in such a case, or a militia man without authority; in an exaggerated case I should go myself. ... Anthony and a great number quantity of bucks came to

United Colony of Demerara and Essequiho, thereafter the Governor of British Guiana (the united colony of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo).] we have not dispossessed the Indians of their territory; they occupy it as freely and uninterruptedly, for every purpose which is essential or agreeable to them, as if we had never come hither, (by the way I·Ve only succeeded to the place of the Dutch), but the tribes, who live within reach of civilization. derive most solid and important benefits from our regular and constant assistance ... Those, however, whose purposes of traffic bring them to George Town, where there are quarters provided for them, and rations issued, besides triennial presents also distributed at the posts on the rivers ...

Goderich: [Secretary of State for the Colonies.] If I were to confine my attention to the evidence before the court, I should concur with Mr. Wray in thinking that the case is established.... I fear that the title of European nations to dominion over the territory and persons of savage tribes can scarcely be referred to any higher or more formal ground ... A debt is due to the Aboriginal inhabitants of British Guiana of a very different kind from that which the inhabitants of Christiandom may in a certain sense be said to owe in general to other barbarous tribes. The whole territory which has been occupied by Europeans on the northern shores of the South American continent has been acquired by no other right than that of superior power, and I feel that the natives whom we have dispossessed have to this day received no compensation for the loss of the lands on which they formerly subsisted .... However urgent is the duty of economy in every

Chapter 1 I 19

mY place; he said he wanted Billy William. to kill him; he went away vexed ... I once paid eight pieces of salompores. and I asked him what he H'ould take to make it up, and he \I'Ould not take any thing.

A. Van Ryck de Groot: been forty years in the colony; the lex rationes is in force amongst them for adulte1y ... I am a protector of Indians; if an Indian made a complaint to me I should act as a mediator, not as a magistrate; if the injuring party did not choose to appear, I should not feel myself authorized to compel him to do so; in their quarrels I should consider I had nothing to do, unless they called on me as mediator; there is no order not to interfere, nor the contrary; on a grant the grantee is ordered not to molest the Indians, hut to cultivate friendship; I give presents in the name of the Governor to the Indians; they are a retaining fee for fidelity and friendship ... the Indians consider them as presents to them as friends and allies not as subjects; I do not know they have ant mode of recording events, or any substitute for writing; any compact between them and us is oral only.

James Fraser: I have been ten years in the colony. I know prisoner; /live at Tapacouma Creek... his wife was a very handsome woman; her character was like that of Indian women in general, pretty loose.

branch of public service, If ts impossible to withhold from the natives of the country the inestimable benefit which they would derive from appropriating to their religious and moral instruction some moderate part of that income which results from the culture of the soil to which they or their fathers had an indisputable title. ··

Chapter 1 I 20

TH 988.102 P43 Pr-1

1111111111111111111111111111111 TH15019

4. The Defendant /the Attorney General of Guyana] specifically denies paragraph 4 of the Statemellf of Claim and will contend that the Arekuna and Akaiwo tribes were nomadic and the former migrated to the territory of Guyana from Venezuela less than 100 years ago.

14. The Defendant will contend that the Plaintiff's claim is speculative, vexatious and malicious and ought to be dismissed with costs. 2

British Guiana was created as an administrative entity when the two colonies of

Berbice and the United Colonies of Demerara and Essequibo were joined in 1831. At

the time of its creation, however, it had neither clearly defined subjects nor clearly

defined borders. This chapter will attempt to show that Fiscal v. Billy William (an

Indian) and Robert Schomburgk's excursions were necessary in making British

Guiana into an entity in which 'systematic colonization', after the abolition of slavery,

could be effectively pursued. By 1831, colonial officials knew that with the abolition

of slavery, labour in the colony would have to be coerced by means other than the

whip. The institution of the Stipendiary Magistrates to administer contracts between

employers and employees is but one example of the growing significance of the law

in the transition from slavery. It was, therefore, not enough to create an administrative

unit called British Guiana; a legal one was imperative. This chapter argues that

despite their coming after the fact, Billy William and Robert Schomburgk were both

central to giving substance to the idea of 'British Guiana'. Fiscal v. Billy William (an

Indian) decided once and for all that Amerindians (and therefore all persons within

the Colony) were inside the jurisdiction of British law. What that case failed to do,

however, was define the colony. Billy William was, in this sense, among others,

incomplete without Robert Schomburgk. The lines that Schomburgk left behind

2 Two paragraph's of the Attorney General of Guyana's "Statement of Defence" to the claim, filed by two tribes of the Upper Mazaruni, in the Essequibo region of Guyana, that 'the Akawaio and Arekuna people as a whole had and have a reasonable and legitimate expectation that their ownership since time immemorial of the land and their rights flowing from that ownership would be recognised and continued and that no step will be taken to impair the same by the State and/or the Government of Guyana or its representatives, assigns or licensees'. The "Statement of Claim" was filed in the High Court of the Supreme Court of Judicature, No. 1114-W, 11 December 1998. The Attorney General's Statement of Defence was filed on 17 January 2000.

Chapter 1 I 21

would decide, after the Arbitration Tribunal·~ of 1898-99, the boundaries marking the

physical limits of the territory. Billy William and Robert Schomburgk effectively

brought an end to anyone's search for solitude in the interior of 'British Guiana'.

Proceeding from the question, why did Billy William live? This chapter will further

attempt to demonstrate that these boundaries, asserted more than justified, one around

Amerindians and the other around the land, make it so that inverted commas must

continue to bind 'British Guiana'.

I.

At a place called Solitude4, in July 1830, when Billy William murdered his 'wife',

Hannah, the two applicable systems of justice (British and Amerindian) prevailing in

the territory declared that he should die for the crime. After his trial in the British

court, the judge sentenced Billy William to death by hanging - 'The Court finds the

prisoner Guilty. The Court condemns the prisoner Billy William to be taken hence to

the place from whence he came, and to be taken thence to the place of execution, and

there to be hanged by the neck until dead';5 the transcript of his trial also revealed that

according to Amerindian justice, prevailing in the region at the time, Hannah's closest

male relatives should have killed Billy William in retaliation - 'the father of the wife

called on me to give him up, the buck, as he wanted to kill him; he said he would kill

him in three days' .6 Slipping through the cracks of (legal) reason, Billy William lived.

3 I am grateful to Odeen Ishmael for his generosity in sharing this valuable archive with the public by making it available on the internet at: . This collection, translated into English from Dutch Spanish and French for the benefit of the Tribunal, Ishmael informs us, 'is a compilation of many of the historical documents gathered and examined by the United States Venezuelan Boundary Commission and the Arbitral Tribunal', which he has titled Guyana's Western Border. As per Ishmael, the 'Spanish manuscripts were gathered from the records of the "Indies" existing in the "Archivo de Simancas," in the "Archivo de Indias," at Seville, and in various public Departments of the Spanish Government. Extracts were also made from the private library of the King of Spain, and the Manuscript Department of the "Biblioteca Nacional," Madrid' while 'the Dutch documents were copied from the Rijksarchief of the Hague'. I will refer to this archive as GWB throughout the remainder of this chapter. 4 On the Tapacouma Creek in the Pomeroon region of the United [British] Colony of Demerara and Essequibo. See map at end titled 'Part of Guiana in I 841 ', taken from Robert Schomburgk, "Expedition to the Lower Parts of the Barima and Guiania Rivers, in British Guiana." Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 12. (1842), pp. 169-178. 5 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Indictment presented to the Honourable the Court of Criminal and Civil Justice of the United Colony of Demerara and Essequibo, by Charles Herbert, First Fiscal, R. 0. v. Billy William (prisoner). 1 March 1831. p. 515. 6 Ibid. 'Extract from the Note Book of his Honour Charles Wray, President of the Honourable Court of Criminal and Civil Justice of the Colonies of Demerara and Essequibo', Monday, 28 February, 1831. Testimony of Gerard Timmerman. p. 520.

Chapter 1 I 22

This was not the first time that the colonial authorities had taken it upon themselves to

prosecute an Amerindian in this territory for the murder of his wife. Protector of

Indians, A. Van Ryck de Groot, testified during Billy William's trial that in 1795

while he was residing at Fort Island in the Essequibo River, 'a man was punished

[when the territory was under Dutch rule, by the Com1 of Justice there], I think, for

murdering his wife; I believe she was an Indian woman; I cannot say whether the man

was Indian or not; but we took him for one; his name was Macanowri, he was

decapitated; I believe the name of the woman was Yagrow'. 7 That was 35 years

previously. de Groot, could 'not recollect any other similar trials'. Finally, with

respect to his current role as Protector, de Groot testified:

I am a Protector of Indians. If an Indian made a complaint to me I should act as a mediator, not as a Magistrate. If the injuring party did not choose to appear, I should not feel myself authorized to compel him to do so. In their quarrels I should consider I had nothing to do unless they cal1ed on me as mediator; there is no order not to interfere, nor the contrary.8

Gerard Timmerman, 77 years old and living in the colony for 61 years, testified that

he 'never knew before this of an Indian tried before the court for injury to another

Indian' .9 Timmerman, to whom Billy William fled after the murder, further testified:

'I told him to stop and I would protect him, and send him to the Governor, which I

did, with a memorial ... I sent him up to protect him from the buck; I did not send him

to be tried; for I did not think he would be tried' .10 Why, therefore, Billy. William's

trial, conviction and the eventual commutation of his sentence?

There are two parts to this question: I) why did Billy William approach the British for

protection? And 2) why did the British protect him from the Amerindian community

instead of killing him themselves? To overstate the answer to both questions for the

moment, it was because Billy William was already dead, and he knew it; the role of

the law - the first role particularly in the colonial context - being to give life to the

dead, it legally and politically nonsensical to kill a dead man, neither did the already

dead man, Billy William, have anything to lose by appearing before the law.

7 Ibid. Testimony of A. Van Ryck de Groot. p. 521. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. p. 520. 10 Ibid.

Chapter 1 I 23

In at effort to explicate that last statement, I will revisit the three principle reasons, put

f01th by the British, on which the commutation of Billy William's death sentence

hinged: first, the question of British legal jurisdiction over Amerindian peoples of the

region - 'whether the Indians, whatever their customs may be, arc in a position to

claim their exercise by a jurisdiction which would supersede our rights' 11; second,

Hannah's adultery which in some way mitigated his punishment - 'the injury which

had been done him (Billy William) by the unfortunate victim (Hannah) of his revenge

should be held forth as an offence of much turpitude, which, by extenuating in some

degree his own, had alone saved him from the punishment of death' 12 - and; finally

the colonial perception that Billy William was not civilized enough, that is, human

enough to be killed for his crime - 'Penal laws devised for a civilised community

cannot of course be applied indiscriminately and in their entire extent, to regulate the

conduct of a people in a state of barbarism' .13 Recognizing the intertwined nature of

these issues, they will not be discussed separately but instead are woven together in

the chapter.

II.

Fiscal v. Billy William (an Indian) did not become a precedent setting legal case in the

sense that it was not explicitly cited in the future jurisprudence that authorized British

jurisdiction over Amerindians, however, as I am arguing, this case marked a shift in

colonial legal policy towards Amerindians in 'British Guiana'. This shift can be seen

for example, in the two other legal cases involving Amerindians that attracted British

legal attention in the ten years after Billy William.

