Editorial: Biden Names St. Croix a National Heritage Site
Editorial: Biden Names St. Croix a National Heritage Site
Crowing about St. Croix and other status items
Editor’s Note: Gary A Schlueter served as an editor at the Virgin Islands Business Journal. He’s the former editor-in-chief at Coastal View News and served as president of the Virgin Islands Conservation Society. Today, he writes at Acorn Archive.
I remember when I scorched madam editor at the Virgin Islands Daily News over St. Croix’s status. In the mid-80s there was an opportunity for each of the three U.S. Virgin Islands (Water Island was still part of St. Thomas then) to have some independence of governance exclusively as an island itself and not part of the USVI as a political whole.
It meant self-governance, something that was not there then and I suspect is not there now. It was well talked over and debated in the paper and on the local radio talk shows. It felt to me like a good thing. I’m for local power though not necessarily some hierarchical structure.
I’m for what the Frenchees on the Northside of St. Thomas had when they come together. They had no leader and they would all get to give their opinion (if they can get it in sideways) on things of importance which could include some tight lipped, serious things which would exclude a non-belonger like me. But mostly they’d talk Yankee baseball, The Destroyers - their fastpitch softball team, anything about the sea, housing reports following the progress of the next house they were building, fish, folklore known only to them and bull shit now and then. Gardening or any kind of growing was fair ground but things could get touchy when someone like Silvie Berry would bring up joining the Northside Farmers Association, of which he was president. They were cautious about joining things. A fisherman’s co-op got a lot of traction but fell apart before it could get going. But I digress—
The eve before the issue was coming to a vote, madam editor sided with the League of Women Voters, a group I respected especially for their environmental oversight, and bad-mouthed the idea. They hadn’t thought it through. They were reacting to shadows of fears they thought might result. And they changed their mind later, but too late for this go-round. In my 18 years on St. Thomas, the issue of status came up three times. So the paper’s influence now helped kill it for the next six years or so, which wrankled me.
A year goes by maybe two, and the issue of more local self-government, that is creating local governments on each island that dealt with island-only matters, comes up again. I liked it because it brought government closer to the citizens. I figure government is going to be corrupt. That’s my starting line. So bring it closer to home. It’s easier to keep watch on government close and you can see rather than far away and out of sight.
By this time and in this presentation and environment, Madam Editor brought up the need for a vehicle of local governance, the same thing she had been against when she and the League of Woman Voters put their heads together and decided the newspaper’s position. They came out against it then, but now she is for it.
That was my scathing insight and to my surprise she published it as a letter to the editor. It began red hot but she published it anyway. It slapped her in the face with the facts and she published it anyway. And she had vetoe power over any letter. She was gracious to do so. It gave her a black eye. She would have been pilloried the next morning at Sparky’s on the Waterfront where they served coffee in brown plastic mugs and, thus stimulated, zingers followed the reading of the Daily News.
I got to crow, but it didn’t matter to the issue one drop. The issue did not move.
Perhaps now that the entire island of St. Croix has been newly designated a National Heritage Site, there will be a wave of recognition for more self-determination.
Birth of a Park
I could crow about something else regarding St. Croix, I was on the Board of Directors of the Virgin Islands Conservation Society when we finally completed a project that outlived many, many former VICS boards, when President George Bush, the first, signed into being the creation of Salt River Bay, National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve Virgin Islands,
I happened to be president of the Virgin Islands Conservation Society that year. I got the part by being the founding secretary of the Environmental Association of St. Thomas-St. John which Thyra Butsan soon named EAST, to match SEA, the St. Croix Environmental Association.
It was SEA who envisioned Salt River park as a national treasure which needed national attention and who over many years and many trials and tribulations, I assume, especially rejoiced when President Bush with his brush — Bingo! made a Park, with a capital P.
Explore Salt River Bay via NPS website—>
The Clash of Continents Begins
The sexist thing about Salt River Bay is it is where deadly hostilities began between Americans and Europeans. It happened on Columbus’ second voyage.
He was searching for fresh water and after dropping anchor sent rowboats out to explore for it. This was too much for the Caribe who were the top dog on the island at the time having recently devoured the Arawaks, the original people of the Virgin Islands.
The Caribe were fierce warriors and fine watermen. When the time was right they showed themselves some way, I like to think of it as in their own war vessels. A fight ensued as we can only imagine where one is killed on either side. They do say the Caribe warriors were led by a fierce female war chief.
While the battle between continents began ending in a tie at Salt River Bay, we know how the other encounters turned out.
That’s why I’m for Land Back to American Indigenus, however feasible.
Stones, Come Home
The staidest thing about Salt River Bay are the stone slabs of a prehistoric ball court, now not on St. Croix at all, but in Denmark of all places. Here’s something to wrankle your craw:
According to nps.gov (US National Parks), a Danish cultural excavator named Gudmund Hatt did an archaeological survey of the Virgin Islands in the 1920s. He did it for Denmark but a few years earlier, in 1917, Denmark sold them to the United States for $25 million in gold.
After visiting St. Thomas and St. John, Hatt spent most of his time on St. Croix and some of that time at the place called Columbus Landing Site at Salt River Point. His excavations uncovered the first batey (ball) court found in de island-dem.
“Four of the slabs had carvings in styles found throughout the Greater Antilles, resembling petroglyphs from lowland Amazonia, Surinam, the Guianas, and the Orinoco basin.” The images included the ‘wrapped ancestor,’ ‘Frog Woman,’ and “several human faces’ plain and otherwise.
The connection the National Park Service author made above is broad. The Greater Antilles begin in the east with Puerto Rico and go west; lowland Amazonia is south along the Lesser Antilles. So this tells us Frog Woman was in power throughout the Caribbean islands. Unfortunately, it does not give us any insight into the origins of the Batey ball players, themselves, North, South or even Central America.
“Based largely on his work conducted at Salt River, Hatt established the first prehistoric chronology for St. Croix and the Virgin Islands which has largely remained intact.” Now there’s something to draw to, or something to draw interest, anyway. No telling how thorough the Gudmund might have been, but it would be interesting to do a then-and-now comparison to see how much we’ve lost and, conversely and more positively, how much we still have.
Hatt uncovered several blocks and a row of nine large stone slabs, which told him they were the batey court. The row of slabs measured 26 feet. So long before the fierce Caribe chased away the European interlopers in 1493, there was peaceful sportsmanship at the Point of Arrows. Maybe another name it could have is Batey Point, except that name might attract a certain kind of people.
After Gudmond Hatt finished his in situ work, he packed up “all the artifacts, including the ballcourt stones” and took them back to Denmark where if they haven’t turned to sand, most probably are today.
Arises the riotous voice Vox Populi minus Populi and raises the call:
Dem stones, dem stones dem’s our stones.
As a Virgin Islander I say let’s get them back from Denmark. There has never been a better time. With this new designation comes greater strength to request repatriation of them stones?
I should think it’s worth doing, but I’m looking at St. Croix from 2,000 miles away more or less. Still, even from here it seems clear, those stones should be where those stones originally were. Where that batey ball court was is now part of Salt River Bay National Park. That means they will be treated with the respect they deserve in situ and in perpetuity.
To bring those stones back from Denmark and to assemble them as they would have been would create value in the spirit of the mission of NPS and is surely in line with the rites and rituals of this new designation as a National Heritage Site.