Connoisseurs of fine cigars may disagree, but many people today feel that tobacco has a lot to answer for—primarily countless untimely deaths and ill-gotten gains. “Wizard burdens” also played a not always good role in various historical events, and one of them was the establishment of the first English colonial settlement in the Caribbean islands.
As so often happens, a pivotal moment in history was brought about by a coincidence of personalities, circumstances and chance – and in this case, the moment happened exactly 400 years ago on the beautiful island of St Kitts.
The events that followed encapsulate much of the colonial history of the Caribbean – conquest, war, inter-European rivalry, slavery and resistance. But what adds extra interest to the early days of St Kitts is the family at the center of the story and a deadly feud between half-siblings.
It all started with an Englishman named Thomas Warner, born in 1580 into a family of landowners in Suffolk, England, and then a captain in the guards of King James I.
Warner seems to have been attracted to the idea of adventures in the “New World” and in 1620 he accompanied Roger North – a veteran of Sir Walter Raleigh’s South American expeditions – to the fledgling colony of Oyapoc, in what is now the area. days Guyana was mostly controlled by the Dutch.
The plan was to cultivate tobacco, which was already flourishing as a commodity in Europe a century or so after the first adventurers had brought it back across the Atlantic.
It was in Guyana that Warner met a Captain Thomas Painton, who suggested that one of the small Caribbean islands would make a better base for growing tobacco than the unstable mainland colony, which was soon abandoned.
St. Christopher (or, more commonly, St. Kitts), first sighted and named San Cristobal by Christopher Columbus in 1494, had not been settled since then and was ideal farmland, Painton said, with plenty of water. Its indigenous name Liamuiga means “fertile island”.
Sometime in 1623—the record is sketchy—Warner headed north through the archipelago until he reached the west coast of the island, at a place now known as Old Road Town. There his little band established a base settlement and made contact with the Kalinago, or Carib, chief Tegramund, who appeared friendly.
Warner’s first priority was to seek investment and reinforcements, and almost immediately he sailed back to England to attract money and men for his planned colony. In January 1624, he returned to the island with his family, settlers, supplies and some interested traders, and the first permanent English colony was established at Old Road.
From its beginnings, the settlement faced adversity. The first tobacco crop was destroyed by a hurricane. Then French colonists arrived on the island, demanding their own territory, and Warner was forced to agree to a treaty dividing the fertile land.
Worse followed when Tegramundi, understandably alarmed by the activities of the foreign invaders, planned an attack. The plot was betrayed and English and French forces combined to massacre the indigenous population – an event commemorated by a hill called Bloody Point.
Warner’s colony, although plagued by constant conflict with the French and Spanish (who invaded briefly in 1629) was considered a success in England. He was knighted and made Governor of St Kitts and Lieutenant General of the “Caribee Islands”.
The number of settlers grew so quickly that Warner sent settlers to Nevis, Antigua and Montserrat to establish new settlements. The influx of new arrivals continued to be a problem, as there was insufficient land and unrest grew among those who had been promised a fortune in the Caribbean.
The protests were violently suppressed by Governor Warner, who at the same time introduced slavery to the island, importing thousands of Africans to work on the labor-intensive tobacco and sugar plantations.
At the time of his death in March 1649, Sir Thomas Warner was a powerful and wealthy man, worth the equivalent of £100 million today. His legacy was formidable: he had established the first permanent English colony in the Caribbean and navigated 35 years of wars and political schemes.
He had also fostered some of the worst aspects of colonial rule, which would spread throughout the region: the destruction of indigenous culture, the imposition of slavery, and the creation of a plantation economy.
His grave can be seen at St Thomas Anglican Church in Middle Island, not far from where he first set foot in St Kitts and his name lives on at the Warner Park sports complex in the capital, Basseterre. Its origins date back to 1923, when the colonial authorities decided to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the English arrival with a public park.
But the influence of the Warner family continued in other ways, not least in a strange and tragic rivalry between two sons of Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas was married three times and had one daughter and three sons by these marriages.
Edward was born in 1609 and became the first Governor of Antigua in 1632; Thomas died in 1679 and not much is known about him; and Philip was born in 1612 and was appointed Governor of Antigua, 40 years after his brother Edward, in 1672.
And then there was a fourth son, confusingly also named Thomas, but better known as “Indian” Warner. He had been born out of wedlock in 1630 to a Kalinago woman, apparently from Dominica, and had been brought up in the Warner family. When his father died, he faced ostracism as an illegitimate sibling, was treated as a slave and fled St Kitts to Dominica.
How Indian Warner “escaped to his Caribbean countrymen in Dominica” (Dictionary of National Biography) is unclear, but apparently he was welcomed to an island where the Kalinago people were still dominant. Rising to a position of leadership, he shrewdly took advantage of the Anglo-French rivalry and led expeditions against both colonial contenders.
The English described him as the “Indian Governor-in-Chief” of Dominica, and an uneasy truce existed until 1674 when a force left Antigua, determined to put an end to the raids and kidnappings carried out by the Kalinago from Dominica. The 100-member party was led by Governor Philip Warner, Indian Warner’s half-brother.
Antiguan colonists first joined forces with the Warner Indian community against a hostile Kalinago group and massacred them. Then, according to the eminent writer Marina Warner, a descendant of Sir Thomas Warner:
“The two brothers met on board ship—Philip’s—under a flag of truce, but the ‘Indian’ and all with him died in the ensuing conflict, some witnesses claiming that they had been deliberately drunk by Philip and then killed. coolly. “
Legend has it that Philip, in an act of fratricide, sought out and killed his own brother.
It was a Caribbean Cain and Abel drama. But unlike his biblical counterpart, Philip Warner escaped punishment and lived until 1689. Kalinago would face further bloodshed as St Kitts abandoned tobacco for sugar and sugar for tourism.
