(In my column this weekend, I will recite some details of the 1773 slave rebellion on the Belize River, as first published in the booklet KNOCKING OUR OWN TING [pgs. 1 to 4], written by myself in 1969.)
On May 29, 1773 it is reported to a Captain Davey who is in command of a ship and crew in the settlement that there has been an insurrection of the slaves on the Belize River in which two white men were killed. He is asked for his assistance.
On the same day, Davey writes to his superior officer, Admiral Rodney (stationed in Jamaica), that he has sent an officer and a party of soldiers to assist in quelling this rebellion.
On June 31, 1773, almost a month after, Captain Davey again writes Admiral Rodney. The black revolutionaries had taken five settlements and executed six slavemasters, their ranks had swollen to fifty, armed with sixteen muskets, cutlasses, etc. Davey’s crowd attacked them on the 7th, but Allah helps those who help themselves. The black brothers cut a trail into the jungle.
Here I will quote from Burdon’s text in Volume l: “Next day 14 slaves who had been forced to join the rebels gave themselves up, but Davey is afraid the inhabitants will find great difficulty in taking the rest, although 3 parties of 40 are being organized to endeavour to surround them, which if they do not effect they must give up the trade, or they will be continually exposed to their excursions and there will be an asylum for all the Negroes who choose to run away from their masters.
“The trade in Belize, excepting at two settlements, is extremely at a standstill, settlers in other rivers are apprehensive, and all the inhabitants beg him to stay. He has told them he must leave on July 10th in accordance with his instructions as he will by then only have enough bread to last until the ship gets back to Jamaica.”
(Here Burdon quotes Davey’s letter directly): “The inhabitants are in a very bad situation: they have neither arms nor ammunition and those that are here are obliged to keep guard for fear of the Negroes on the Kay, and what is much worse their fears will not make them unite and there is not the least subordination — they are continually quarrelling and fighting. Two nights ago at the Guard Room there was a man killed and another very badly wounded. I have got the murderer on board and shall bring him to be tried.”
So at this stage, the black guerrillas had the oppressor slavemasters so scared that they were starting to fight and quarrel with one another. Note, however, that everything is described from the slavemasters’ viewpoint. Burdon does not do this with malice aforethought, or at least we should not think so. No one will ever know what kind of suffering and starvation our ancestors were undergoing in the jungle. We don’t know if women, maybe pregnant, had joined them, or how many children there were. One would think that there might have been women and children among them, because the guerrillas were planning a one-way trail to freedom, and they would want whatever family they had along with them.
On a long trek, women and children obviously slow a guerrilla down, but it is the essence of his role that, once he has established himself in a terrain, he can then defend it and hold it from the enemy. This is known in military terms as a “liberated zone.”
No one knows what actually went on in the jungle: all we know is that after the rebellion on the Belize River in late May and early June, the rebels must have started cutting a trail north, because on October 11, 1773 a committee of Baymen writes to Admiral Rodney that the “19 surviving rebels” tried to reach the Spanish, and a Captain Judd sent a commissioned officer, two non-commissioned officers and twelve marines to cut them off, but eleven of them reached the Spanish Lookout on the Rio Hondo. And baby, the Rio Hondo is quite aways from the Belize River. Dig it. Those brothers were revolutionaries. To Burdon they were rebellious Negro slaves. For us, they are revolutionary black people.
You might be wondering why the revolutionaries headed north to the Spanish. This was nothing new—runaway slaves from the Honduras settlement were constantly seeking refuge amongst the Spanish on the Rio Hondo and in the Bacalar province. And such complaints as the following from the Baymen are common in the 18th century. The Baymen write to Admiral Rodney on October 9, 1773 that “their lives and properties are so uncertain through the harbouring of their runaway slaves by the Spanish that unless some immediate security from this oppression is obtained the logwood trade must cease and they must evacuate the settlement.”
These complaints are made repeatedly year after year. The point now to consider is why, after taking refuge amongst the Spanish for so many years, did our ancestors supposedly side with the English at the Turkey Fight in 1798. In the following work I will seek to show the difference between 1773 and 1798 and explain for the first time the black man’s stake in the whole English-Spanish rigmarole.
Before we end the 1773 episode, it is noteworthy to point out that the archives recorded another incident whose relationship to the larger rebellion is obscure.
In a letter dated August 8, 1773, Admiral Rodney writes to Captain W. Judd of H.M.S. GARLAND instructing him to proceed directly to the Bay and find out particulars of the reported Negro rebellion and massacre of several whites. He is to show the utmost civility toward any Spanish he encounters and not to trespass on their exclusive territory in quelling the rebellion; in fact, he should endeavour to get the Baymen to subdue the Negroes themselves. He should, however, demand the return of the three fugitive slaves who murdered McDougal and were immediately received into the Spanish Lookout on the Hondo, where the guard also helped to plunder McDougal’s raft.
It is not clear whether the execution of McDougal occurred before or after the Belize River rebellion. It seems to have occurred at some point near to the Hondo and probably after the Belize River rebellion. It may be that the McDougal execution was prompted by news among the slaves of the Belize River rebellion or perhaps even contact with a few of the rebels. The three executioners of McDougal might even have been rebels who managed to reach the Hondo before Judd arrived. In any case, as it is written, the text seems to preclude the possibility that the McDougal execution might have been the spark for the Belize River rebellion.
Not until November 6th 1773 do we get documentary evidence of the end of the rebellion. Rodney writes to Secretary Stephens on this day that Judd has arrived from the Bay and that the Negro rebellion is entirely suppressed.