Joseph Chatoyer

Who is Joseph Chatoyer?

Joseph Chatoyer was the paramount chief of the Garifuna people, also called the Black Caribs, on the island of Saint Vincent during the late eighteenth century. Descended from a mixture of indigenous Kalinago Caribs and West Africans who had settled the island's windward coast, the Garifuna resisted British attempts to seize their fertile lands under the terms of the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which had assigned Saint Vincent to Britain without the consent of its Indigenous and Garifuna inhabitants. Chatoyer emerged as the principal war chief uniting the scattered Garifuna settlements against European encroachment, and he allied with revolutionary France during periods of colonial rivalry. He led the Garifuna in the Second Carib War of 1795, a major uprising against British rule, and was killed in single combat with a British officer, Major Alexander Leith, at the Battle of Dorsetshire Hill on 14 March 1795. That date is still observed annually in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as National Heroes' Day. In 2002 he was formally proclaimed the nation's first National Hero, and monuments, streets, and cultural institutions across the country now bear his name.

Sources: Government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, National Heroes' Day official history · UNESCO, "Language, Dance and Music of the Garifuna" (Proclamation of Masterpieces of Oral Heritage, 2001) · Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry on the Garifuna and the Carib Wars