The first case, First Fiscal v. Frederick (an Indian), was registered in September

1831, just at the time that Billy William's was being hotly debated. Frederick went on

trial on 13 February 1832 14, fours days before Goderich gave his final decision

11 Ibid. 'Extract from the Note Book of his Honour Charles Wray, President of the Honourable Court of Criminal and Civil Justice of the Colonies of Demerara and Essequibo', Monday, 28 February, 1831. Charles Wray's summation.s p. 522 12 Ibid. Despatch from Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban. 17 February 1832. p. 538. 13 Ibid. 14 GWB 1803 to 1840, Item 469. Extract from the Note-Book of his Honour the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Colony of Demerary and Essequebo, in British Guiana. First Criminal Session, Monday, 13 February, 1832.

Chapter 1 I 24

regarding Billy William, on 17 February 1832. 15 (Though he had commuted the

sentence in July 1831 Goderich was still deliberating Billy William's punishment in

February 1832, during which time Billy William was made to 'remain in a public

jail') Described as a crime of 'a very dark complexion', Frederick was charged with

murdering his in-laws by breaking their skulls with a stick and burying them in a

provision patch. 16 This murder took place in the vicinity of the Marshall Falls in the

Mazarooni district of the Essequibo. In the transcript of the trial of this case and other

related documents, there was no deliberation over the question of jurisdiction neither

in terms of place or over persons. There was, however, mention of the opinion that

'when an Indian is killed, the relation [of] the person killed considers it his duty to

take vengeance by killing the murderer'. 17 Even though the person offering this

testimony also stated that he knew of 'no custom among the Indians for the

punishment of murder', this issue did not receive here the detailed attention that it did

in the Billy William case. These questions, among others, were being settled in Fiscal

v. Billy William (an Indian) and so, as we shall see in due course, Frederick's fate

hinged on the outcome of Billy William.

In 1841 another case arose while Schomburgk was completing his boundary survey

and is recorded in some detail in his brother, Richard's account of that expedition. In

the district of Cumaka, after the deaths of his parents under suspicious circumstances

-either by 'charms', or by 'secretly administered poison' 18 - Maicerwari, identified

simply as a boy, came to the conclusion that a Piai (medicine-man) known as Waihahi

was responsible for their deaths. On questioning the Chief of the village as to why he

had not reported this murder, the Chief replied 'because I saw nothing wrong in it: the

boy avenged his father's and mother's death on the man who robbed him of them'. 19

Both the Schomburgk brothers were convinced that in killing the Piai, the boy had

15 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Despatch from Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban. 17 February 1832. p. 538. 16 Ibid. Letter from George Bagot, Esq., to Major-General Sir B. D'Urban. 20 September 1831. p. 528. 17 GWB 1803 to 1840, Item 469. Extract from the Note-Book of his Honour the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Colony of Demerary and Essequebo, in British Guiana. First Criminal Session, Monday, 13 February, 1832. Testimony of George Philip Wishrope. 18 GWB 1841, Item 482. Inclosure 2: Mr. Schomburgk to Governor Light, River Manari (a tributary of the Barima), June 22, 1841. 19 Richard Schomburgk. Travels in British Guiana 1840-1844, Translated and Edited with Geographical and General Indices and Route Maps, by Walter E. Roth. Vol. I, (Georgetown: Published by Authority Georgetown, 1922). p. 122.

Chapter 1 I 25

done what he had done out of 'the highest sense of duty'. 20 Mr. King, the Police

Inspector, however, was not so impressed and 'after a long and difficult enquiry',

Richard Schomburgk wrote, 'he [King] held Maicerwari prisoner so as to take him to

Georgetown and send him up for trial, which in spite of all protestations on our part,

and to my brother's great annoyance, was subsequently effected'. 21 The Police

Inspector fetched off Maicerwari to trial before Robert Schomburgk could finish

making his maps suggesting that the question of jurisdiction over the Amerindians

had already been settled and opens up the possibility that the anxieties over borders

had little to do with Amerindians, that it was then, as it has come to be today, a

dispute between the Venezuelans and the British. I will disagree and suggest instead

that borders are central to the working of the law, that borders are a recognition that

there are some who are outside of the law. In other words, I wish to argue that borders

are tangible evidence of the negotiation between the law, in this case Western law,

and local practice.

It may be important to observe that all of the above three cases involved Arawaaks,

i.e., they involved disputes internal to a particular tribe. Furthermore, they all

involved the settling of domestic disputes. They were all, in a sense, confined to the

realm of the family: in Billy William it was a wife-murder, with Frederick it was the

murder of in-laws and in Maicerwari 's case it was the revenge for the death of"

parents. (Other cases that attracted attention at this time involved non-Amerindians,

i.e., whites and Negroes, assault on Amerindians, in which case the tribe-identity of

the Amerindian is not mentioned.22) There is one other case that found the British

involving themselves in the affairs of the Accawaiis. It occurred in 1826. In that case,

according to the Protector of Indians, Bagot, 'the quarrel arose by an Indian of one of

the families having been killed by one of the other, who, in his tum, was put to death,

and his death again revenged, until the law of retaliation produced its ordinary result

in the death of several innocent persons on both sides' .23 The dispute reached such a

pitch that the respective parties, being 'hotly numerous' had 'stockaded themselves'.

Into this situation the Protector intervened and offered to 'adjust' the dispute.

20 Ibid. 123. 21 Ibid. 22 For examples see, PP 1834, vol. xliv Letter from George Bagot, Esq., to Major-General Sir B. D'Urban. 20 September 1831. p. 529. 23 GWB 1803 to 1840, Item 468, Inclosure 2: Mr. Bagot To Lieutenant-Governor Sir B. D'urban, Essequebo, September 20, 1831.

Chapter 1 I 26

According to Bagot, not only did the Accawaiis agree but they also 'demanded what

they should do in similar cases in future'. The result of this intervention was that the

Protector offered and the Accawaiis agreed 'to bring the individual who should again

kill one of the other party and give him up to be tried by our [British] laws'. 24 The

affair, as per the Protector, ended amicably: 'The Chiefs having eaten bread and drank

wine together then placed their marks to a Treaty of Peace and AJJiance which I had

drawn up and explained to them, and which I have every reason to believe they have

faithfully observed, having heard of no feud or quarrel between them since'. 25 In

retelling the details of this case, Bagot appears to have been arguing that BiJJy

William was an outcome of that agreement amongst the Accawaiis.

With the exception of the Piai's and Frederick's case, which occurred after BiJJy

William, all of the cases mentioned in this chapter were referred to, if only if) passing,

in deciding Fiscal v. Billy William (an Indian). Billy WiJJiam, unlike any other case

before it, (and none since) was decided upon by drawing on the most extensive

catalogue of Amerindian presence before any variant of Western law. Billy William

set the precedent that Amerindians, whatever their tribe, because they availed

themselves of British 'protection' were within the jurisdiction of English law. There

is no evidence at this time of the law intervening to settle inter-tribal disputes of ,·

which the capture and sale of Amerindians as slaves was an obvious and persistent

one.

III.

Though John Alstein testified, 'I was the only free person at my house that day' ,26

neither Hannah nor Billy William were slaves. As Alstein further disclosed, the 'small

house' at Solitude, the 'Iogie', was 'built by Indians' and the 'bucks [Amerindians]

[were] in the habit of visiting us, when so, they swing their hammocks in the Iogie;

sometimes they stay for a couple of days'. 27 From AI stein's description, the coming

and going of the Amerindians at his place was not very different from their relation

24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 PP 1834, vol. xliv. 'Extract from the Note Book of his Honour Charles Wray, President of the Honourable Court of Criminal and Civil Justice of the Colonies of Demerara and Essequibo', Monday, 28 February, 1831. Testimony of John Alstein. p. 518. 27 Ibid.

Chapter 1 I 27

with the Post-holder in the region. In the Frederick case, Mr. Richardson, the Post­

Holder, described that relationship: 'Sometimes they come and put the post in order

and weed the grass, and they are given these things in payment. They always expect

payment for their work. Sometimes ~hey get these things without work. Not always, I

believe' .28 Richardson was right, the Amerindians did not always receive payment for

their work.

In 1503, Queen Isabella of Spain passed a decree making it legal to enslave

'cannibals', i.e., the Caribs of the Caribbean. It was not until 1793 that enslaving

Amerindians was abolished. Ironically, for much of the life of Amerindian

enslavement, it was upon the Caribs that Europeans relied for their slaves.

The cannibalism of the Caribs began from the time of Columbus?9 European stories

about Caribs being 'eaters of human flesh' abound in the AT records from 1593 to the

late 1 ?'h century. As time went by however, 'slaving' was added to the crimes of the

Caribs and eventually it would completely replace cannibalism. For instance, in one

of the earliest accounts, of 1 January 1593, Don Antonio Berrio wrote to the King of

Spain informing him that he had come to the New Kingdom of Granada 'with the

desire for rest which my age demanded' .30 'And being come to that kingdom, and

hearing the great news there is about the expedition to El Dorado', Berrio continues,

'I collected at once a number of men and a great quantity of horses and cows and

plenty of munitions and other necessary supplies; and with this equipment, which cost

me a large sum of gold, I set out from the New Kingdom'. 'Skirmishes with some of

the Indians', compelled Berrio to abandon his first attempt, but when he set out the

second time, a began his voyage down the Orinoco, he found the land empty, for all

the country is without natives, on account of the fleets of the Caribs, who ascend the

river and have eaten them up'. Berrio was not put off though. Committed to finding El

28 GWB 1803 to 1840, Item 469. Extract from the Note-Book of his Honour the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Colony Of Demerary and Essequebo, in British Guiana. C First Criminal Session, Monday, 13 February, 1832. Charles Herbert, First Fiscal, v. Frederick, an Indian. (Charge of Murder of two Indians.) 29 See for example, Letter of Dr. Chanca on the Second Voyage of Columbus, pp. 287-288 in The Northmen, Columbus, And Cabot 985-1503, Original Narratives of Early American History The Voyages Of Columbus And Of John Cabot. ed. Edward Gaylord Bourne, With Maps And A Facsimile Reproduction (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906). A part of the Guttenberg ebook Project and available at <www.guttenberg.org>. 30 GWB 1593 to 1613, Item 1. Don Antonio Berrio to the King of Spain, January 1, 1593.

Chapter 1 I 28

Dorado, he thanked God one day when he was lost for sending him guides in the form

of 'two pirogues of Caribs, who were stealing people for their cannibal feasts and

food'?' Stories such as these are too numerous and familiar to merit recounting here.

What is interesting is the turn that takes place in the 17'h century.

In April of 1686, weary of French advances on the South American continent, the

Spanish official in Guayana complained that the Caribs were known to 'kill Indians

who are not of their nation, and even white people, without any cause, but simply

from their evil nature', that they 'have committed much slaughter and devastation in

alliance with the French, with whom at the present time they have traffic and

communication, and it is much to be feared that they are going to help the French to

settle on the mainland'. 32 This shift in the Eur~pean perceived menace of the Caribs

from cannibalism to slaving had been developing for some years earlier with the aid

of the non-Spanish European colonists. In the 1640s, for example, Spanish soldiers

complained that 'the Caribs sell these Lutherans [i.e., the Dutch of Essequibo and

Berbice] the Indian women they steal from the villages'. In the same letter, the

soldiers, however, make a case for enslaving the Caribs on 'the ground that they are

such cruel butchers of human flesh', whose 'barbarism' was again revealed 'in these

past days', when 'Father Sedeno, the Superior, while going in a pirogue from

Cumanagoto to Cumana, was carried away with all the others, and in an island, before

reaching Paria, they were murdered and eaten' .33 By mid 181h century, the Spanish

would no longer be lamenting Carib cannibalism, but would write instead that the

'slave trade has so completely changed the Caribs that they give themselves no other

occupation than a constant going to and returning from war, selling and killing the

Indians'. The report goes on to give a lengthy description of how the slaving missions

were carried out by the Dutch and the Caribs.

