When thou camest first, Thou strok'dst and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in't; and teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee, And showed thee all the qualities of the isle The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile; Cursed be I that did so." The remonstrances of the Caribs against the wrongs they were doomed to suffer were as little heeded by the colonists as the complaints of Caliban by Prospero.

The French were resolute, powerful, and rapacious, and treated the red men with inhumanity.

The Indians, unable to contend with their oppressors by open force, fled to their mountain fastnesses, and commenced an obstinate predatory warfare upon the whites, murdering without discrimination all whom they found defenceless.

This led to a bloody and protracted struggle for the mastery; and a reenforcement of troops having been sent from France to aid the infant colony, it was decided, after mature deliberation, that the most expeditious and effectual mode of ending the war, and establishing peace on a permanent basis, was TO EXTERMINATE THE CARIBS.
These original "lords of the soil" were accordingly driven from their fastnesses, hunted by parties of soldiers, shot down like wild beasts wherever found, until their number was reduced from thousands to about one hundred.

Bing cut off from the mountains by a military force, this remnant of a powerful band fled to a promontory on the north part of the island which overlooked the ocean, and, hard pressed by their civilized foes, more than half their number leaped over the rocky precipice into the sea which dashed against its base.