A new ethnic group, the Garifuna, appears…

A new ethnic group, the Garifuna, appears in Belize at the same time that the settlement is grappling with the ramifications of the end of slavery.

In the early 1800s, the Garifuna, descendants of Carib peoples of the Lesser Antilles and of Africans who had es-caped from slavery, had arrived in the settlement.

The Garifuna had resisted British and French colonialism in the Lesser Antilles until they were defeated by the British in 1796.

After putting down a violent Garifuna rebellion on Saint Vincent, the British moved between seventeen hundred and five thousand of the Garifuna across the Caribbean to the Bay Islands (present-day Islas de la Bahía) off the north coast of Honduras.

From there they had migrated to the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and the southern part of present-day Belize.

By 1802 about one hundred and fifty Garifuna had settled in the Stann Creek (present-day Dangriga) area and were engaged in fishing and farming.