31 Ibid.

I am unable to name all the nations which the Caribs pursue with the object of enslaving them. But these are the tribes dwelling on our frontiers, and the most generally known are the Barinagotos, Maos, Macos, Amarucotos, Camaracotos, and Afiaos, Paravinas, Guaicas, etc. The Dutch and Caribs, to

32 GWB 1670 to 1688, Item 124. Reports Concerning the Carib Indians of Guayana, With Report of the Fiscal (1686) Annex 1 of the Report. Don Tiburcio de Axpe y Zuniga to Secretary, Don Antonio Ortiz de Otalora. Madrid, April 26, 1686. 33 GWB 1638 to 1647 Item 58. Account of the help that was sent to the Provinces of Guayana. The Navigation of the River Meta and Great Orinoco, with their Soundings; the Branches into which it is divided; the Forests and Plains; Rivers which flow into it; and the Indian Tribes which inhabit its banks, with their customs.

Chapter 1 I 29

go to those nations, ascend the River Essequibo, navigating it well for twenty days up stream to where they have a post; and on account of a very great fall they have to drag the boat for a long distance, and then continue their navigation communicating if they like with the Rio Negro, ascending the river from the Essequibo by the right bank to the River Aripamuri some lagoons are met with; the Aripamuri is navigated as f~r as possible, when a porterage of about half-a-league is to be overcome to the River Mauhajan, which is formed by these lagoons, and by this last the Rio Negro is reached; descending this by the left bank to the Amazons, and ascending the same river by the right, they enter the Orinoco.34

The threat presented by the Caribs in the mid 181h century was that they enslaved

other Amerindians. In the struggle for control of this 'frontier' the Caribs found

themselves caught between the Spanish (and later the Portuguese) on the one hand

and the Dutch and French (and later the English) on the other.

By the time Schomburgk made his ascent of the Corentyne in 1836, he was more

interested in finding 'the Slave Path' used by the Caribs than he was in finding

cannibals. The Caribs he did encounter there were still described by him as a 'nation

dreaded by every other tribe' ,35 but this was due only to the fear of being captured by

them as slaves. Schomburgk was happy when in an expedition a year later he

managed to convince the 'uncivilized Caribs' to 'relinquish their original plan of the

[slaving] expedition' ?6 Schomburgk's journal of his expeditions in many ways reads

like a novel. One of the most striking ways in which it does so is the way in which the

search for the 'slave path' that links Corentyn to Berbice and then to the Essequibo

begins and ends the narrative composed over a nine year period.

In the second expedition, his first up the Corentyn, Schomburgk was forced, on

account of the lack of cooperation from the Caribs and with a 'heavy heart', to

abandon his search for the portion of the 'slave path' that led from Corentyn to

Berbice. Along the way Schomburgk had engaged the Caribs to serve as guides. As

the expedition progressed the Caribs became more and more reluctant to lead

34 GWB 1757 to 1758, Item 378. Extracts from Testimony of the Judicial Proceedings which were Instituted Concerning the Secret Expedition, and Apprehension of two Dutchmen, with their Wives and a Negro Slave, in the River Cuyuni, and the Wounding of two Soldiers by these in the Invasion which took place. (1) Letter Of The Prefect Of The Missions To The Commandant OfGuayana, Which Gave Rise To The Secret Expedition Against The Dutch. Sefior Don Felix Ferreras, Sunday, June 9, 1758. 35 Robert Schomburgk. "Diary of an Ascent of the River Corentyn in British Guayana, in October, 1836". Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 7. (1837), pp. 285-301. p. 286. 36 Ibid. p. 331.

Chapter 1 I 30

Schomburgk to the illusive path, at one time saying that it was impassable in the rainy

season. Later Schomburgk would come across another group of Caribs proceeding to

'the Macusi country, with the intention of trading for slaves'. 37 His earlier suspicions

were now confirmed: the Caribs had deliberately withheld knowledge of the path

because the surveyor's presence would interfere with their design.38 Schomburgk then

changed course and led his next expedition up the Berbice where he was stunned·

when 'on landing the Indians drew my attention to some bushes which had recently

been cut with a knife: we now cautiously approached the hoped-for turtles, but to our

mortification we found that they were only shells. We saw remains of former fires,

and it was evident that I had found by accident the path that leads to the Essequibo' 39

It was not until his last expedition, however, when he returned to the Corentyn in

1843 that while ascending the Rupununi a Carib informed him that 'they had left their

craft at the place where the path leads from Corentyne to Essequibo' .40 Schomburgk

was at last able to map the complete 'slave path' from the Corentyn through the

Berbice to the Essequibo.

The passing manner m which he was gtven this information characterizes

Schomburgk's encounters with the Caribs. Though he managed to procure a

collection of their skulls, he generally kept his distance from the living ones he met.

So much so that when in his "Report on the Natives of British Guiana", where he

managed to take the measurements of the height of the figure, circumference of the

pelvis and length and breadth of the hands of five tribes, including the Atorias of

whom 'only seven individuals are alive' ,41 he could give no measurements for the

Caribs.

That Schomburgk met so few Caribs is suspicious, this despite the drastic reduction in

the overall numbers of Amerindians in the region due to the introduction of 'European

vices and diseases' and 'our most potent instruments for the subtle or the violent

37 Ibid. p. 298. 38 Ibid. p. 298. 39 Robert Schomburgk. "Diary of an Ascent of the River Berbice, in British Guayana, in 1836-37". Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 7. (1837) pp. 302-350. p. 328. 40 Robert Schomburgk. "Journal of an Expedition from Pirara to the Upper Cornetyne, and from Thence to Demerara". Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 15. (1845) pp. 1-104. p. 96. 41 Ibid. p. 27.

Chapter 1 I 31

destruction of human life, viz. brandy and gunpowder' .42 He wrote towards the end of

his time in 'British Guiana' 'reluctant as I am to despair, the conviction is forced upon

me that the Indian race is doomed to extermination'. He also expressed regret to know

that the woman, Maiha, whom he met in his stay at Watu Ticaba, was 'the last

remnant of the once powerful tribe of Amari pas' ,43 and went on to add,

Alas! a similar fate awaits the other tribes; they will disappear from these parts of the earth on which Makunaima, the good spirit, placed them, and which since the.arrival of the European, has become the vast cemetery of the original races.44

- ·

This all happened coincidentally on the 24 of May 1843, a day Schomburgk did not

allow to 'pass without a bottle of champagne being drank to her Majesty's health'.

'The bottle, whose contents we emptied to the health and prosperity of Britain's

Queen, we buried, with an account of when and why it was emptied of its sparkling

beverage, at the spot where the flag-staff now stands, on which, on this occasion, the

union-jack was hoisted'. He then paused and asked, 'will civilization ever extend to

the poor benighted beings who surround us now, so as to render it likely, after the

present generation shall have passed away, that the plough or the hoe may bring it

again to light?'45 Was Schomburgk, anticipating the extinction of the Amerindians,

hoping for the day when Europeans would unearth this bottle and read about the

Amerindians? Or was he looking to day when Amerindians would themselves in the

future, having been brought 'from the solitudes of savage life to the abode of

civilization' ,46 come upon this archive and learn something about their past? In

Schomburgk's case it could have been either. Had he thought about the Caribs and

asked himself why there were in 1843 so few he may have been more optimistic and

less in a hurry to call for the plough and hoe.

The remorse shown for disappearance of Amerindians in general and certain tribes in

particular from Guiana was not expressed in Schomburgk's work for the Caribs. The

diminution of the Carib population was dramatic enough to cause the 1837 Committee

on Aborigines to remark, 'Of the Caribs, the native inhabitant of the West Indies, we

need not speak, as of them little more remains than the tradition that they once

42 PP 1837, vol. vii. Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 4. 43 Robert Schomburgk. "Expedition from Pirara to the Upper Cornetyne". p. 27. 44 Ibid. p. 27. 45 Ibid. p. 26. 46 Robert Schomburgk. "Ascent of the River Berbice". p. 350.

Chapter 1 I 32

existed' .47 In 1669, in an informed account of Guiana by a certain Major Scott, it as

noted, 'It is beyond all controversy that Guiana hath been time out of mind ye station

of ye Carrebs, and all the Indians on the island [probably referring to Trinidad and the

other Caribbean islands] owe their origin all from thence'. Scott goes on, in a survey

of the Amerindians inhabiting the region, to add 'The most numerous nacion of

Indians in Guiana are ye Careebs.48 From the Waini in the east, which is close to the

Tapacouma where Billy William murdered Hannah, to the Orinoco to the west and the

Acarabisi in the south, Scott estimated that there were 20,000 Carib families

residing.49 In other parts, for example what Scott calls Macorea, and could possibly be

the River Maroco that is even closer to Tapacouma, there were 11,000 Carib families.

Schomburgk' s anguish over the physical extermination of the Amerindians did not

cause him to reflect on his own efforts as a possible campaign of cartographical

extermination. He, for example, tells of the following instance that forces one to

question the rules he followed when naming.50 Of the naming of a river in the

Essequibo he wrote:

Our guide, who appeared the most stupid of all the Indians with whom our travels had made us acquainted, gave us merely a broad ha! for an answer when I inquired the river's name; and as I could not obtain anything further from him, I introduced the river under that name in the map! [second exclamation mark added].51

Of the Zibi cataract, he admitted, 'the name of this cataract, Zibi, appears to have

fixed itself in the memory of our guide in consequence of the tradition, that the spirit

which dwells there demands of every party that passes, a victim as toll' .52 Similarly,

acknowledging that, for example, Caruni or Caruwuini for the Pianoghottos, and the

Curitani of the Maopityans, were one and the same river, he arbitrarily chose one.53

'The Rupununi, which the Indians call the Camoyepaugh, or Sun River', remained the

Rupununi. Camoyepaugh may well have been a Carib name since as Schomburgk

notes, 'the Caribs, those scourges of the less valiant tribes, settled from Surinam along

47 PP 1837, vol. vii. Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 10. 48 GWB 1648 to 1669, Item 91. Account of Guiana, Believed to be by Major John Scott. 49 Ibid. 5° For a less sceptical view of Schomburgk's rules for naming see, Burnett, D. Graham. "'It Is Impossible to Make a Step without the Indians': Nineteenth-Century Geographical Exploration and the Amerindians of British Guiana." Ethnohistory, 49:1. (winter 2002) pp. 3-40. p. 30. 51 Robert Schomburgk. "Expedition from Pirara to the Upper Corentyne". p. 67. 52 Ibid. p. 67. 53 Ibid. p. 78.

