The Friendly Virgins (1976)

when Zach for the people the most delightful charming welcoming well just the most friendly folks you will find anywhere in their friendly virgin [Music] the first thing you'll notice about the Virgin Islands is there so much diversity at least a half a dozen distinct cultures blend together really blend together in a multiracial multi-language community it's fascinating so much in the islands remind you of their long history it's close to 500 years since Columbus's landing party came ashore into the mouth of the Salt River Columbus called the island the largest of today's three virgins santa cruz holy cross when the French later took the island they called it st. Croix the Indians of st. Croix and of st. Thomas and st. John islands to the north didn't long survive nothing's left of the character me I relax except for a few shards of pottery some fish hooks sim carvings relics of a fragile culture buried under the tide of Spanish power but the Spanish built their real strongholds in the larger islands to the west porto rico east vanilla cuba and it was the English who settled in the virgin twenty years before Jamestown Virginia they were followed by the Dutch about 1625 had then the French and for a hundred years a great European sieve hours fought for control of the Caribbean during all the fight the Dames but quietly into st. Thomas about 1666 and into neighboring st. John and when the French King abandon st. Croix the Danes bonded and began nearly 300 years of Danish rule in the islands senator Fritz collects keeps up the long Danish agricultural traditions of his family raising Senna pole cattle when the Danes came here in 1734 it was a jungle there was about a hundred and six people living on the island and they needed someone to go ahead and work it they invited anyone to come as long as you had five hundred with Stella and of course 1750 to 1879 if it's in ruin your seed comes from those days today you see the windmill towers of the Danes almost everywhere on the three islands when the power crushed the sugar but it was African sling to work the plantations of the Virgin Islands the great Harbor of Charlotte Amalie on st. Thomas was to become one of the key slave trading points in the Caribbean receiving hundreds of Africans weekly one leg of the triangle trade which bound Europe Africa and a new world together and an exchange of slaves sugar and rum and manufactured goods all moving under sail on the prevailing trade winds but the Danes were never comfortable with slavery and they were the first to break away from it abolishing the slave trade for Danes by 1803 in 1848 a strong liberal tide ran briefly through Europe and one particularly liberal and humane day happened back near to be the governor-general of the Danish Virgin Islands Peter Pan children decreed freedom of all slaves in the Danish Virgin Islands on July 22nd 1848 almost 20 years before Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in the United States virgin Islanders remember Peter Pan children and indeed their whole Danish history with warmth and affection they'll point out to you throughout the island scores sweeping steps outside churches and public buildings what the island is called welcoming arms a particularly graceful and pleasant style of construction that symbolizes the Danish policy of open arms to all comers English French Dutch all were welcome to settle in the Danish Virgin Islands and today the many churches and synagogues throughout the island tell us a great deal about the enlightened tolerance of Danish administration for Catholics Protestants and Jews were encouraged to live and work together in notable harmony but even the enlightened Danes couldn't help the islands when they discovered that Europeans could produce sugar beets cheaper than virgin Islanders could produce sugarcane unemployment became severe and the islands became a burden that Denmark could no longer carry when the United States offered to buy the merchants the Danish people voted to sell down came the Danish flag in 1917 after two and a half centuries and up with the Stars and Stripes but it wasn't to be an easy recovery for the Virgin Islands the world depression that shattered our economy in the state hurt even worse in the Caribbean today virgin Islanders of middle age vividly remember those hard years when I was going on scene cry was a typical rural community sugar cane growing all over the island people like my grandparents with whom I grew up for example use horse and cart at 30 cents a day 40 cents a day or ten dollars a month as a cook as my mother do and my father who worked as a stable hand even this however was good in comparison to the rest of the Caribbean area and even for Rico in the early fifties people started to discover a quiet spot in the Caribbean it was under the US flag what people were friendly hospitable and as a result in the late 50s early 60s you had a woman thriving bustling Virgin Islands to me a thriving community it is today but at the same time Virgin Island is remember their colorful past I still dance the quadrille copied from their masters by plantation slaves over a hundred years ago the virgin Islanders don't want their children to lose touch with their roots nor to forget what life was like in the old hard times okay boys and girls when your grandmother was believed he had a group things like we have in this garden we have sugar cane sweet potato planning we have pigeon peas bananas whoo the fabric or crow and we have a couple too near the tree now