Saint Kitts is one island in the country known as Saint Kitts and Nevis located in
a chain of Caribbean islands called the Lesser Antilles.1 In the correspondences, Saint Kitts is mentioned in comparison to British Columbia’s colonial policy. For example, in this correspondence, Seymour writes that the vacated barracks in New Westminster are of so little value to the Colony that British Columbia should not be required to pay for them. Seymour equates the barracks in New Westminsterto perishable huts on the Fraser compared to those in Saint Kitts.2
Saint Kitts was named when Christopher Columbus landed on the Island in 1493.3 Before colonization, Saint Kitts was called “Liamuiga” (meaning “fertile land”) by
the indigenous Kalina-go (or Caribs) population.4 Like all of the Caribbean Islands, the Ciboney (sometimes Siboney), the Tiano (a subgroup of the Arawak), the
Kalina-go (Carib) were indigenous to Saint Kitts.5
Saint Kitts was eventually settled by the English in 1623 (and Nevis shortly after in 1628) and, for the following two centuries, was an entry point for enslaved Africans who
were sold as commodities in the international slave trade or used as forced labour
in Saint Kitts.6 As with the rest of the British Empire, slavery ended in Saint Kitts in 1834. The island became independent from Britain in 1983.
1. Momsen, J. D. and Gladstone E. M. Mills. Saint Kitts and Nevis,Encyclopedia Britannica.
3. Momsen, J. D. and Gladstone E. M. Mills. Saint Kitts and Nevis,Encyclopedia Britannica.
4. Con Aguilar, Eldris, Heritage Education—Memories of the Past in the Present Caribbean Social Studies Curriculum (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2020), 19-20.