oh hi and welcome to this episode of rediscover saint croix as you can tell by my gear i'm about to take you and a group of kids on a hike that's right we're about to explore a western portion of the island that's most familiarly known by its name have you ever heard of annalee bay i'm sure you have but do you really know about this area and its history curious i am too come on let's go on a hike the significance of the northwest they threw it for a week three or four reason one the topography is the most stupid part of saint croix two the cultural significance of the maroons who live here tree the terrestrial environment the plant community and for the marine environment and the connection from this part of the island to the other parts of the caribbean look for example saint john saint thomas puerto rico and haiti the northwest is international so extremely and and and lastly people die here people give the life people fall down to rocks and people that could die people would hunted her and kill and those people were the maroons maroon is the name given to slaves in the caribbean that refuse to be held captive and escape from plantation owners evidence and accounts of maroon activity can be found throughout the western hemisphere in places like jamaica and haiti and here on saint croix in every instance maroons use the topography of an area as a method of escape and a means of defense on saint croix the rough and treacherous landscape of the northwest was ideal for their survival as free people and it's this area that we will be exploring today with our guide olasie davis and members of the rising stars summer camp now the hike that we are on is about a one and a half to two miles walk down a rugged dirt road to will's bay along the way we'll be learning about the vegetation in the area what the maroons use to survive and other interesting facts first interesting thing we come across this inkberry tree now this plant here we call it christmas tree this was a tree that was used going back from in in still africa on the island during the christmas season and as a kid growing up in saint thomas and saint croix our parents used to cut these tree down after thanksgiving getting ready for the christmas season you have to call inkberry you notice there's berries on the tree itself when it's very mature it turns white and inside is the ink like a dark color is used medicinally as well you can use it to write you know and papers you can see it's very flexible see the very flexible tree so folks here in ireland use this effort to go fishing they cut off all the side shoot and see how how it is very flexible back and forth so the people who live there a hundred years ago 50 years ago 75 years ago live off the land so what i mentioned about the inckberry tree the christmas tree this is the particular tree they're talking about it's the evergreen tree which means it's basically how green flowers are green leaf all year round okay so if you're going fishing in those days the folk will take this they cut out the shoots these shoots there put a little fish in line and that's how they catch the fish today now we have this fancy ways of catching fish okay the berries are not edible the berry used uh for medicinal use and if there was a a white one i would open it and show you inside it's a dark bluish color and that berry being crushed to put in a mountain pencil crush it a little bit of water and they get that for example like a feather from a chicken they have a hole they soak up the ink and then the write and the paper called inkberry now this is a very interesting vine it produces bright red seeds that were once used to ward off evil spirits but you may also want to stay away if ingested they can be deadly this particular plan we call jumbi beads these are the beads right here seven seed can kill a full grown cow so you can imagine what we do is you digest this here now this plant is one of the plants that the maroons use to protect themselves what i mean by that by spirit what they call jumbi so they make a bracelet from the seed itself and when a child is born they tie it around the hand as a bracelet and to protect them from evil spirit why interesting here in the islands many years ago the older folks used the beads in the lamp and the kerosene lamp and of course those folks was very poor in those days so by putting the bead inside the lamp the bead expands and then all we really slowly at night as you're going home you're walking toward the house and the jumbi follow you and as you open the door there's the lamp but if we don't have the beads in the lamp you got to walk in backwards inside the house that's part of our tradition now in south and central america the indian also used this jumbi bead went cheering bantu as well but didn't put it around their hand they put it around their neck so see this tradition come way back from africa and the maroons who live here uh more than 150 years ago and going back to 16 50s they used this beads are part of the spiritual protection again to be called jumbi as i mentioned before the terrain is rugged even though there is a pathway one still has to be very careful walking it gives a sense of what the maroons had to endure to remain free according to olasie the maroons survived by foraging for food and or stealing what they could from the town they basically gather wild fruits berries and they actually migrated on in a town like in frederiksted and where they steal foods and come back as part of the islands as well so they were not farmers to say nonetheless the northwest region provided enough food sources for them like this fruit this fruits are locus a other food source of the maroons in this part of the island now the locus also call stinking toe is the reason for that as you know you go outside and the ring catch you it would get wet or your socks get wet and if shoe smell stinks does the world's thinking too so inside in here there's a powdery substance that the maroons eat so we'll do a demonstration for you and open this one here oh this one looks really good but they have an unusual smell to it this is the part that they consume and what happened is it sticks to your hoof or your mouth but it does not kill you but you have a strong odor and then you have a seed seed right here so this one a particular food that was used in order to open this some more yeah go look at the powder this is the edible part you can make a nice drink with it the shell in the other hand is due to insecticides the shell what it does the grain is sell down to like side of like you know you're doing carpentry and then they sprinkle the shed the the the along the house along the doors so at night you know you don't get centerpiece and all the inset calling inside so this is used as an insecticide too as well and this this is the the meat of it so one in the food that many years ago that the maroon eats in this part of the island you open it in the inside part it's open and you can eat the inside of it but what happened it tastes very good when you eat it it gets stinking breath so as kid back in the sixteenth when we growing up in this island which i had in my school yard we look for one crack it open eat it taste pretty good look for a girl kiss her and get stinking breath that was a one of our games i'm glad no one ever tried kissing me after eating that other food sources for the maroons were guava berries and red man jack this tree here and give it a three common name they call it talking time lumber gumbo a tourist tree you see it does peal you notice here when it gets sunburned see thats why it get the name tourist tree this particular tree is have gum in it the gum is edible for example you notice where they those who carpenters that when they're making furnitures that look a paint and they paint in the wood because stick together come from this talking time traditionally in the island the lumber gumbo or