European discovery and early history

Columbus’ fourth voyage 1502-1504

The islands were anciently known as Las Guanajas, from Guanaja, first seen by Christopher Columbus in his fourth and last voyage to the New World, on July 30, 1502. The Admiral named it 'Isle of Pines', and claimed it for Spain.^[12] It was from this island that he then encountered the coast of the American continent, on which he landed on the 14th of August following, at the point now called Punta Castilla de Trujillo.^[13]

When the islands were first discovered, they were populated by Pech Indians, who used boats to trade with Honduras, Yucatán, and (allegedly) Jamaica.^[14]

Notwithstanding Spanish laws prohibiting slavery, governors interested in the slave trade labeled the Pech Indians cannibals, hostile, and opposed to Christianity. Based on this information, Queen Isabella I of Spain issued a decree granting license to the Spaniards to capture and sell the islanders. Under this decree, Spanish slave traders from Cuba raided the Bay Islands continuously from the time of their discovery for the next 20 years. As a result, the population of the islands rapidly declined.^[14]

Diego Velasquez, governor of Cuba, in 1516 formally authorized several companies to trade in Indian slaves. In 1526, Hernán Cortés, who had conquered Mexico, marched to Trujillo to depose a rival conquistador from Cuba. The remaining Pech sought his protection, which Cortés provided. He drove away the slave traders, despite their licenses from the authorities in Cuba.^[14]

William Claiborne

William Claiborne was the first non-Spanish European to attempt settling the Bay Islands, after being granted a patent in 1638 to begin a colony on the island of Roatán. The English would be involved in the Bay Islands for the next two hundred years.^[12]

Around this same period, Dutch, English, and French freebooters were leading raids on the Spanish in the Bay of Honduras. These raids largely avoided Claiborne's settlement.^[12]

18th-century map of the Bay Islands

In 1642, English settlers from British Honduras (modern day Belize) invaded and occupied Port Royal on Roatán. These same settlers also raided the Spanish, provoking an attempt by the Spaniards to drive them out of the colony. This attempt was initially unsuccessful, but in March 1650, the Spanish finally succeeded in retaking Port Royal.^[12]

Black Caribs

English settlers in the Bay Islands

The first records indicating permanent English settlements in the Bay Islands show that Port Royal, on the island of Roatán, was again occupied in the year 1742. In this year the British made an attempt to gain possession of most of the Caribbean coast of Central America, and in doing so, rebuilt the old fort on Roatán.^[12][15] "The archives at Belize record a Major Caulfield in command of Roatán as early as 1745. On August 2nd of that year, the Major wrote a letter to a Mr. Edward Trelawny, Governor of Jamaica, describing Spanish harassment of English settlements... These settlements appear to have been well established on the island of Roatán by 1775."^[12]

The events which followed, so far as they concern these islands, are thus narrated by the Bishop Pelaez: "On the 24th of September, 1781, advices reached Truxillo, which were immediately communicated to the government at Comayagua, that certain negroes and others, to the number of about 300 men, had constructed three forts at the entrance of the principal port of the island of Roatan, armed with 50 guns, and that three armed. vessels cruised in the neighborhood, the object of the whole being to intercept the ships plying between the kingdom of Guatemala and Cuba. It was reported that these freebooters had 3000 barrels of provisions for their support, and that their object in holding the port was to make it a refuge for their vessels, which were no longer allowed to go-to Jamaica...When this information reached Guatemala, Viceroy Galvez, "made arrangements to expel the intruders."^[15]

On the early morning of March, 2nd 1782, the Spanish...directed a well-coordinated attack against the English at Port Royal.^[12] "After a heavy cannonade, detachments of the troops landed and opened regular trenches against the forts, which were so closely invested and hotly pressed that on the 16th of the month they surrendered at discretion. The lives of the defenders were spared, but all their dwellings, to the number of 500, were destroyed."^[15] Six years later, in 1788, England completely evacuated all of her settlements in the Bay Islands as well as on the Miskito Shore.^[15]

The islands then lay deserted of Europeans for almost fifteen years until 1797, when the English removed by force some 5,000 "Black Caribs" (a mixture of African Negro and Carib and Arawak Indians) from the Windward Island of St. Vincent, and marooned them on the then empty beaches of Port Royal on Roatán. Under the command of Captain Barrett, deportees transported to Balliceaux and then Bequia, small islands in the northern Grenadines.^[15] They were then shipped to Roatan by the H.M.S. Experiment. They were landed on Roatán on a stormy day of February 25, 1797.^[16][17] According to the Honduran historian, Durón, the British employed two men-of-war and a brigantine, landing the deportees in April, not February, in 1797.^[12]

Colony of the Bay Islands

Francisco Morazán, President of the Federal Republic of Central America (1830–1839)