Chapter 1 I 33

the Rupununi'. 54 Schomburgk' s maps are dominated by 'Amerindian' names and in a

sense may be as valuable as the message he left in the bottle in that they may hold a

clue to who lived where in this territory now called 'British Guiana' - discounting

names such as ha! 55 of course. But not all of his names are Amerindian. Taking, as he

put it, the 'privilege of discovers' he named a few places and flora after his

benefactors: Queens, Kings, Governors and members of the Royal Geographical

Society. The last thing he named was a large cataract in the Corentyn River. He came

upon it at 11am on 24 September 1843. So uncommonly picturesque was the scenery

near the cataract that Schomburgk decided to name it after the then Secretary of State,

Lord Stanley's Cataract with the following footnote: On our arrival at the Carib

settlement, I learnt it was known to them under the name of Ataripu; I have,

nevertheless, preserved the name I gave it under our first impressions'. 56 Schomburgk

failed to see that what he was lamenting in the case of the 'Indians' he was guilty of in

the case of the Caribs. What Schomburgk did with places and plants may have also

been done with people. Those whom he classified as 'Arawaak' may have been

plough bearing Caribs; a Carib, a rebellious Arawaak, resulting in a scenario that

threatens to render these classifications, like some of the names on the maps,

gibberish.

Billy William, known also as Jamma and Yarike,57 however, in 1830 was an Arawaak

living in Tapacouma and he killed a woman named Hannah, 'a nice looking woman

for a buckeen' ,58 at a place called Solitude, which Robert Schomburgk never bothered

to include on his maps.

IV.

Even though Robert Schomburgk first visited Tapacouina in 1836, it was not until

1842, when on his penultimate expedition, to the source of the Takutu River, 300

hundred miles away, that he recalled Tapacouma. And then too, only when confronted

with the curious Epidendreae (Epistephium parviflorum) and the pretty Bachia (Miki,

54 Ibid. p. 97. 55 For the locations of the River ha!, the Cataract Zibi and the 'slave path', see the map at end titled 'Pirara to Corentyne 1843', taken from Ibid. 56 Ibid. p. 97. On the map the cataract appears as 'Lord Stanley's Cataract or Ataripu'. 57 PP 1834, vol. xliv. in the testimonies of Aurelius and William Hilhouse. pp. 516 & 519. 58 Ibid .. John A1stein's testimony. p. 518.

Chapter 1 I 34

or Cleistes rosea)59. These plants he recollected, he last saw in the 'savannahs of the

Tapacoma and Capooy'. There is no mention of Billy William, Hannah or John

Alstein; Solitude had vanished. After the stabbing, Hannah, bleeding, walked 'away

towards the Creek', while Billy William according to the testimony of Janet, one of

Alstein's 18 slaves, 'went away' into the woods.60 (For the location of Tapacouma,

see accompanying 1841 of the Lower Barima.61) Three of Alstein's Negro slaves

testified in this case, the siblings Janet, Phillis and Aurelius. Actually, only Janet and

Aurelius testified. Phillis, though christened, was 'sent away' from the courtroom

because she did 'not understand the nature of an oath ' 62. The testimony of slaves was

a recent phenomenon. Charles Wray, the President of the Courts of Demerara and

Essequibo and judge in the Billy William case, was a witness before the Committee

that recommended that admission of slave testimony. When asked, for example,, the /\

evidence of slaves should be admitted in court, Wray responded, 'to criminal cases

undoubtedly; in civil cases, great caution is necessary' .63 Janet who washed for

Alstein was in the house doing nothing at the time of the murder while Aurelius,

whom Alstein referred to as the 'boy Aurelius', was taking apart and cleaning his

master's gun.64 The relationships between the Europeans and the slaves and the slaves

and the Amerindians in the non-coastal regions of 'British Guiana' do not conform

easily to those with which we are familiar from the coast.

Slavery in the Essequibo region, for example, defies any simple description. In June

of 1706, the Commander of Essequibo wrote from Fort Kijkoveral to the West India

Company in the Netherlands 'that on the 281h April last thirteen young negro creoles,

whom I made use of as traders for the Company and in other ways, have run away up

above the falls in Cayuni with two of their women' .65 Who these Negroes were and

what they did is known from an official journal kept at Fort Kijkoveral between 1699

59 Robert Schomburgk. "Visit to the Sources of the Takutu in British Guiana, in the year 1842". Journal ofthe Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 13. (1843) pp. 18-75. pp. 47-48. 60 PP 1834, vol. xliv. in the testimonies of Janet and John Alstein. pp. 516 & 518. 61 Robert Schomburgk. "Expedition to the Lower Parts of the Barima and Guiania Rivers, in British Guiana". Journal ofthe Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 12. (1842), pp. 169-178. 62 PP 1834, vol. xliv. 'Extract from the Note Book of his Honour Charles Wray, President of the Honourable Court of Criminal and Civil Justice of the Colonies of Demerara and Essequibo', Monday, 28 February, 1831. pp. 516-517. 63 PP 1828, vol. xxiii. Second Report of Commissioners on Criminal and Civil Justice in the West Indies and South America. United Colony of Demerara and Essequebo, and Colony of Berbice. Dated 14 Aprill828. p. 659. 64 PP 1834, vol. xliv. pp. 516-518. 65 GWB 1689 to 1714, Item154. Commander, Essequibo, To West India Company, June(?), 1706.

Chapter 1 I 35

and 1701. For instance, on the morning of Monday August I ih 1699 one of them was

entrusted with 'a goodly parcel of trading wares' before he was to set out for the

Upper Cuyuni the following day to procure some horses by barter.66 The previous

Friday, 'Jan [Antheunissen], the boy, [had] set out for the Upper Mazaruni in order to

obtain some poison wood by barter. ' 67 He returned on Thursday 27th August 'with

fourteen or fifteen bundles of poison wood'. Also the negro trader Louis, from the

Upper Essequibo, returned bringing with him 129 pieces of salt fish, 12 calabashes of

balsam, 20 logs of letter wood, and four balls of fine dye. He was promptly given a

fresh stock of trading wares 'to go and make an expedition for salting purposes to the

Upper Essequibo'. The old negroes Lourens and Lieven traded wares for orange dye,

provisions, and other things in Penoeny. To start the trade between Orinocco and the

Rio Essequibo in 1673 it was 'resolved to send thither Steven Tornaelje with an old

negro who knows the language well' .68 The Negroes, as traders, travelled

independently and widely in the interior of the territory. They carried in their

possession goods of no small value to the Company after 'having been recommended

by the Commander to take good care of everything'.

They were trusted not only with the wealth of the West India Company but at times

were themselves responsible for finding and returning 'runaway' Amerindian slaves.

September 22nd: ·'Big Jan, the old negro, has gone down the river to look for a free

Indian who has run away with a female Indian slave from the fort'. As it turned out,

'At eventide [on 24th September] the free Indian, who had been out fishing up in the

Cuyuni with the female slave whom he had taken away, returned to the fort'. It is not

known whether the female slave also returned. Aside from tracking runaway

Amerindian slaves, Negro traders also took part in the trade in Amerindian slaves. On

181h September, 'Jotte, the old negro, set out for the Upper Mazaruni with th~ son of

the deceased Chief Owl Mackerawacke, in order to bring down four or five slaves,

whom the said son has offered to sell'. Chief Owl Mackerawacke, a Carib, was also

Jotte's father-in-law.69 The Tuesday 22nd September entry in the journal reads, 'In the

afternoon Jotte, the old negro, arrived from Mazaruni, together with the son of the

66 Ibid. Item 144. Extracts From An Official Journal Kept At Fort Kijkoveral (1699-1701). 67 Ibid .. 68 GWB 1670 to 1688, Item 98. Proceedings Of The West India Company (Zeeland Chamber) July 20, 1673. 69 GWB 1670 to 1688, Item 127. Extract From Essequibo Council Minutes (Inclosure In Despatch From Commander, Essequibo To West India Company), October 20, 1686

Chapter 1 I 36

deceased Chief Owl Makerawacke, bringing with him four female slaves, two

children, and a boy, and the aforementioned son, after having been paid by the

Commander, went away satisfied. The old negresses have again been crushing salt'.

There is also an instance of Negroes being employed to improve relations between the

Company and the Amerindians. The Commander reported in 1680, 'I have sent a

negro up the Cuyuni in order, if it be possible, to establish peace between the

Akuways and the Caribs, so as by this means to get hold of the wild-pig hunting there

as formerly' .70 Negroes at this time were not simply coerced by force into labouring

on plantations.

The trust the Commander in Essequibo placed in the Negro traders extended further

when they were placed in charge of expeditions. For example, 'at about one o'clock in

the afternoon [of Saturday 16th January 1700], "Handsome Claesje," the negro slave

who had been sent to Cuyuni, appeared at the fort with the Indians and the corial he

had taken with him, and bringing twenty-nine quakes of orange dye and eleven

parcels of bread' .71 Negro traders were also gone for long periods at a time. On

Wednesday January 27th 1700, 'there arrived [at the Fort] from Mazaruni the old

negro Big Jan, who had been sent thither upon the 2nd November last, bringing with

him 10 quakes of orange dye, 30 quakes of bread, 8 quakes of pork, and 4 quakes of

fish'. The makeup of trading party varied. Sometimes there was only the Negro

trader; at other times he travelled with Amerindians and a White trader. There is also

an account of a Negro trader going out with his son: the old negro trader Big Jan

returned from the Mazaruni with his boy Sam, bringing with them 22 parcels of bread,

22 parcels of pork, and 3 quakes of "paaij," together with some other trifles. In a

report that showed how these expeditions could also prove fatal for the Negro traders

and dependence of the Company on the said traders, the Commander wrote in 1683,

'we lately have been embittered by the death of Gilles, an old negro of the Company,

recently poisoned up in the Cuyuni, as the Caribs pretend, by the Accoways. On that

account the aforesaid old negroes have become afraid to have intercourse with that

tribe; I shall, however, bethink me of means for conciliating that tribe' .72 The freedom

that the Negro trader enjoyed coupled with the knowledge he gained of the region

70 Ibid. Item 114. Commander, Essequibo, To West India Company, February 27, 1683 71 GWB 1689 to 1714, Item 144. Official Journal Kept At Fort Kijkoveral (1699-1701). 72 GWB 1670 to 1688, Item Ill. Commander, Essequibo, To West India Company, June 28, 1680.

Chapter 1 I 37

made it no surprise that they often ran away and managed not infrequently to stay

away.

Escaped Negro traders/slaves in the Essequibo were also recaptured and surprisingly

sometimes they were convinced to return. To recapture the abovementioned 13 young

Negro Creoles, a 'sergeant with a well-manned vessel', was dispatched to pursue

them 'but he found it impossible to get within sight of them, since there are so many

passages in the falls and between the islands'. 73 Before returning empty handed to the

Fort, however, the sergeant 'learnt from the Caribs that the creoles had been there

[under the Great Fall], and had given out that they were obliged to go right up-country

in order to cut planks there by my [the Commander of Essequibo] orders'. Thus at a

loss, the Commander was compelled to seek help from an unexpected group: 'the

three aged Fathers of the same [i.e., the runaways]' who happened to be in the vicinity

at the time salting fish. 'Grieved to hear such news of their children' the fathers were

anxious to set out. The Commander reported however, I kept Big Jan, who is blind

through age, and could not go, at home, and sent up the two others, namely, Old Sam

and Dane, to see if they can find the runaways, in order to persuade them with kind

words, and so bring them back home'. The Commander also paid 40 Caroly guldens

to the free Malack, named Jan Pietersen, a 'good interpreter and acquainted with the

ways there' to accompany the fathers on the journey. Pietersen returned after being

away for some time and reported that 'he [had] found four of the runaways overland

in Penoeny, who said to him their wish was never to come to the fort, but to make

their way further into the savannah, since, as they pretend, they are obliged to do too

much work'. Old Sam and Dane however, did not give up and proceeded further into

the Cayuni savannah leaving the trusting Commander to wonder if he had lost 13 or

15 slaves.

It is not known how the 1706 escape of the 13 negroes turned out but in 1710 a few

other Negro traders, referred to in the above cited journal ran off from the Kijkoveral

Fort. Of them three, Lieven, Adriaan, and Sander, returned. Having learnt from the

Creole Jan that the runaways were in the Mazaruni district, the Commander 'sent

thither three other creoles of their friends, and the butler, Reynoud van der Heyde,

73 GWB 1689 to 1714, Item 154. Commander, Essequibo, To West India Company, June(?), 1706.

Chapter 1 I 38

with a letter of pardon composed by me for that purpose' .74 On meeting the runaways

the letter of pardon was read and after being exhorted by the other Creoles to 'do their

duty' the three returned. The others remained 'somewhat scattered up in Cuyuni

among the Indians'. While not suggesting that the lives of slaves in the Essequibo was

devoid of exploitation and pain, it is interesting to note in these incidents the apparent

absence of the brutality that was usually visited upon slaves who ran away from the

sugar plantations of Demerara and Berbice. It is also curious to note that in neither of

these cases were Amerindians mobilized to recapture the slaves, on the contrary, there

is the suggestion that the runaways were actually living among the Amerindians.

When William Hilhouse75 testified in 1831 at Billy William's trial that 'adultery with

a Negro, or the descendant of a Negro, is punished with death', he was hinting at a

prejudice that may have existed more in the minds of the colonists than anywhere

else. An earlier expression of this colonial prejudice is found in the work of Dr.

Pinkard. In the preface to his description of an expedition against bush Negroes and

their subsequent torture and execution in the early 1800s, he notes that because of the

earlier defeat of the all Dutch garrison, officials then 'raised a corps of negroes from

among the most faithful of the slaves; and also engaged in their interest a party of

Indians from the woods, who happily for the planters, hold the Bush negroes in great

abhorrence' .76 Schomburgk echoed a similar prejudice in 1842 when recounting the

episode of the search for the missing member of his team, Hamlet Clenan.

Schomburgk wrote, 'I found great difficulty in inducing the Indians to assist me in

this search. As soon as they understood from the Wapisiana, who belonged to our

party, that it was a black man who was missing, they ceased to feel the slightest

inclination to stir. This hatred of the red man towards the black is remarkable' .77 He

74 GWB 1689 to 1714, Item 164. Commander, Essequibo, To West India Company, June 6, 1710. 75 Author of such tracts as: W. Hi1house. "Two Letters addressed to His Honour Charles Herbert, Esquire, the First Fiscal and George Bagot, Esquire, Protector of Indians 1826 and, Indian Notices: or Sketches of the Habits, Characters, Languages, Superstitions, Soil, and Climate of the Several Nations of British Guiana with Remarks on their Capacity for Colonization, Present Government"; and "Suggestions for Future Improvement and Civilization, Also the Ichthyology of the Fresh Waters of the Interior". 76 George Pinckard, M.D. Notes on the West Indies: Written during the expedition under the command of the late General Sir Ralph Abercromby: including observations on The Island of Barbadoes, and the settlements captured by the British troops, upon the Coast of Guiana; Likewise remarks relating to the Creoles and Slaves of the Western Colonies, and The Indians of South America: with occasional hints, regarding The Seasoning, or Yellow Fever of hot climates. Vol. II, (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1806). p. 243. 77 Robert Schomburgk. "Sources of the Takutu in British Guiana". p. 56.

Chapter 1 I 39

goes on further to add that this hatred 'is not confined to the Indians of Guiana'. 78 It is

curious to note that this incident occurred the day after Schomburgk had the

opportunity to meet a Capoucre, i.e., 'a cross between a negro and an Indian woman',

whose 'hair is wholly, like that of the negro'. (Though not stated explicitly, the Indian

woman here appears to be a Wapisiana.) Consistent with the then prevailing opinion

that great animosity prevails in 'British Guiana' between the Amerindians and the

Negroes, Schomburgk was quick to add that, of the Capoucre, there are 'very few in

British Guiana' .79 Having travelled extensively in 'British Guiana', however,

Schomburgk was aware that the reality on the ground does not always coincide

smoothly with the reality one is trying to imagine into existence. This tension was

revealed when he added, while there are few Capoucre in 'British Guiana' 'great

numbers are to be met with in Surinam, where it appears a great many runaway slaves

have intermarried with the Caribs' .80 (Here too is an effort to project the Carib as not

being from 'British Guiana'.) A year later Schomburgk would meet more people of

mixed Amerindian and Negro descent. He seized on this opportunity to measure skull

sizes etc., and compare 'the offspring of a Negro man and an Indian woman, with an

Indian of pure descent'. 81 In all the cases, as it turned out, the Amerindians living in

'British Guiana' who 'intermixed' with Negroes were, according to Schomburgk's

classification, Wapisianas. The story of the unmaking of the Amerindian as slave and

into native was a process that took centuries and whose plot was moved along by

events not restricted to the hinterlands of 'British Guiana'. The Billy William case and

the debates over jurisdiction to which it gave rise was another burdened segue in the

abridged edition of the history of the 'British Guiana' coast.

v. Mary Noel Menezes, in the only secondary account of the Billy William case, focused

on the question of jurisdiction. She asked, 'did the Courts of Justice have legal

jurisdiction over the Indians?' 82 Menezes concluded, like the British, that they did.

She then proceeded to what she saw as the more justified question, 'if they had such

78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. p. 55. 80 Ibid. 81 Robert Schomburgk, "Expedition from Pirara to the Upper Corentyne". p. 23. 82 M.N. Menezes. British Policy towards the Amerindians in British Guiana 1803-1873. (London: Oxford at Clarendon Press, 1977). p. 130.

Chapter 1 I 40

jurisdiction, could they prosecute the Indians for violations of laws of which they had

no civilized understanding?'H-' These questions also occupied Charles Wray, President

of the Honourable Court of Criminal and Civil Justice of the Colonies of Demerara

and Essequibo, as he presided over the Billy William case.

Wray reasoned the question of jurisdiction along two lines: jurisdiction over the

territory in which the crime was committed and jurisdiction over the Indians residing

within that territory. Wray argued in his submission to Secretary of State Goderich

that Billy William's fate rested first of all on whether the spot where the act was

committed lay within the territory of Great Britain claiming, 'without jurisdiction we

have no power to investigate'. 84 In an argument that amounts to nothing more than a

tautology, Wray, while establishing that European presence, in the form of a Dutch

fort, in the region predated British occupation, a point necessary to avoid the thorny

question of culpability which surrounds the question of conquest, reasoned thus: 'the

place is occupied under a grant from the Crown, built on and cultivated by the

grantee, who carries on a trade there; ... thus the Crown of Great Britain has exercised

all those rights, by which nations usually indicate their claim to territorial

. ' 8~ possessiOns . ·

At this point it may be useful to provide some background to the European presence

in the region to explain the presence in Essequibo in 1830 of the above mentioned

'Dutch fort'. In quite an exhaustive study of cases related to the development of land

law in British Guiana, (in which however, there is no mention of the Billy William

case), Fenton RamsahoyeH6 begins with an informative summary of the chequered

colonial history of the region under study that also reveals how the law stuttered into

being. We learn that from 1580, when Dutch colonists .set up the first European

trading posts in Essequibo on the banks of the Pomeroon River, to 1831, when the

three counties of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice were united into the colony of

British Guiana, control over these territories frequently changed hands between either

83 Ibid. p 130. 84 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Extract from the Note Book of his Honour Charles Wray, President of the Honourable Court of Criminal and Civil Justice of the Colonies of Demerara and Essequibo, Monday, 28 February, 1831. Charles Wray's summation. p. 522. 85 Ibid. Charles Wray's summation. p. 521. 86 F.H.W. Ramsahoye. The Development of Land Law In British Guiana. (New York: Oceana Publications Inc, 1966).

Chapter 1 I 41

one of or some combination of the Spanish, Dutch, French, English and Amerindians.

In brief, in 1596 the Dutch managed to finally successfully assert control over

Essequibo. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was established however, with the

loss of Brazil the company became insolvent in 1657 and abandoned Essequibo. Old

supporters of the settlement then took over and Guiana then extended from Cayenne

(or French Guiana) through Suriname (Dutch Guiana) all the way to the Essequibo. In

1674, the old Dutch West India Company was revived and the colony was placed

under the control of an appointed Commandeur. The system of government of the

colony took the form of what could be called a military dictatorship under which the

Commandeur had full authority "not only on water but also on land and consequently

'over the people'." Until now, however, no mention was made as to which system of

law was to be administered in the colony. In 1675 it was decided that the law of

succession obtaining in South Holland and Zeeland called the Schependom's law

should be adopted in the colony. In 1691 a Court of Policy and Justice was set up

comprising of managers of the several plantations with the Commandeur as Secretary.

In the mean time, in 1689 war was declared by the Netherlands against France and as

a result of raids by the French in that year, the Pomeroon River was abandoned as a

settlement. Peace came with the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 only to be

disrupted when France declared war against the Netherlands on 3rd July 1702. In 1708

the French finally captured and plundered Kyk-overal only to abandon it to the Dutch

shortly thereafter. The period after was one of relative calm between the European

colonial powers and until 1781, when Essequibo and Demerara first capitulated to the

British, the colony saw both administrative and demographic change. The Courts of

Policy and Justice were separated and separate ones were created for Demerara.

English planters from the West Indies began entering the Essequibo in large numbers,

which necessitated expansion into Demerara. In 1782 the French re-entered the

picture and captured Essequibo and Demerara from the British, which they returned to

the Dutch in 1784. This relay-like history of Europe in the region began to settle down

when in 1792 Sir Ralph Abercrombie captured Essequibo for the British. On 19

September 1803 the final Articles of Capitulation ceded the United Colony of

Demerary and Essequebo to the British with the colony of Berbice following a few

days later.

Chapter 1 I 42

As a result of the colony changing hands so many times Roman-Dutch law emerged

as the applicable system of law until its almost complete replacement by English law

in 1917, however, 1831 began a time of considerable change in the colony. At that

time the English population was increasing and the colony was in the anomalous

position of having an English community - the only community whom, until this

time, were admitted before the law -governed by an alien system of law. Agitations

were made between 1832 and 1846, and in 1847 statutes were enacted introducing

into the legal system portions of the English Criminal law.

This was the history Wray drew on to conclude, that 'their [the Amerindian] position

appears to me to be that of a conquered nation, or more accurately speaking, that of a

nation whose lands the Dutch, our predecessors, occupied, peopled and governed by

their own laws and instructions, without any resistance from the former inhabitants' .87

Exercising the strategic ignorance necessary to maintain the logic of colonialism,

Goderich concurred with Wray 'in thinking the case [for jurisdiction] established' .88

However, in a moment of self-reflection, rare for such a high-ranking colonial

official, the Secretary of State, admitted that:

A debt is due to the Aboriginal inhabitants of British Guiana of a very different kind from that which the inhabitants of Christendom may in a certain sense be said to owe in general to other barbarous tribes. The whole territory which has been occupied by Europeans on the northern shores of the South American continent has been acquired by no other right than that of superior power, and I fear that the natives whom we have dispossessed have to this day received no compensation for the loss of the lands on which they formerly subsisted.89

It is important to remember that this admission came in the very letter that declared

British jurisdiction did indeed extend over Amerindians. This admission, which could

have been used by the law and through the law to prove the injustice of colonial rule

and therefore question the logic, which will, from this point forward, establish the

supremacy of colonial law, and thus the future colonization of Amerindians, by the

British, was instead employed to legitimise its implantation and substantiate the myth

of the laws impartiality. The debt of 'Christendom' to the 'barbarous tribes' of the

world was a distraction conveniently invoked as a justification to perpetuate colonial

87 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Charles Wray's summation. p. 522. 88 Ibid. Despatch from Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban, 21 July 1831. p. 523. 89 Ibid. Charles Wray's summation. p. 522.

Chapter 1 I 43

domination; similarly, Hannah's adultery was also invoked to explain why Billy

William should live. Let us consider more closely Goderich's reasoning which

ultimately spared Billy William's life.

There is sufficient proof both of British occupation of the lands in question, and of the Indians claiming and enjoying the protection of British officers in that territory. I fear that title of European nations to dominion over the territory and persons of savage tribes can scarcely be referred to any higher or more formal ground. In the present case it is consolatory to know that the assertion of British rights is made only in furtherance of justice, and for the protection of the natives from the effects of their own unruly habits and passions.90

First, the legitimacy of British jurisdiction over the land (based on conquest) and its

peoples (based on them availing themselves of British protection) was accepted;

second, the admission that European (Goderich was here unwilling to have the British

shoulder all the blame but is willing to accept the responsibility, as a Christian burden,

but also on behalf of his Dutch predecessors, for discharging the debt of conquest)

rule over the territory and its peoples is the result of nothing more than violent

conquest; lastly, the consolation: the need to protect Amerindians from themselves -

if left to live according to the 'traditionary maxims' of their tribes they will

exterminate themselves.

VI.

As revealed m the trial, it was habit of the British to settle disputes, to buy

Amerindian life by paying off the relations of the victim: 'in general they will take a

price' .91 It may be useful to bear in mind here also that at this time, in 1830 in

London, a deal was being made in which the British government would in four years

time contract to purchase twenty million pounds worth of West Indian lives.

Furthermore, this is also the time when the triennial presents paid to Amerindians, in

part as a retainer for their part in catching runaway slaves, would cease, 'I conceive

that the distribution of rum should immediately cease; and I confess that I am unable,

as at present advised, to perceive that any very substantial and permanent benefits are

obtained by the colony, or conferred upon the Indians, by the distribution of the

other' 92 articles. This practice of buying life was used for the last time with

90 Ibid. Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban, 21 July 1831. p. 523. 91 Ibid. Gerard Timmerman's testimony. p. 520. 92 Ibid. Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban, 17 February 1832. p. 540.

Chapter 1 I 44

Amerindians in the Billy William case, however, it is a transaction as warped as the

logic of colonial rule itself. Hannah's life, had her father accepted the Protector of

Indians Gerrard Timmerman's offer, would have been worth 'eight pieces of

salompores' 93 anc~ history would not have occurred. He did not; instead Hannah's life

was the price extracted on behalf of the entire Amerindian community in return for

their civilization, a necessary prerequisite for their recognition before the law, for

their life, their humanity, (where only civilized life could be taken by the Jaw- 'it [is]

impossible to punish a homicide committed under such circumstances, in the same

manner as wilful murder is punished when committed by a member of a Christian and

civilized community' 94) whereas, Billy William's life served as a demonstration of the

ability of the law to give life. The above-mentioned debt owed to Amerindians, it

appears, was extinguished by allowing Billy William to live, by recognising him

before the Jaw. The Amerindians bought their life with Hannah's life. That they got

what they paid for was symbolised in Billy William's commuted death sentence.

VII.

British jurisdiction, symbolised in the flag-staff planted by Schomburgk and the bottle

buried beneath it, was double edged: simultaneously signs of conquest and invitation,

it excluded as it included. Meeting between February and May of 1837, the Select

Committee on Aborigines (British Possessions), consisting of, among others, Fowell

Buxton, William Gladstone and George Grey, met

to consider what Measures ought~ to be adopted with regard to the Native Inhabitants of Countries where British Settlements are made, and to the neighbouring Tribes, in order to secure to them the due observance of Justice and the protection of their Rights; to promote the spread of Civilization among them, and to lead them to the peaceful and voluntary reception of the Christian Religion.95

At this time, Schomburgk was on his third expedition in 'British Guiana', his ascent

of the River Berbice.96 The Select Committee on Aborigines, though not by name,

referred to the Billy William case when it quoted extensively from despatches written

by Lord Goderich in 1831 when he was considering the commutation of Billy

William's death sentence. The evidence collected, for example statistics, cultural

93 At the moment I don't know what this is. 94 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Despatch from Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban, 21 July 1831. p. 523. 95 PP 1837, vol. vii. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 1. 96 Robert Schomburgk. "Ascent of the River Berbice, in British Guayana". pp. 302-350.

Chapter 1 I 45

practices and efforts to Christianise the Amerindians, during Billy William's trial

informed many of the conclusions of this Committee. 'on the advantage of living

under British Laws', the Committee reported, 'we must still concur in the sentiment

of Lord Goderich, as expressed in the same letter, upon a reference as to sentence of

death passed upon a native Indian for the murder of another'. n Goderich had written:

It is a serious consideration that we have subjected these tribes to the penalties of a code of which they unavoidably live in profound ignorance; they have not even that conjectural knowledge of its provisions which would be suggested by the precepts of religion, if they had even received the most elementary instruction in the Christian faith. They are brought into acquaintance with civilized life not to partake its blessings, but only to feel the severity of its penal sanctions.98

The Committee went further and admitted that,

Too often, their territory has been usurped; their property seized; their numbers diminished; their character debased; the spread of civilization impeded. European vices and diseases have been introduced amongst them, and they have been familiarized with the use of our most potent instruments for the subtle or the violent destruction of human life, viz. brandy and gunpowder.99

The Committee was constituted to address these contradictions. As they put it, 'your

Committee was appointed ... to compare our actions with our avowed principles, and

to show what has been, and what will assuredly continue to be, unless strongly

checked, the course of our conduct towards these defenceless people' .100 Schomburgk

was therefore wrong when he wrote in his diary that February 'nothing of interest

[had] occurred' .101

VIII.

February 1837 was a month of rejections for Schomburgk. Given the findings of the

Committee, it is of little wonder that it was. Catastrophe struck at what Schomburgk

had, 'for want of an Indian name', named the 'Christmas Cataracts' .102 It was there

97 PP 1837, vol. vii. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. I 0. 98 In both, PP 1837, vol. vii. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 10, and PP 1834, vol. xliv. Despatch from Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban. Downing Street, 21 July 1831. p. 523. 99 PP 1837, vol. vii. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 4. 100 Ibid. 101 Robert Schomburgk. "Ascent of the River Berbice, in British Guayana". p. 335. 102 For the location of the Christmas Cataracts and other places associated with Schomburgk's 1837 expedition up the Berbice river, see map at end titled 'British Guayana 1837' taken from Robert

Chapter 1 I 46

that he lost his friend, Charles Reiss. Though Reiss had predicted the night before that

'he knew he should die young', even he had probably not guessed that it would be so

soon. Reiss died when his coria! capsized and he struck a sunken rock and 'sunk in

the whirlpool at the foot of the rapid'. Schomburgk found a suitable spot at which to

bury him, on a high mound within a circle of 'mora-trees and palms, - the latter an

emblem of the Christian faith' .103 Along with the Indians who 'professed Christianity'

he proceeded to read for his 'poor companion' a 'beautiful and expressive service for

the burial of the dead' .104 As with the law in the Billy William trial, however,

Christianity too was forced to make compromises when it came to death. 'In the

absence of a coffin', Reiss was wrapped in his hammock and buried in the coria!, 'by

the upsetting of which he had lost his life' .105 And in his mausoleum of trees -

Christian and heathen - Reiss was laid to rest. Firmly fixed to one of the trees, its

inscription slightly modified, was the following small tablet that Reiss himself had

brought, 'in order to engrave his name, and to leave it as a remembrance in case we

should reach the Acaray Mountains'.

Drowned, 12th Feb., 1837,

CHARLES F. REISS,

Aged 22 years.

The 'huts abandoned ... on account of the murder of an Indian', 107 the greeting from

'Chief Jandje ... of the mixed race ... dressed out in a costly uniform, with sword in

hand, a present ... from the late Governor Baird .los and the 'redoubt and reformed

church, of which [only] the remains could be seen' 109 that Schomburgk encountered

in the days that followed formed the tangible expression of the simultaneous

disjuncture and connection between what the Select Committee described as 'our

actions and our avowed principles', i.e., between colonization and colonialism. It is

this contradiction that probably explains one further rejection suffered by

Schomburgk.

Schomburgk, "Diary of an Ascent of the River Berbice, in British Guayana, in 1836-37". Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 7. ( 1837) pp. 302-350. 103 Ibid. p. 335. 104 Ibid. p. 338. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. p. 343. 108 Ibid. p. 348. 109 Ibid. p. 341.

Chapter 1 I 47

As the Committee heard from its witnesses that the policy of 'extermination' had to

be abandoned as it had 'thrown up impediments to successful colonization',

Schomburgk complained ·of being_ 'excluded from the welcome' in a village to which

he had gone 'to buy cassada bread'. On his arrival there, the chief of the village, in an

elaborate ceremony, greeted all 'whom he considered the first among [Schomburgk's]

crew'. This the Chief did with the 'three short sentences', 'sit down, sit well down, sit

very well down'. To which those so greeted responded, 'wang', or 'I thank you'.

After the chief's greeting then 'came his sons and all the men of the settlement, one

by one, and repeated the same'. The ceremony lasted 'upwards of half an hour', and

in which Schomburgk remained completely unacknowledged. To add injury to insult,

Schomburgk 'slept that [March 12] night in an open savannah', not very far away on

the banks of the Wieronie River, 'drenched by the rain' .110 And as the Committee

wrote the following earlier-quoted sentence, 'Of the Caribs, the native inhabitants of

the West Indies, we need not speak, as of them little more remains than the tradition

that they once existed', 111 Schomburgk heard of the recollections of the oldest Caribs,

'who remember at the time of their youth, when the Essequibo and Corentyn were

thickly inhabited, that a constant communication was kept up between the Caribs of

the Pacaraima mountains and those of Surinam'. 112 The much-feared Caribs, it

appears, had vanished.

IX.

In asking, 'if for the murder of an Indian this man cannot be tried, by what process of

reasoning can the court claim jurisdiction over an Indian killing a white or a black

man?' 113 Charles Wray, the trial judge in the Billy William case, was voicing what

appears to have been a relatively new anxiety for the British in 'British Guiana': the

threat to the lives of its colonists. The white men referred to by the judge may have

been of that 'adventurous class of Europeans who lead the way in penetrating the

territory of uncivilized man', 114 however, when the post-emancipation policy for

developing and administering the colonies - taking into account the 'national

110 Ibid. p. 346. 111 PP 1837, vol. vii. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 10. 112 Robert Schomburgk. "Ascent of the River Berbice, in British Guayana". p. 335. 113 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Charles Wray's summation. p. 522. 114 PP 1837, vol. vii. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 74.