what are we going to do we're going over there we're going to dig the ground and see if we can find some potatoes now I think we should find some potatoes in the graph here this is a salsa and what do you do with the salsa I'm really let you eat it how do you eat it you come back here I shall read it all right that's one somebody in slow pulsing balls come on Angela joke's on us you know you make special you make ice cream you make sure and you make a very good drink out of the sour stuff now hear this what is it a genie alright okay a genie things but you know what this GT Tate is made from borrowed go another one para all right it's this Genie thing it's made from the clay the clay of the dirt and grass traditional ways of making things are being taught in the schools and more and more virgin Islanders are turning to their traditional markets where there's color and variety and showmanship coming talans what is the best time for them to shop in the market so your shop is hog market every day yeah but on Saturday it's a big market day what time you get up in the morning to come down here this morning I can I just from don't have up for four o'clock to order truck yeah I have to get up at 3 o'clock yes get up three take my bar and cool off and then hook few market women are is delightful or as shrewd as sandy of st. Thomas is how she gets rid of an extra load of lives that grow wild all over the island squanders I mean all sobriety from the customers that I want red give us in a row your DNA but you know why I have more line than whatever I'm very fast and the line is very slow so I mother damn over on st. Croix the oldest traditions of the Virgin Islands are returning after four centuries there are spanish-speaking virgin Islanders again back from Puerto Rico and Culebra and Vieques from Mexico and Central America we have kept our tradition of food music like Bojangles and merengue the garages the boleros and our language like a home we speak Spanish and I call it Spanglish because when one can you can't remember something that you say in English can't remember some negligence and Hispanics and everybody understands except British Traditions to persist in the place names on st. croix and in its families of English descent like those of Joyce Hurd who looks as English as at London housewife it was from about 1670 this estate has been on the old-time maps as we have seen it and the name Spratt Hall came from the original name of Spratt hall and hauled means house and Danish my family's been here about as long as anybody who's been in New England in the fascinating swirl of cultures and traditions in the virgin's nothing is more colorful than the French vegetable farmers of the north side of st. Thomas the descendants of Norman in Britain peasants and fishermen who arrived three generations ago men like fisherman Joel applies most efficient in the north side is done by myth but we all keep a couple of traps for whenever they the rough wet is on we cannot use an episode go to trap let's dicen la gotti if I really wanted us to make it I needed it it will take me about two days Sinitta she's going to be 48 feet deep and when I join her onto the piece already have she's going to be about 85 I'm 6 feet to the side of while fishing alone you either talk to yourself or you sing to yourself I don't like talking to myself but no one answers I made a Calypso there's a widow make yourself a demon make yourself a demon make yourself a seaman with a plan and a kolobok in your heart oil doctor fish oil doctor fish and fry harness by doctor fish employ a hard-nose with ha ha ha kibosh I went south this morning was rugged wet summer squall my hat about chicks I say be a match to win someone swells was 15 and over the caps 20 my little boat was just going like a kite when I get in holding I had spots all over my eyes when Joe Laplace was a boy he meant the virgins during the Depression to find work in New York City when I leave st. Amand you could've cell officially in 4 pounds on nickel 8 cents tension contour water person having in hand at the time we had a nickel to take the nickel they had a dime or you get a dime while in New York I always dreamt of coming back came back in 1963 did not know some them fishing today make yourself a seat make yourself a seaman make yourself a seaman with a fun and a Java in your hand if there's one thing that binds all the virgin Islanders together if their love of music some of it comes out of the old hard times when you made music out of whatever you could well scratch up and that's why we now enjoy the music of the scratch band you also hear the young people of the virgins playing with steel band music from Trinidad what you see behind me is our instructor mr. Maynard speaking to young people how to film a fan steel fan making is a beautiful skill it is the thing that has been invented by a black man for all people to pay the battery that has to think about it heading master sinking in I have to start marking it indicated line are the difference of the note and you take a punch and we make the punch marks and then you beat that and smoke upwards after that start pulling that is the most complicated part music my language it doesn't that you are you are not you just as coming miss and comment [Music] very quiet which is harder to town on that door I will right right ready we have a belt all of us find something special in the virgins down on a few days vacation or fear to work like Michael York and the film crew of the island of dr. Moreau I'm not saying that because