The English seem to have made no other demonstration on the islands during the 18th century. They remained in the undisturbed occupation of Spain.^[12] "In 1821, when the Central American provinces achieved their independence, the islands were under the jurisdiction of the state of Honduras. This state of things continued until May, 1830, when the superintendent of the British establishment of Belize, as a measure of coercion against the republic, which had refused to surrender certain runaway slaves, made a descent on Roatan and seized it on behalf of the British crown. The federal authorities remonstrated, and the act was disavowed by the British government."^[15]

"The superintendents of Belize, however, seem to have kept a longing eye on the islands, and to have watched for a pretext to place them under their own jurisdiction. In 1838 their wishes were in part gratified. A party of liberated slaves...of the Grand Cayman islands, came to Roatan to settle. Col. Loustrelet, the commandant, apprised them that they could not do so without the permission of the state government of Honduras."^[15]

"A number applied for and obtained the requisite permission, and received grants of land. But another portion, incited by one or two white men among them, appealed, as British subjects, to the superintendent of Belize, Col. Macdonald, who immediately visited the island, in the British sloop-of war Bover, ran down the flag of Honduras, and, seizing Col. Loustrelet and his soldiers, landed them near Truxillo, and threatened them with death if they ventured to return."^[15]

The republic of Central America had meantime been dissolved, and the feeble state of Honduras was left alone to contest these violent proceedings. Her government remonstrated energetically, but without obtaining redress; and finally, in 1844, the British government instructed Mr. Chatfield, consul-general, to apprise the Honduras authorities, that "when Col. Macdonald hauled down the flag of that state in Roatan, it was by order of the British government... no act of sovereignty followed on the proceedings of Macdonald. Meanwhile, the Cayman islanders continued to emigrate to Roatan, and, in 1848, the population numbered upward of 1,000.^[15]

"Proclamation of the Colony of Bay Islands"

In 1850, the British organized the islands Roatan, Guanaja, Barbareta, Helena, Morat, and Utila into a colony under their rule, called the Bay Islands.^[14]

A small party in the island favourable to British interests, was active in their efforts to secure English protection. "When visited by Capt. Mitchell, E. N., in 1850, he describes them as "electing their own magistrates, by universal suffrage," and "quite ignorant under what government they are placed." A Mr. William Fitzgibbon was chief justice, and acting chief magistrate. Some time in this year, a petition was drawn up by the British party, addressed to the governor of Jamaica, asking him to name magistrates and assume supreme authority in the island.^[15]

Acting on this petition, Capt. Jolly in HMS Bermuda was sent to the islands. He called a meeting of the inhabitants, and declared them under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. Chief Justice Fitzgibbon protested against the whole proceeding... In spite of this protest, however, and backed by the guns of Bermuda, the authorities appointed by Sir Charles Grey were duly installed in the islands. Two years after this occupation, on March 20, 1852, a royal warrant was issued, constituting the islands a colony, under the title of "colony of the Bay islands," of which proclamation was made in Roatan, by Col. Wodehouse, superintendent of Belize, Aug. 10, 1852.^[15]

Cession of the Colony to Honduras

Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom grants the colony of the Bay Islands to Honduras after the Wyke-Cruz treaty.

The proclamation of these islands as a British colony, attracted immediate attention in the United States, where it was universally regarded as a direct violation of the convention of July 5, 1850, known as the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty. This convention provides that "the governments of the United States and Great Britain, neither the one nor the other, shall over occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Costa Rica, Nicaragua, the Mosquito shore, or any part of Central America."^[14]

The matter was brought under the attention of Congress, and the committee of foreign relations of the U.S. senate, after a full consideration, reported "that the islands of Roatán, Bonacca, Utila, etc, in and near the bay of Honduras, constitute part of the territory of the republic of Honduras, and therefore form a part of Central America; and, in consequence, that any occupation of these islands by Great Britain is a violation of the treaty of July 5, 1850."^[14]

Expostulations to this effect were at once addressed by the American government to that of the United Kingdom, and an elaborate correspondence was carried on through the years 1854–1856, between Mr. Buchanan, American minister in London, and Lord Clarendon, on the subject, but without any satisfactory result. The United Kingdom hastily augmented her naval forces on the West India station, and her example was promptly followed by the United States; and, for a time, the peace of the two countries hung upon the discretion of a few naval commanders, acting under orders necessarily vague and indefinite.^[14]

At this critical moment the government of Honduras despatched a minister to London, who took the ground that the question at issue was one that primarily concerned Honduras, and he demanded the surrender of the islands, equally as a measure of justice to that republic, and as a means of withdrawing a dangerous issue between the United States and the United Kingdom, upon which each had committed itself beyond the power of receding.^[14]