tourist tree is used as fence posts in other words they plant them in rows that's part of the tradition for boundaries and of course the tree have many more additional use in a decision to let you know when the spring rain is coming um late in the year in the fast season the leaf began to defoliate which means began to drop they change different colors and bout around january or february there is no leaf on the tree coming to the spring leaf begin to appear on the tree okay so this is again a call lumber gumbo now if you get a cut you take the gum from this tree and put the gum on the cut it will slow your bleeding down all large right they got three larges and this uh it depends this other native and it's very resistant against hurricane these trees if you're going in a cliff they're very short or in a valley it gets very tall so you depend in topography where he tree growing you got from short to very tall now here is another attractive but dangerous plant coma claudia de donai locally known as christmas bush this plant has colorful leaves with sharp spines it has the same active chemical irritant found in poison oak and poison iv the common side effect from being scraped by the spines of this plant is a severe rash however it is known to have also caused respiratory failure in some extreme cases according to olasie this plant was used as a natural defense by the maroons to cover their tracks and secure their hiding places i'm not tired though i'm not tired a little over a mile into the hike we come across this structure that dates back to 1796. it was once a dungeon for maroons that were captured it is said that slaves would be held in this small space for weeks to months at a time at the end of the hiking trail you end up at the wills bay and annalee bay bats according to olasie this is one of the shoreline caves along the northwest that maroons hidden it is said that there are caves along the rugged hillside where maroons found refuge so far there hasn't been any real evidence of these caves but it's something we're definitely going to look into for now we'll say goodbye to this part of annalee bay and travel west to maroon ridge a sacred place where historians say maroons took their last stance but before we can get to maroon ridge we must first as we always do take a short hike now the path is a narrow and winding incline everybody doing all right along the way we come across some plant species that we saw on our first hike like this one remember the christmas bush if you notice on the leaf itself you see turns sitting right here on both sides so if this sticking really good in the flesh many times you'll break out with ooze on the skin otherwise in five ten minutes you're skin does break up the soars all over it take about 10 to 15 minutes to absorb in the bloodstream and for some people who are very sensitive possibility can kill them so the sap for this plant here is used for ring worm they they it require vaseline what was vaseline made from so you take the vaseline mix with the sap and the vaseline reduce the poison in the sap and then apply it to your hand and see if we get um for example ringworm there's a couple things you can do without even going to the doctor you can get a lime cut it in half rub it where part you get the ring worm because it's contagious and you can get the blue that your parents wash you're close with and then you can get this and put it on your hand and about a week or two it kills the ringworm it's a traditional way the folks live here many years ago like the maroon well talk about later on they use poison plants and also look when they run away they use plants to detour the dogs and those who hunting them so otherwise they cannot pick up the scent or the person the moral of the story is stay away from this plant when you see it and then there is this structure a lighthouse built by the danes in 1912. it's said to be the oldest and only true lighthouse on saint croix after another 10 to 15 minute walk up a very narrow and treacherous path we finally reach the top of maroon ridge here we learn about the history of the area and why some consider it a very sacred place this section of the island here is the last resistant areas of the maroon to colonial power this part of the island slay jump off on this cliff we see right here and kill himself so now on this side here on top of there the verdant forest they live in these areas of the island that have the most steepest cliff of the island and when a danish ship was leaving frederiksted to go out these marine make rough and go out in the ocean capture these ships and migrate to puerto rico during the 16th and 1700s and other parts of the caribbean in fact there was maroon all the way from haiti that was here before denmark arrive here during the 1633s i mean that's 1623 1723 1724. now it's important to note that maroons who were captured were severely punished most often times they lost limbs many times they were hung or beheaded a main reason why so many refused to be captured and instead jumped to their deaths off these cliffs if you it's a maroon in a runaway and they catch you they could cut off your head cut off the tongue cut off your foot cut off your hand you remember now you were not a human being you was a slaved african throughout the caribbean they look for the most difficult place where they can be fined and this entire saint croix this area going back to the north west of the island was the most difficult in fact in in 1754 when did we get to severe saint croix this part was still in paris the never surveillance area here because until years later because at the topography and because of the dense forest so this will continue to be maroon country horse watershed and going right back so this this ocean you see right there they migrated you notice you can look out you can see saint thomas saint john see tortola and the cleric was in puerto rico and collaborate from this side so they migrated went the part of the wall so we are connected to puerto rico saint thomas and john tortola and other parts of the caribbean from this section of the island and now along these hillside a mountainous area there's cave there's a cave over here that have a two compartment i'd have two compartments where you could just go inside the cave in like two bedrooms so to speak and there is caves along the coastal to as well now this individual used to go going and talking firstly for example and they will steal food and come back this area here i'm very stunning right now there was trees in this particular area there was no acacia on my ambush so they come down in the night and even sometime in a day they mingle with other folks there and migrated back in this part of the island now there's three areas in the forest where the individual jumped off and so-called commit suicide.

what is important is that most times when you had maroon settlements they were on islands that had a lot a lot of high hills a thick thick forest not a small island like saint croix and the danish man who wrote the article said that saint croix is unique because it is one of the only places in the caribbean where you find such a large number of africans able to establish maroon settlements for such a long period of time you find it in haiti you find it in jamaica in panama south america and the dominican republic and in dominica but you really don't find large long maroon settlements on small islands it's on small saint croix the africans were brave enough to come up here and live independently of their slave masters uh up this was truly an interesting and educational experience it goes to show how rich the island is in history and how places that are seemingly ordinary have extraordinary stories thanks for joining us on this episode of rediscover saint croix and always remember to cherish your home this beautiful island but most of all cherish each other we'll see you next time you