Chapter 1 I 48

necessity of finding some outlet for the superabundant population of Great Britain and

Ireland' 115 - was being created, policy makers had a different colonization and a

different colonist.

In summmg up, the Committee on Aborigines, led by Buxton and Gladstone,

described the new future of British policy towards the Amerindians:

This, then, appears to be the moment for the nation to declare, that with all its desire to give encouragement to emigration, and to find a soil to which our surplus population may retreat, it will tolerate no scheme which implies violence or fraud in taking possession of such a territory; that it will no longer subject itself to the guilt of conniving at oppression, and that it will take upon itself the task of defending those who are too weak and too ignorant to defend themselves. 116

To continue its colonial policies while at the same time no longer subjecting itself to

the 'guilt of conniving at oppression' required not only a new philosophy of

colonialism it also required new colonists. Edward Gibbon Wakefield's "Wakefield

System" of colonization influenced this new phase of colonial rule in the sugar

colonies. 1 17

'Emancipator of Slaves', Thomas Fowell Buxton's nephew through marriage was

Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Born in London in 1796, Wakefield, great great grandson

of David Barclay, founder of the Barclays Banks, was educated at Westminster

School and Edinburgh high school; he was then employed by William Hill as an

envoy to the court of Turin. In 1816 he made a daring runaway match with an heiress,

Eliza Susan Pattle, which eventually failed. He was then appointed secretary to the

under-secretary of the legation, Turin. Life for Wakefield was going well until in

1826 he abducted a Cheshire heiress and was jailed for three years. During his time in

prison he wrote a series of works on the theory of colonisation, including A Letter

from Sydney. Robert Stephen Rintoul, who published Wakefield's opinions on

colonial questions in the Spectator, and Lieutenant-colonel Robert Torrens with

whom he founded in 1830 the National Colonization Society supported his views on

colonization. By this time however, Wakefield was not a man that many in London

115 Ibid. 116 Ibid. 117 E.G. Wakefield. A View of the Art of Colonization, With Present Reference to the British Empire; In Letters Between a Statesman and a Colonist, 1849 and England and America.

Chapter 1 I 49

wanted to openly befriend. His ideas on colonization though, attracted the attention of

several influential persons: for instance, Buxton, John Stuart Mill and also Lord

Howick - then secretary to Goderich and thus ensuring Wakefield the ear of the

colonial secretary of state - soon to be the third Earl Grey, colonial secretary of State.

Grey in paying him tribute, later, said, 'I consider these principles to he not less

important than they were novel at the time they were brought into notice by Mr

Wakefield'.

Wakefield was called to testify at length before the Select Committee on The Disposal

of Crown Lands in the British Colonies in 1836. 'The whole subject' of colonization,

Wakefield observed, 'had, previous to 1830, 'presented one very remarkable feature,

namely, an immense amount of practice without any theory. There was long

experience without a system, immense results without a plan, vast doings but no

principles'. What was in essence the first theory of colonization was the Wakefield

System. Designed with first Australia and then New Zealand, in mind, it

recommended a process of scientific and systematic colonization, the essence of

which was also, with modifications, applied in the British Americas. 118

Wakefield, in prison, listening to the tales of convicts returned from or on their way to

Australia, came up with a system of colonization based on six principles designed to

make 'the waste lands of the Empire a source of real advantage, not merely to the

colonists who settled there, but even to the Mother-country which sent them out'.

Wakefield sought to bring into harmony what he saw as the superabundant wasteland

in the colonies and the superabundant labour and capital in the mother country. The

first principle was that a 'sufficient price' should be charged for waste land - high

enough for labour to be available to capital, low enough for the labourers to be able to

become their own masters within four or five years. Secondly, the proceeds of the sale

of land at a sufficient price, and of a tax on such land, were to be employed 'in the

conveyance of British labourers to the colony free of cost'. Free of cost to the

emigrants - and also free of cost to the British tax-payer. Thirdly, emigration would

hardly be systematic unless the emigrants were of a good sort of men and women. The

118 Biographical information has been taken from such works as: I. O'Connor. Edward Gibbon Wakefield: The Man Himself, (London: Selwyn & Blout Ltd., 1928); and P. Bloomfield. Edward Gibbon Wakefield: Builder of the British Commonwealth (London: Longmans, 1961 ).

Chapter 1 I 50

absence of some balance between the sexes was, according to Wakefield 'the greatest

evil of all' Fourthly, colonies must be peopled with members of all classes: 'Then,

you see, these colonies, like those of Greece, would contain a mixture of all classes of

society .. .In fewer words, every grant of land in these colonies would be an extension

... of Britain itself, and would provide so much more room for all classes of Britons'.

Fifthly, no convicts should be transported to new or reformed colonies; no slavery,

black or white. And lastly: colonists should start governing themselves 'at the earliest

practicable opportunity, under the eyes of a Viceroy, certainly, but a Viceroy whose

advisers were to be responsible to the people'. In other words, Wakefield's system

depended heavily on European colonists; climate forbidding, however, Europeans did

not proceed to the tropics in significant numbers, (at matter to which we shall return

in a later chapter).

Nonetheless, the need to turn land into real estate persisted. At this point in time,

however, the majority of two-legged life in the West Indies, by European racist

standards, was not even human. To ensure a healthy empire it was necessary, first of

all, to have human colonists. Land could not become real estate until this was

achieved. The law, through the Billy William case, was one attempt to turn

Amerindians not only into human beings, but into foreigners as well. The Negroes,

whose transformation into human was on the horizon, were generally accepted as

being foreign to this place. The making of humans in the sugar colonies was

necessarily realised through the law: Amerindians first, Negroes four years later as a

result of His Majesty King Frederick William the Fourth's "An Act for the Abolition

of Slavery throughout the British Colonies; for promoting the industry of the

manumitted Slaves; and for compensating the Persons hitherto entitled to the Services

of such Slaves." Mere human beings were not enough. The enactment of the theory of

colonization that emerged at the end of slavery was bound up with the resolution of

what I describe as the central paradox of the law (in the colonies): how to recognize

only the living while giving life to the dead.

X.

Chapter 1 I 51

The Billy William case is significant for many reasons not the least of which is the fact

that at its centre is the murder of a woman. The question arises: could any other

incident but that of a woman's murder for adultery have attracted such attention and

articulated so many crises? The history of European presence in the Americas after

Columbus suggests strongly that there is. As an Amerindian woman, Hannah's was at

some level also a death foretold.

The centrality to this case of Hannah's alleged adultery demonstrates another way in

which the law is forced to negotiate with local practice. Billy William was sentenced

to death for murder. On the other hand, his sentence was commuted in no small part

because of Hannah's adultery. Chances are that Billy William and Hannah djd not

have a marriage that would have otherwise been recognized by British law. From this

effort to preserve itself and achieve its larger goal of 'informing the ignorance' of the

'untutored and defenceless savage', 119 however, the law did not emerge untarnished.

Among other things it had to recognize Billy William and Hannah's 'marriage' as

legitimate as any Christian or civilized one. Otherwise, the law would have to apply to

the 'savage'. As Goderich explained, 'it is impossible to punish a homicide committed

under such circumstances [i.e., when the guilty 'had been taught to believe himself the

proper judge and avenger of such guilt'], in the same manner as wilful murder is

punished when committed by a member of a Christian and civilized community. The

real difficulty is, to determine whether it can justly receive any punishment at all'.

Billy William, though allowed to live, was punished by the law, he would remain in

jail for at least one year. In punishing him the law declared that there were no longer

'savages' in 'British Guiana'.

It would have been illuminating .to have data on the number of men versus women

killed by Amerindian men for adultery. Without that information, however, and even

though, according to one witness, there were 'so many instances of incontinence with

white persons that it may justify great suspicion on the part of the husband', 120 one

thing seems certain: to date no white man had ever been killed in the United British

colonies of Demerara and Essequibo for adultery with an Amerindian woman.

William Hilhouse revealed that there was in fact a racial aspect to the punishment for

119 PP 1837, vol. vii. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 74. 120 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Testimony ofWilliam Hilhouse. p. 519.

Chapter 1 I 52

adultery by stating simply that 'adultery with a Negro, or the descendant of a Negro,

is punished with death'. 121 It is not known from this statement whether it was the man

or the woman who was killed. It would be revealing to know when the lover of the

Amerindian woman was Negro whether it was the man or the woman who was killed.

At the heart of the judge's recommendation that Billy William's death sentence be

commuted lay the assumption that Billy William murdered Hannah because, through

the act of adultery, she wronged him. It was begged on his behalf that the 'suspicions

he [Billy William] may from the character of the woman have entertained of his

wife', 'weigh with the court to recommend to the Governor to exercise the only power

he possesses in such a case, to leave the execution of mitigation of the sentence to the

merciful consideration of His Majesty's Government' .122 Goderich concurred:

Whilst the injury done him by the unfortunate victim of his revenge should be held forth as an offence of much turpitude, which, by extenuating in some degree his own, had alone saved him from the punishment of death. 123

The challenge before the British with Billy William remember was how to punish and

civilize at the same time? How, when the civilized's punishment and the barbarian's

punishment are the same, to punish and at the same time maintain this distinction?

The testimony of Hilhouse foregrounded this problem: 'if the prisoner were convicted

and executed, his relations would not have recourse to the lex taliones 124, for the

public executioner taking his life, it would easily be explained to them' .125 The British

could have actually killed Billy William thereby both preserving the coherence of the

law and at the same time satisfying the Amerindian's sense of justice. But they did

not. Instead, Hannah's adultery was called upon to preserve Billy William's life.

Similarly, Billy William's identity as an 'untutored and defenceless savage', on the

other hand, helped save his life, but it was further used to make the case for the future

colonization of Amerindians. As the Judge summed it up, 'if for the murder of an

Indian this man cannot be tried, by what process of reasoning can the court claim

121 Ibid. 122 Ibid .. Charles Wray's summation. p. 522. 123 Ibid. Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban. Downing Street, 17 February 1832. p. 538. 124 The law of retaliation. 125 PP 1834, vol. xliv. William Hilhouse's testimony. p. 519.

Chapter 1 I 53

jurisdiction over an Indian killing a white or a black man?' 126 revealing thereby that

the legal is also highly political.

CONCLUSION.

Hannah's murder at Solitude and Billy William's subsequent survival of the death

sentence provide us with an occasion to consider not only how but why the law

(re)entered the British sugar colonies at this particular moment. This chapter has

sought to explore how in 'British Guiana' the land and the law came to be

interwoven? It has sought to make some sense of the familiar phrase 'the law of the

land'.

Western Law, as we saw earlier, was present in the colony from as early as 1580:

there was law for the white colonizers and order for the non-whites. As is well known,

until the beginning of emancipation in 1834, slaves were subject simply to the law of

the plantation, a picture of which is provided by a plantation manager: 'They [the

overseer and driver] have their bilboe, and they have their instruments of punishment,

and they have their prison house on their estate, and when any disorder is committed,

the overseer acts as the Justice of the Peace and commits the offender'. 127 Within the

boundaries of the plantation the sole purpose of the law was to coerce slaves to work.

