The History of Rum
By Frederick H. Smith, Ph.D.
I
n the summer of 1996 I went to Barbados to
prepare a historical archaeological field school in
deceased, we determined that the graveyard was the final
resting place of Bridgetown’s slave population.
Bridgetown with my colleague Dr. Karl Watson and his
Throughout the day, construction workers and residents
students from the department of history at the University
from
of the West Indies, Cave Hill. On the morning of
excavation and pondered our work. Some mentioned the
Saturday, July 13, Watson called to say that construction
ghosts of those buried at the site and the restlessness
workers in a part of the city known as the Pierhead had
of duppies, the mischievous, and sometimes malicious,
unearthed skeletal remains while preparing a site for the
spirits of the dead. At the end of the day, we removed
expansion of a local shopping mall.
the skeleton with the tobacco pipe and began packaging
The skeletal remains turned out to be human, and further
investigation revealed more burials at the site. We spent
the day surveying this unmarked and forgotten cemetery,
and recording information about the site. Based on the
absence of grave markers, the cemetery’s location on the
periphery of the town, and the presence of a mideighteenth century white kaolin clay tobacco pipe, which
the
nearby
neighborhoods
monitored
our
it for proper storage at the University of the West Indies.
About that time, someone in the crowd shouted that we
needed to pour libations to those buried at the site, and
within minutes a bottle of rum was produced for that
purpose. The rum was poured on the ground and the
pouring
was
punctuated
by
requests
the duppies “rest in peace” and “leave us alone.”
had been placed in the crook of the right arm of one the
www.bajansunonline.com/MAGAZINE/ | [email protected] | @BajanSunOnline
that