it's the perfect thing to spend I think it's one of the nicest Caribbean islands I'd be no I think the balance between development and what it's left real nature is just perfect and charm is bikina I'm really impressed and I'm you know looking forward to seeing me the thing that you'll notice mostly I think down here and say cry there's a friendliness of the people for instance it's the only place I've ever seen where you can be trying to get into a line of traffic and not have to wait the 10 or 15 minutes but somebody will stop for you and let you into the line it's not a very big place and you'll find people saying hello to you in good morning and you don't even know who they are but that's kind of the easy way out when you first see it you think it's still here nothing has happened to it and it's going to be the most beautiful place in the whole wide world to count with Virgin Islands because the temperature is a temperate climate year-round the matter what [Music] I've sailed in Lake Champlain New York Chesapeake Bay sales a number of different places but I've never found a place to sail where you can count so much on good weather and the steady win one of the other nice things about sailing them the Virgin Islands is that you're in the United States you can buy the products that you know everybody speaks the language it's nice to be able to enjoy this kind of exotic existence and still be in the United States I don't believe that you would find any American community that is active politically as we are in the Virgin Islands everybody is a politician in fact politics is spoken on the street corners by young ones old ones and by everyone the voting primaries and also in general elections far surpass participation in many of the United States and we're very proud of that yes virgin Islanders are an active vigorous community full life full of joy and increasingly they're learning the pleasures of creating with their hands from artists and craftsmen who have come to live in the virgin this is the way I do what I call the undersea fantasies and a lot of the other backgrounds or the cuts that I know Jeff Chile's place in st. Thomas is home to a number of crafts people that come down from the mainland to work in the Sun and among the flowers of the Virgin's candle makers silk Rashmi ty Dyer and master silkscreen printer fire while over on st. Croix Fletcher Pence works with massive slabs of wood and teaches apprentice students the art of woodworking we make arrangements with private landowners to remove their dead trees and we will come and remove the foam the trunks that they're large enough may be cut into big slabs for tabletops you can kind of imagine what it will be in the finished product but before you open the log it's a deep dark secret human eye is seeing what has never been seen before the human being defined by Thomas Aquinas is a being with brains and hams enjoys nothing more than be creatively usefully productively engaged with both his hands and his brains so there's good work for the hands and the mind and the Virgin's in skills to be admired the skills are preparing and displaying magnificent pieces special skills sometimes exotic skills and special to the Caribbean like those of the mighty snake and peaches [Music] I came down just to spend the summers never went back fell in love with the island and the people I just loved it I really do enjoy the activity down here if you feel like being around people you can go to a beach with people or you can run away to a secluded area and be all by yourself most of your beaches around here there is snorkelling right off shore so you can secure along and you can get in through snorkeling along the swimming [Music] [Music] [Music] about 90% of the people in the United States you've never bought anything over 4 or 5 pounds and whenever they see a face pointing at 30 or 40 pounds it's quite a tremendous thing to them and that is the one thing that I have really enjoyed in this type of fish more than anything else some of our best anglers are women they don't weigh over 100 pounds soaking wet but they learn to let the fish do the fighting use their legs and brace against this kidney hornist this way they can wear a big fish down fairly easy if they fixed as much as men then when he did and I'm afraid Johnny harms cameraman yarn spinner sports fisherman hunter at the great blue marlin I came here in April 1963 and made a prediction that we would catch a world record within five years and then 64 we did break the record by three pounds 814 probably the greatest catch in the world still it was 448 pounds on 12 pound test line her loose greens the vivid colors of the sea in the mountains of perversions and year-round weather not only to swim and sail but also and get out on the greens and fairways to golf any day of the year or be able winter or summer to break onto rackets and play all that tennis your heart desires but what's best on the Virgin Islands of the people themselves you just don't want to miss them their great warm smiles their friendship their kindness that you're applying to find on every Sun st. Thomas and st. John and st. Croix and you surely don't want to miss the music of the virgins but these are people who love to sing it make music from their scratch bands steal them to their jazz musician are their choral singing in their churches it's their music that we take back with us along with our memories of wonderful sunlit beaches sparkling water and wine friends [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]