Black Caribs of St Vincent

A variant by Brunias, identifying the man as 'Chatoyer, the Chief of the black Charaibes with his wives' is in the National Gallery of Jamaica. Another variant by Brunias was engraved in Bryan Edwards's History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, London, 1801. Brunias painted numerous St Vincent subjects for his patron Sir William Young, first British Governor of Dominica, who had sugar estates on the island. Britain was given St Vincent, along with Dominica and Tobago by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The British distinguished the so-called black Caribs (descended from African slaves who has intermarried with the Indian population) from the Island or yellow Caribs. For a discussion of these, and of Chatoyer in particular, see K.D. Kriz, Slavery, Sugar and the Culture of Refinement Picturing the British West Indies 1700-1840, New Haven and London, 2008, pp.49-51.