Cra Cra - A Carib Canoe Links Past and Present
Christopher Columbus sent his men ashore on November 14, 1493 to explore and find water. Instead, they encountered a canoe full of Caribs armed with bows and arrows in the Salt River on the island called Santa Cruz — now known as St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Each side suffered a fatality during this first documented resistance by natives to European explorers in the New World.
The Caribs were early settlers who migrated by canoe up from South America’s Orinoco River. European invaders, famine, and disease gradually decimated their population but some Caribs survived — today about 3,000 of their descendants live in eight villages on the east coast of Dominica. There, people farm and fish, and a few still make canoes. In 1995, Etien Charles built GLI GLI for Tortola artist Aragorn Dick-Read and Dominica Carib artist Jacob Frederik and later crafted a Carib canoe that is now part of the collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.
Bryan and Jill Updyke, owners of a St.Croix kayak excursion, sales and rental business, saw a documentary film about the canoe GLI GLI and were intrigued as operators of kayak tours emphasizing the history of the Salt River. After meeting Dick-Read, Updyke arranged to have a Carib canoe built and shipped to St. Croix.
“They were real nice,” says Bryan Updyke of Etien Charles and the other boat builders. “I sent them some money in advance and they were surprised.”
A year passed as Charles and his helpers created a 25-foot dugout canoe using 100 year-old gommier wood from a huge tree, then made a two-day trip crossing three rivers to a village where the canoe was trucked to a shipping company, transported to St. Thomas, and finally shipped to St. Croix’s Gallows Bay. The result is the CRA CRA, named for the Ringed Kingfisher, a large bird found on Dominica.
“I was amazed when we got the canoe — it was so similar to the rendering by the National Park Service,” says Updyke, referring to a painting of the Carib conflict with Columbus. “Etien Charles knew it would be used to represent the Caribs and they wanted it to be authentic.”
Updyke soaked the canoe with gallons of boiled linseed oil until it wouldn’t take any more and painted it red, blue, black and white, using translucent stains. He outfitted CRA CRA with paddles, a spear, a bow, and bailers made of calabash gourds, all items used by the original St. Croix Caribs, then unveiled it in a blessing ceremony last November. Canoes, of course, are built for the water and the Updykes took the CRA CRA to the Salt River National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve for its maiden voyage.
“It turned on a dime…we were cruising!” says Jill Updyke, who found the boat easy to handle. She says that four people can ride in the canoe and eventually paying guests will paddle it for an authentic historic immersion.
“Imagine a visitor or a student seeing undisturbed mangroves for the first time in a handmade dugout canoe crafted by the descendants of the very same people Columbus encountered,” she says.
The Updykes say there are only a few Carib canoe builders left in Dominica, and that Etien Charles seems reluctant to ever build another large dugout like the CRA CRA.
“The old growth trees are getting fewer and he’s not getting any younger,” says Jill Updyke. “The Caribs ask that we take good care of the CRA CRA.”
For information: Virgin Kayak, St. Croix: 340-778-0071
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