ABSTRACT

Walter Roth’s first official posting in British Guiana in 1907 was as the Government Medical Officer, Magistrate and Protector of Indians in the Pomeroon District, an area that, one century later, still demarcates the westernmost extent of African and East Indian settlement of the coastal plain (coterminous with rice and, formerly, plantation cultivation of sugar and other export crops). The coastal road ends at the market village named Charity, on the Pomeroon River, which remains the fluvial gateway to the Amerindian peoples of the North West District, who were the first subjects of Roth’s investigations.