Song and Dance in St. Lucia

Abstract

in the Lesser Antilles, 500 miles southeast of Puerto Rico. In the wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries St. Lucia changed hands fourteen times between France and Britain. As a result, although her government has been that of the British Windward Islands since 1803, the 86,000 St. Lucians still speak French Creole patois and are largely Roman Catholics. This population, with the exception of a few hundred whites and a few thousand East Indians, is of West African ancestry with little European admixture. France, Africa, and Catholicism have combined in St. Lucia to produce a homogeneous culture unique in the West Indies. St. Lucia's 233 square miles are covered by heavily forested volcanic mountains. In several narrow valleys between these peaks, sugar cane is extensively cultivated on large estates owned by the French Creole whites, and worked in season by landless Negro day-laborers. The hills around the sugar valleys and in the interior are divided into the small estates of the landed colored peasantry who raise bananas, cacao, and coconuts for export. The coast of the island is ringed by small towns and villages, the largest of which, Castries, has nearly a fourth of the island's population. The business and governmental administration in this capital city are largely in the hands of coloreds, many of them originating in other nearby islands. The coastal towns with their neatly-laid-out streets, large stone churches built by voluntary labor, and rows of gray, weatherbeaten houses, have changed little in the past century. In sharp contrast, Castries has suffered disastrous fires in 1927, 1948, and 1951, and is now a clean, concrete, model town.