Merikin Merits

A Merikin Marine (Image by Jakednb) 

If it weren't for Colin Kaepernick, few Americans would know the third stanza of their national anthem, and fewer still would know about Merikins.

The rarely-sung third stanza of The Star Spangled Banner contains these disturbing lines:  No refuge could save the hireling and slave  From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.  It would be one thing if Francis Scott Key were lamenting this plight of the “hireling and slave.”  He was instead acclaiming it.

These hirelings and slaves were likely “black slaves hired to fight on the side of the British during the War of 1812.”  Why did they favor the British side?  The so-called “land of the free” still enslaved them, but the British were promising them freedom at the war’s end.

The British kept that promise in 1814, even though the United States was demanding “the return of American ‘property.’”  There were about 6,000 of these newly-freed “hirelings,” who then made their way to British holdings.  Most “settled in Canada, with some going to Trinidad, where their descendants are still known as ‘Merikins.’”

The Merikins brought with them Orisha (“a syncretic Yoruba and Christian Caribbean faith”) traditions of spiritual healing, herbalism, environmentalism and organic farming.  These age-old influences now temper the ever-increasing urbanization of Trinidad.

Resources

http://caribbean-beat.com/issue-140/heroes-of-forgotten-war#axzz4IdP1eMkc

http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/29/star-spangled-banner-and-slavery/

Copyright September 4, 2017 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved