Cataloging Indigenous Life

Abstract:Although colonial texts and archives generally preserve only fragmentary traces of Indigenous life, this article examines the potential for botanical forms of documentation to provide evidence of Indigenous survival and resistance to empire and survival. In particular, it discusses a catalog compiled by the botanist Alexander Anderson, who served as superintendent of the royal botanic garden in St. Vincent from 1785 to 1811 and witnessed the Second Carib War (1795–1797). Containing multiple references to Carib or Garifuna knowledge of plants, the catalogue shows that Garifuna gardening pre-dated European attempts to cultivate and transform the Caribbean environment by thousands of years. It also shows how the Garifuna used counter-plantation strategies and sites to resist British attacks on their sovereignty and outlast a devastating war.