"Near the village of Stone Fort on the leeward side of St Kitts, not far from the main road that tour buses use to shuttle cruise ship passengers around the island, there is a ravine locals call “Bloody River”. It carves its way through a remarkable volcanic-rock canyon that threads its way to the Caribbean Sea. Its path embodies the story of the island’s colonisation. Carved into the top of the ravine, and out of sight of the air-conditioned passerby, there are over 100 eroding drawings (“petroglyphs”) that archaeologists date to the Early Ceramic Age (500 BCE–750 CE). The waterway, which was also known as Pelham River, carves its way to the mythic site of “Bloody Point”, so named on maps of the island by 1714 at the latest.

Local legend states that Bloody Point and Bloody River were named to commemorate a violent nighttime massacre of Indigenous Islanders perpetrated by French and English settlers in 1626. Sources suggest small numbers of Europeans were living on the island as guests prior to the violence. Taking their cue both from local oral legend and the historical marker placed by the government soon after the island gained independence from Britain in 1983, Kittitians refer to the events as the “Kalinago Genocide of 1626”. In the postcolonial era, the materiality of the site, marked by the winding ravine and the remnants of Indigenous imagery, offers Kittitian guides a way to tell a powerful counter-narrative of the island nation’s history; one that does not begin with European “discovery” but rather invasion, violence, and bloodshed launched against an already present society."