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Plantation Rif St. Marie

The Central Historical Archives actually have very little on the history of the Rif St. Marie plantation itself, the reason being that the bulk of this information has been filed in the Netherlands.

What we do know about the plantation is the following:

Rif Plantation was founded soon after the occupation of Curaçao by the (Dutch) West India Company. Initially, this plantation formed part of a large whole that stretched from Malpais to San Juan, but around 1680 the land was subdivided and this plot became a separate plantation. In those days this plantation was called Sint Marie, after the nearby Sint Marie Bay given that name by the Spaniards earlier on. Around 1700, Sint Marie was one of the nine plantations of the West India Company. In 1717 it was leased, and in 1796 sold. It was at this sale that the name “Rif” was first used.
In 1700 there were 73 slaves working on the plantation. It is known that in 1707 harvests reaped in Curaçao were rather poor, and there were only 64 slaves left to work on the plantation, where among others tobacco, cotton, sugarcane and indigo were cultivated with moderate results. As for cattle, there were 151 horned cattle, 168 sheep and 188 goats.

The owner of the plantation up till 1796 was the government of the “Colony of Curaçao”
(consisting of six islands; much later, to be precise in 1954, the Netherlands Antilles became a fact).

In 1796 the widow Vos purchased the Rif St. Marie Plantation, which remained in her family’s possession until the heirs sold the plantation to Joseph Capriles in 1844. A couple of years later this gentleman passed the ownership of the plantation to one of his relatives, Abraham Capriles.
After that, early 1900, a widow Jesurun bought the plantation. The last owner and in part now still owner of the plantation is the Neuman family. Meanwhile the Rif St. Marie “Landhuis”
(country house) was no longer being kept in good repair and no cattle could be seen grazing there any more. It is around this point in time that salt-extracting operations were started in the bay of Sint Marie. The salt-ponds in this bay produced top-quality salt.

In 1910 these salt-ponds, that exist to this very day, yielded around 12,000 barrels of salt.
The Rif St. Marie countryside is uniquely beautiful. Many herbs grow there in the wild, among them the “Yerba di Hole” (a medicinal herb) and the “Wabi” (which literally means: old tree).
Among the birds that can be found mainly in this area are the “Wara Wara” (the Curaçao eagle), “Kini Kini” (small hawk), “Prikichi” (parakeet) and the “Makuaku” (frigate bird). Then there are the “Trupial”, the “Chuchibi” and many other bird species.


Landhuis” Rif St. Marie

The first stone dwelling that served as accommodation for the “factor” (supervisor) of the (Dutch) West India Company existed around 1680 already. A second country house was built a couple of yards to the south of the existing “Landhuis” around the end of the seventeenth – beginning of the eighteenth centuries. In 1805 this second house was burned to the ground during the invasion of the British. The existing “Landhuis” (see photo) was probably built around 1840. The layout shows the traditional type of “Landhuis” combined with the T-shape type that can also be found at the Daniel and Blauw country houses. The core is formed by a not very large “sala” (living-room), to one side of which we find the beginning of the long leg of the “T”, with next to that a small room. Enclosing this core is a gallery that virtually runs all around. There is a spacious kitchen in the southwestern corner, with another room next to that. In the southwestern corner we find a fine, rather large cistern with right next to it a bathroom with a sunken bath. In between this bathroom and the protruding arm of the “T” there is a small, attractive interior patio. The bedrooms are one floor up. Some three/quarters around the house runs a spacious terrace enclosed by a parapet. From the back terrace one has a beautiful view of the Sint Marie Bay. To the western side of the house there are two pillars, in between which the slave-bell must have been suspended in the olden days. To the west of the house there are still, clearly recognizable though now partly collapsed and overgrown with weeds, the “mangazinas” (store houses), stables and pens. On this same side, some twenty yards from the kitchen, there used to be a fine-looking half-open kiln used for baking bread (“fornu di pan”); unfortunately it has caved in completely.

Saltponds of Jan Kok

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the African slaves extracted salt from the shallow bay belonging to the Jan Kok plantation. This salt was shipped to Holland, where it was used to salt down herring and other fish. The process of extracting salt took hours of hard labor in the scorching sun. The slaves considered this the worst possible kind of work. These days the former salt-ponds are home to a small flock of flamingos. These birds found a safe haven in Curaçao in the late eighties, having migrated to this island during a severe storm in neighboring Bonaire.
Please do not disturb the flamingos.