Culture Connections in The U.S. Virgin Islands

 

People On the Islands

    While there have been many groups of people that have lived and colonized these islands there is one group that stands out more than others when it comes to the Virgin Islands. The population on the island is primarily blacks that are descendants of African Slaves. There has been a recent increase in Puertoricans and Americans that have moved to the islands and less than half of the population is not native born. There are multiple examples of how diverse these Islands the main one that is easiest to notice is how the language differs between each island. The traditional language of the island is English much of it is spoken in a dialect called "Calpyso" which gets it's origin from the West African griot tradition. St. Thomas has a good amount of french speaking natives and St. Croix has multiple Spanish speaking natives that have moved from Puerto Rico. There are multiple impacts on the culture on the island it is almost like a melting pot for cultures to come together.


Territorial evolution of the Caribbean - Wikipedia
     Countries that have settled on the Island

    By the year 1600, the native population on the Virgin Islands had been wiped out by the Spanish colonizers. Dutch and English settlers landed and settled on St. Croix and the dutch were driven out around 1645 after that the French came and took possession of the island back from Spain, Denmark had also established slave plantations on both St. John and St. Thomas and they bought St. Croix from the French in the year 1733. As you can see in the 133 years from being first colonized there have been multiple countries leaving their impact on the area no matter how small or how big. Denmark suppressed the slave trade in 1803 the practice wouldn't end until the British took control in 1807. The islands were then returned to Denmark and remained in their control until the U.S. bought them in 1917. When it comes to these islands it isn't possible to say one culture helped shape it because there are impacts from six different nations all throughout history so their cultural impacts on the island tend to stay because each group of colonizers left something different for the island when they left and that is why even today there are traces of all these cultures mixed together on these small islands in the Caribbean.

United States Virgin Islands | History, Geography, & Maps | Britannica


“Calypsonian.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Jan. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypsonian#:~:text=Calypsos%20are%20musical%20renditions%20having,the%20West%20African%20griot%20tradition.&text=The%20patois%20or%20French%20creole,the%20calypsonian%20and%20calypso%20music. 

“The People of the Virgin Islands.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/place/Virgin-Islands/The-people.

Peters, Susan W. “United States Virgin Islands.” Countries and Their Cultures, Every Culture, www.everyculture.com/To-Z/United-States-Virgin-Islands.html.






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