On April 30, 1859, the United Kingdom, under a great deal of pressure from the United States, agreed to surrender the Bay Islands and the Miskito Coast of both Honduras and Nicaragua, if allowed complete freedom of action in the territory known at that time as British Honduras. This solution was regarded with favor by both parties, and a convention was entered into between the United Kingdom and Honduras, whereby the Bay islands were placed under the sovereignty of the latter state, with the reservation of trial by jury, freedom of conscience, etc., to the actual inhabitants.^[12]

The principles of this convention were accepted by Honduras, but some of its details were viewed with disfavor by the Honduras congress, and it was returned to London for certain modifications. These changes were made, and the "colony of the Bay islands" ceased to exist, and the islands passed under the sovereignty of Honduras.^[14]

Many of the English settlers disagreed with this resolution. They sought the help of American filibuster William Walker in order to put pressure on the British government to keep the islands. Walker who in 1857 had been deposed from the presidency of Nicaragua, by a Central American army, decided to assist them. Walker arrived in Honduras, and landed in Trujillo with one hundred men, but his efforts to help the English settlers were in vain. Walker was captured by Captain Nowell Salmo, turned over to Honduran authorities, and executed on September 12, 1860.

Citizenship

Coxen Hole in 1910. Most of the population in the town were Anglo Saxon whites and garifuna people.

The Government of Honduras was heavily consumed with troubles on the mainland, and had little interest in her newly won possessions some 15 to 80 kilometres (10 to 50 mi) off her northern shore. Honduras took no action at all until April 12, 1861, when her Minister of Foreign Affairs sent a brief note to a Mr. Hall, then British Consul to Honduras. This note informed Hall that Honduras was not yet prepared to take possession of the Bay Islands, and requested that Britain remain patient.^[12]

On May 23 of 1861, however, British patience ran out. Belize demanded that the Commandant of Trujillo visit Roatán in the near future to take over the sovereignty of the colony, and on June 1, 1861, after having been a British Colony for less than nine years, the Bay Islands became the "Departamento de las Islas de la Bahía", under the struggling Republic of Honduras.^[12]

It was not until 1902, a year after the death of Queen Victoria, that many of the islands' English population realized that their assumed British nationality and claims to British protection were no longer valid.^[12]

Jane Houlson wrote in 1934 that many islanders were still denying Honduran nationality (p. 68); and Peter Keenagh, an Englishman visiting the islands in 1938, wrote: "Since the ratification of the Treaty of Comayagua there has been a continual struggle between Islanders and Mainlanders. The island families, for many reasons, consider that their British stock is superior to the confusion of Spanish, Indian, and Negro blood which populates the mainland, and there has never been the slightest feeling of subjection".^[18]

Up until the late 1950s visitors to the islands "noted that there were some residents there who still claimed British nationality, even though both Honduras and England agree that any person born in the islands subsequent to the treaty of 1861 are Honduran citizens."^[12]

Ethnic composition

During the pre-Hispanic period, the Bay Islands were inhabited by the Pech people and other indigenous peoples. Archaeological remains found in the area, such as those on the island of Guanaja, show that these indigenous peoples originally inhabited all the island. However, they were eventually forced to relocate, or they were captured, enslaved, or killed after the foreign occupation of the Bay Islands. Due to this, the islands were practically uninhabited by the year 1528.

The archipelago began to be populated again by European people due to the arrival of English, French, and Dutch buccaneers who established their camps on the islands. From then on, the Bay Islands were the scene of frequent conflict between Spaniards and non-Spanish pirates.

White population

The white population is made up of descendants of British settlers and white foreigners.

On the three main islands there live descendants of British settlers (mainly English) who occupied the islands in the 18th century. By the mid-19th century, under the Wyke-Cruz treaty, many of the descendants of the white colonists of Great Britain changed their citizenship to Honduran after the country regained the territory, and they officially separated from the British Empire. However, it would take several decades for them to assimilate into the Honduran population.

A 2013 census determined that 11.41% of the population of the Bay Islands is white. However, it has been confirmed that more than 40% of the population on the island of Roatán is of foreign origin. These are mostly white Americans and French Canadians, as well as some European immigrants who have decided to buy properties on the islands.

Black population

Garifuna fishermen. Fishing is a common job in black communities.

During the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, under British occupation, several contingents of black people arrived on these islands, among which three major groups stand out:

(1) The Afro-colonial or French blacks, brought by the Spanish colonizers.

(2) The black caribs or Garífunas.

(3) The Anglo Antilleans, known as English-speaking blacks, brought from Jamaica and the Cayman Islands to work in agriculture.^[19]

At present, the black inhabitants of the Bay Islands are called black caribs, and they are not a genetically homogeneous group. Some black caribs with European ancestry and lighter skin refer to themselves as "browns" while referring to those with less European ancestry and darker skin as "colored".