Boundaries form the basis of the law. The changes in property relations - for

example, the ex-slaves' right to acquire property and own land and to not be sold with

real property as fixtures on the land -that would accompany the abolition of slavery

threatened old boundaries. The end of slavery, and the coming of 'civilization,

therefore, ended the relevance of the plantation map of 'British Guiana'. As one

commentator on the Billy William case explained at the time: until the minds of men

are led to a submission to the law, little hopes can be entertained of any advance in the

arts of civilized life' .128

Amerindians, not unlike Negroes, occupied a peculiar position in the colonial legal

landscape. Until 1831, they were neither subject to European laws nor did the

Europeans recognize Amerindian laws or systems of justice. Furthermore, their

relationship to the land on which they lived was ignored. As the Committee on

126 Ibid. p. 522. 127 PP 1831-32, vol. xx. Report of the Select Committee on the Extinction of Slavery throughout the British Dominion. Q. 118. 128 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Letter from George Bagot to Major-General Sir B. D'Urban. 20 September 1831. p. 526.

Chapter 1 I 54

Aborigines acknowledged: 'if they have been found upon their own property, they

have been treated as thieves and robbers. They are driven back into the interior as if

they were dogs or kangaroos' .129 Goderich while deliberating Billy William's fate in

1831 summed up the relationship thus, 'The whole territory which has been occupied

by Europeans, on the Northern Shores of the South American Continent, has been

acquired by no other right than that of superior power'. 130 This conclusion was based

on judge Charles Wray's summation in the Billy William case that Amerindian's were

a 'conquered nation' residing in a 'conquered country'. 131 It is worth pursuing Wray's

reasoning even further since both his and Goderich' s written reflections, as

precipitated by the Billy William case, on the position of Aborigines in British

territories formed in large part the basis for later British policies regarding

Amerindians. Not satisfied himself with describing Amerindians as 'conquered

people', Wray continued, 'these foreigners [italics added], then so conquered, have

chosen to continue within the territory, have never disputed our rights, and have

adopted our institutions formed for their express interest and protection' .132 The

earlier-mentioned 1837 Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements), for

instance, concluded that one of 'two systems we must have to preserve our own

security, and the peace of our colonial borders; either an overwhelming military force

with all its attendant expenses, or a line of temperate conduct and of justice towards

our neighbours', 'the main point which I would have in view', said a witness before

the Committee, 'would be trade, commerce, peace and civilization. The other

alternative is extermination; for you can stop nowhere; you must go on; you may have

short respite when you have driven panic into the people, but you must come back to

the same thing until you have shot the last man' .133 The end of slavery also meant that

the Amerindians would also be 'invited and afforded ... the opportunity of becoming

partakers of that civilization, that innocent commerce, that knowledge and that faith

with which it has pleased a gracious Providence to bless our own country' .134 This

'invitation' set about to inaugurate a regime whose business it was to keep everyone,

Negroes and Amerindians, from resorting to the land. In so doing, the laws and the

129 PP 1837, vol. vii. Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 4. 130 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban. Downing Street, 21 July 1831. p. 524. 131 Ibid. Charles Wray's summation. p. 522. 132 Ibid. 133 PP 1837, vol. vii. Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). p. 74. 134 Ibid.

Chapter 1 I 55

lines that appeared in the 1830s in 'British Guiana' did not eradicate but instead

reconfigured old identities and categories that capital could no longer accommodate.

Goderich on February 17, 1832 preserved Billy William's life when he ordered that

'he should be removed from the colony in chains, and his banishment should be

attended with every appearance of severity which can be properly given to it, and

should be represented to the Indians, both of his own party and of the party hostile to

him, as the infliction of a heavy punishment'. 135 As Bagot, the Protector. of Indians,

pointed out, however, 'the disposal of the unfortunate Billy William is indeed a

puzzling question', and went on to suggest that there was 'no other alternative but that

of keeping him in the jail' .136 To phrase Bagot's dilemma differently, how could a

person be banished from a place with no boundaries? That Goderich suggested 'the

best way of disposing of him would be to remove him to some distant region, and if

the authorities of Cayenne or in Colombia should refuse to allow him a place of

refuge within their territories, it might be possible, perhaps, to remove him to some

British settlement, Honduras or Trinidad', 137 only serves to reinforce this point. It was

not until Schomburgk that Billy William would actually be punished, for

Schomburgk's lines marked a boundary beyond which banishment was possible. Like

Phillis' 'not understanding the nature of an oath' and being 'sent away', and Billy

William's father, William Maltis' laying 'hold of a stick' in the courtroom repeating

'a form of invocation after the interpreter, I swear to the Great God above; it is true

that I say. If !lie, Great God destroy me', and then 'runs away', Schomburgk's lines

represent the law's inability to completely bind. As long as there are Phillis' and

William Maltis' around, physical borders will be necessary to establish the 'empire of

the law' .138

But Schomburgk did more. Through the names he placed on the map, ·within the

borders, he may have also made it possible for Billy William to be banished without

ever having to leave what is known as 'British Guiana'. What actually happened to

Billy William is difficult to say. Menezes writes, without citation, that 'both Billy

135 PP 1834, vol. xliv. Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban. Downing Street, 17 February 1832. p. 538. 136 Ibid. George Bagot to Major-General Sir B. D'Urban. 20 September 1831. p. 526. 137 Ibid. Viscount Goderich to Sir B. D'Urban. Downing Street, 17 February 1832. p. 538. 138 Ibid. George Bagot, Second Fiscal, Essequibo, to Major-General Sir B. D'Urban, 20 September 1831. p. 529.

Chapter 1 I 56

WiJliam and Frederick were transported for life to Trinidad' . 139 I have been unable to

confirm this. In a chapter that has in effect argued that Robert Schomburgk was Billy

WiJliam's executioner it would only he fitting to point the reader's attention to that

Cataract on the Pirara to Upper Corentyn map of 1843, in between Sir Walter

Raleigh's and Lord Stanley's Cataracts, below the 'Slave Path' and on the border of

Carib country, Surinam, that Schomburgk, during the last days of his last expedition,

named Frederick William's Cataract 140 and to suggest that when, having packed away

his Bunten's siphon barometer for the last time in 'British Guiana', he wrote that he

was able to perform his 'arduous duties without the loss of a single human life', 141 he

had no idea how right he was.

139 M.N. Menezes. British Policy. p. 134. 140 Robert Schomburgk. "Expedition from Pirara to the Upper Cornetyne". p. 102, where Schomburgk wrote, 'We started in the early morning of the 22 [September 1843], from the foot of Frederick William's Cataract, under which name, in honour of my sovereign, the King of Prussia, this magnificent fall will appear in my maps'. 141 Ibid.

Chapter 1 I 57

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I wish I could repeat to you, as eloquently as I heard it related, the 1•ery illferesting detail of an expedition sent into the n·oods against these Bush negroes. last rear. under the command of major M'Grah, and captain Doup,an. Many persons had been robbed. and had their property otherwise injured by their /i.e., the Bush negroes'] predatory excursions;- indeed the 1rhole colony was disturbed, and from the increasinp, number of these sanguinary hordes. was threatened with e\'ellfual destruction. It was therej{>re resolved that a body of troops should he sent into the ll'ood.1· to search fi>r their place of resort, and to endeavour to subdue or exterminate them. A party of the Dutch soldiers of the garrison was, accordingly, equipped for this duty; and marched in due military order to the forest. But this was not the species of force calculmed for such an expedition: and from not having observed all the minute precautions required, in this new and hazardous kind of wwfare, they were surprized and defeated by the negroes; and \'ery few of the soldiers escaped 1rith their lives - most of their being killed, and their scalps, or bodies, fixed against the trees, to serve as an example of what others had to expect who should venture on a similar expedition. Upon this occasion one of the officers was carried out of the wood by a faithful slave, who, qftenvards, refused to accept his freedom as a reward; and only begged to have a silver medal to wear on days of festival. The government and the colonists having discovered, from this fatal experience, that the Bush negroes were more formidable than had been expected; and finding that regular European troops were not the best fitted for this kind of service, raised a corps of negroes from among the most faithful of the slaves; and also enp,aged in their interest a party of Indians from the ll'oods ... Well provided and equipped, this second expedition, commanded as above-mentioned, separated into two parties, and boldly advanced into the wood to form a combined attack. Upon their march they passed the dead bodies of the Dutch soldiers tied to the trees at the sides of a narrow path. Not deterred by this horrid example, they proceeded onward, having the sagacious Indians on their flanks; by whose acuteness and penetration they discovered the various situations, where the different companies of the Brigands had taken up their residence, and, by well concerted attacks, defeated and routed them wheresoever they met them . ... It was found that the Brigands had eight of these encampments, or points of rendevouz in the woods, one of which is supposed still to remain undiscovered. After much fatigue in endeavouring to find it, the search was relinquished, in the idea that some of the prisoners, either by indulgence or torture, would be induced to make it known: but this expectation has only led to disappointment. All the means used have failed, and the prisoners, faithful to their cause, have suffered torture and death without betraying their forest-associates. The cruel severities upon these miserable blacks have been such as you will scarcely believe could have been suggested or practiced by any well-ordered government: for however strongly punishment was merited, the refinement (!(torture with which it was executed oup,ht never to have been tolerated in any state professing to be civilized. Humanity shudders at the bare recital of it. Most of the rinp,-leaders were taken, and brought to Stabroek, where they tried and executed, the majority of them suffering with a degree of fortitude and heroism worthy of a better cause. One in particular, named Amsterdam, supported the extreme punishment with a firmness truly astonishing. He was subjected to the most shocking torture, in order the compel him to give information regarding the remaining encampments - but in vain! He despised the severest suffering, and nothing could induce him to betray his late companions, or to make known their yet undiscovered retreat. He was sentenced to he burnt alive, first having the flesh tom from his limbs with red-hot pinchers; and in order to render his punishment still more terrible, he was compelled to sit by, and see thirteen others broken and hung; and then, in being conducted to execution, was made to walk over the thirteen dead bodies of his comrades. Being fastened to an iron-stake, surrounded with the consuming pile, which was about to be illumined, he regarded by-standers with all the complacency or heroic fortitude, and exhibiting the most unyielding courage, resolved that all that torture, ingenuity or cruelty might invent should not extort from him a single groan; nor a syllable that could in any way impeach his friends. With the first pair of pinchers, the executioner tore the flesh from one of his arms. The sudden infliction of pain caused him to recede, in a slight degree, from the irons; and he drew in his breath, as if to form it into a sigh, but he instantly recovered himself- his countenance upbraided him, and he manifestly took shame for having betrayed even the slightest sense of suffering - then, resuming more, if possible, than his former composure, he patiently waited the approach of the next irons, and, on these being brought towards him, he steadfastly cast his eye upon them, inclined a little forward, and with an unshaken firmness of countenance, deliberately met their burning grasp! From that moment he shewed himself capable of despising the severest pain. Not a feature was afterwards disturbed, and he preserved a degree of composure implying absolute contempt of torture and of death. Finally, when the destructive pile was set in flames, his body spun round the iron stake, with the mouth open, until his head fell back, and life was extinguished. I am told, by a gentleman who had the melancholy task to attend the execution, that the most horrid stench continued, for many hours, to issue from the roasting body, and was extremely offensive throughout the town, penetrating so strongly into the houses to leeward, as to make many persons sick, and prevent them from taking food during the remainder of the day.

George Pinckard, M.D who travelled in Guiana between 1795 and 1796

Chapter 1 I 61