Brief history of Pointe Michel

Pointe Michel was first inhabited by Amerindian people from South America, the last group being the Kalinago (Caribs).


Referred to, to this day, by the French word “La Pointe”, Pointe Michel was one of the first areas in Dominica settled by the French people in the early 1700s. Most of them were small farmers who were being pushed out of Martinique by the expansion of sugar production there.

The French, and later the British, established many estates in the valleys behind Pointe Michel and the village grew as a commercial and social centre for these estates. Most of them grew coffee, although some sugar was also grown, and in the early 20th century they all changed their crop to limes.

La Pointe was the landing place for French soldiers during two French attacks on the British in Dominica, one in 1778 and the other in 1805. Because the people of La Pointe were French supporters the French forces knew that they would not be challenged. From here they marched on to Roseau, but had to fight hard under the cliff at Solomon and at Loubiere.

As the estates expanded the importation of enslaved Africans into the area grew. Soon the French families were mixing with the African people and a Creole population developed in La Pointe. The languages mixed and a new culture was created in dance, song, food and dress. After Emancipation of the slaves in 1838, many people from the estates in the hills came down to settle in the village along the narrow stretch of land near to the sea.

It then became a village of fishermen and farmers. Today, hardly anyone lives in the hills and there are many ruins in the bush.

From the earliest days of French settlement the Roman Catholic faith was strong in La Pointe. At first the parish of St. Luke was served from Roseau; in 1771 a priest resided here briefly, but eventually in 1852 La Pointe got its first resident priest, Fr. J.S. Féron.

In the 20th century, changes grew apace in Pointe Michel. Water, electricity and telephones came gradually. Before proper motorable roads most La Pointe people went to Roseau by canoe, and when the roads did arrive, Roseau people came here to catch canoes to take them to Soufriere, before that road was built in the early 1960s. Health clinic, Credit Union, playing field and housing schemes were some of the other changes seen in the village. Much of the housing had to be rebuilt after Hurricane David, 29 August 1979, when Point Michel got a direct hit by the storm.

In politics, La Point people have led the way. In 1832 William Leonne was one of the first Roman Catholics in Dominica to enter the House of Assembly, following the emancipation of Roman Catholics in 1829. On May 15, 1919 a future Prime Minister, Dame Mary Eugenia Charles, was born at Point Michel, later becoming the first woman Prime Minister in the Caribbean.

In music and song children of the village have done it proud: Ophelia Olivacee Marie, First Serenade and others. The style of its women has been immortalized in the 1967 calypso "Pointe Michel Girls".


Sou rce: Lennox Honeychurch - Historian