The Slave’s Steps

Near the port in Petit-Canal, is a site dedicated to memorializing the painful history of Guadeloupe. Les marches des esclaves (The Slave’s Steps) are a sequence of forty-nine stone steps upon which plates with the names of different African ethnic groups are fixed: Kongo (Congo in French), Yorùbá, Igbos (also Ibos in French), Wolof (Oulofs in French), Fula (Peuls in French), Bamileke. They lead to the gates of the church and the memorial dedicated to slavery in Guadeloupe. At the foot of the steps is a bust of Louis Delgrès, a hero in the fight against slavery, and a monument of the eternal Flame for the Unknown Slave, inaugurated in 1994 to bear witness to this significant aspect of Guadeloupe’s history.