Gales Point
| Gales Point | |
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Gales Point center
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 Gales Point
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| Coordinates: 17°11′N 88°20′W / 17.183°N 88.333°W | |
| Country |
 Belize
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| District | Belize District |
| Constituency | Belize Rural Central |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 296(est.) |
| Time zone | Central (UTC-6) |
| Climate | Af |
Gales Point is a village in Belize District in the nation of Belize, Central America. The village is on a peninsula in the Southern Lagoon In 2000, Gales Point had a population of about 500 people, most of whom subsist on fishing and farming.
Most recently, in 2010, the population was placed at 296.
Gales Point Manatee or Malanti is the local name for the village. The village is located in the Southern Lagoon, which is a Manatee reserve. The Southern Lagoon's water is brackish. This lagoon connects directly to the Caribbean Sea through the Manatee Bar River.It also has 14 sq. miles of wildlife reserve known as the Gales Point Wild Life Sanctuary.
Ritamae Hyde (2009) recently established that based on (textual and oral) evidence Gales Point Manatee was an early maroon community. -A maroon community is a settlement made by persons who resisted enslavement by fleeing the control of the colonial authorizes and ‘slave masters’ to live in self-sufficient communities in the hinterlands.
It is believed that Gale’s Point became one of such community where ‘ex-enslaved’ persons from “nearby areas such as Sibun River, Runaway Creek, Mullins River and Main River” established around the late 1700s and early 1800s (Hyde: 2009, p. 13, 16).
Colonial knowledge of maroonage in British Honduras dates to 1816 when Superintendent Col. George Arthur recorded that there was “a community ‘near Shiboon River, very difficult to discover’” outside the influence of the colonial authorities (quoted in Shoman: 2000, 51).
In 1820, Arthur again made reference to “‘two Slave Towns, which it appears have been long formed in the Blue Mountains to the Northward of Sibun’” (ibid).
In around 1944, Gales Point became the first village in Belize to have a village council. Nurse Cleopatra White, first nurse in the village, recognized the need for managing village affairs and organized a council. Her idea later became the model for the current village council system which has been implemented throughout the country.
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