The Caribbean Cultural Center Offers Fun, Relaxation, and Enlightenment in One Beautiful Tropical Setting
Help Make This Dream Come True - Click Here For The Theme Park Proposal

To Play Music associated with this page

THE MAJESTIC QUARTET OF WINDWARD ISLANDS TAPERS OFF TOWARD THE end of the Lesser Antilles, rising sheer from the Atlantic surf on one side and the gentle wavelets of the Caribbean Sea on the other. The islands are the mere tips of a volcanic mountain range that has sprouted along a rift in the earth's crust where the Atlantic and Caribbean tectonic plates collide. Three of the four main Windward Islands have an active soufriere, a sulfurous volcanic vent liable to erupt every hundred years or so (Grenada, the exception, has bubbling hot springs). Tall enough to create their own microclimates by trapping the winds off the Atlantic and converting them to rain clouds, the Windwards are fantastically fertile. Islanders grow bananas, coconuts, and spices for export, and farmers have their work cut out for them trying to keep the encroaching sea of green at bay. In the high country, rare parrots add a flash of brilliant color to the dense rain forest canopy towering above a steaming jungle of ferns, creepers, and twisted tree roots.

Today Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent (with its chain of islands known as the Grenadines), and Grenada are independent nations, but their long association dates back to the days of sail when they fell to the windward side of the English colonial trading routes between Europe and the Caribbean. Later the term was adopted by 19th-century British administrators who governed the Windward Islands as a group distinct from British colonies in the Leeward Islands.

The earliest inhabitants of the Windward Islands were Arawak Indians, farmers and fishermen whose peaceful reign ended abruptly with the arrival of warlike Carib people about A.n.1000. Spanish explorers gave the "Cannibal Isles" a wide berth, and they became the focus of Carib resistance in the region until the mid17th century, when the sugar trade spurred French and English colonists into action. Initially the two most topographically challenging islands, Dominica and St. Vincent, were left to the Carib, who were joined by escaped African slaves. But a century later, white settlers had forced Dominica's few remaining Carib into exile on the Atlantic coast; on St Vincent mixed race black Carib took refuge in the hills and continued a dogged resistance until the early 19th century.

Throughout the plantation era Europe's conflicts were mirrored in the Caribbean arena, where Britain and France squabbled over the Windwards incessantly and won, lost, and regained territories with bewildering frequency. The islands inherited a contused legacy of French and English place names, as well as the French-influenced Creole patois that is still widely spoken in Dominica and St. Lucia, although the islands have been officially English speaking for 200 years. When slavery was abolished in 183·t, former slaves turned to the land and carved small-scale farms out of the rich soil. The islands slid into an agricultural backwater administered by a British governor based in Grenada. Several attempts to federate the British Caribbean territories came to nothing, and eventually the individual Windward Islands were granted self-government in the 1900s and full Independence in the late 1970s. They are now members of the British Commonwealth.

Part of the Windward Islands' appeal is the coexistence of tourism and traditional island life. This is particularly true on Dominica, where vast tracts of primal rain forest and uplands remain in pristine condition, and fishing and farming still underpin the local economy. Also unspoiled and under appreciated. St. Vincent is another rain forest wilderness and tropical market garden but generally consigned to the role of steppingstone for yachtsmen heading for the Grenadines. The Grenadines are a yachting paradise, an alluring chain of minuscule island, with great beaches, some uninhabited, some harboring exclusive resorts. Others, such as pretty Bequai, fall somewhere between the two. To the south is charming Grenada. Easygoing and friendly the Spice Island is overloaded with natural beauties and ringed by sandy beaches, spice plantations, and pretty Z D villages. St. Lucia is the most developed of the Windwards, but even here it's easy to escape the resort beaches of the northwest and take a trip to the mountains, where villages nestle amid fabulous tropical flowers and vegetable plots on the edge of the forest.

If you have noteworthy cultural information on any Caribbean island, we would like to hear from you. Maybe you are an expert in geography, or knowledgeable on architecture, or specialize in Caribbean anthropology, or train tropical parrots, etc., send us an email. Share your knowledge and talents by sending your edited copy and permission so that we can include this on the Caribbean Cultural Center website. Please, no copyrighted material.

Top Of Page

You can email comments to the webmaster at webmaster@caribbeantown.com. Copyright © 1999 - 2002 Caribbean Town. All rights reserved.  Visit us at www.caribbeantown.com  Revised: November 11, 2006, Site Map, Search