The popular mythology that St. David's is a world apart from mainland Bermuda seems to bear academic scrutiny, according to anthropologist and author of `Mohawks in the Onion Patch', Geoff Rothwell.

Mr. Rothwell argues that St. David's Islanders were able to carve out a "separate category" for themselves within racially divided Bermuda throughout history and this unique identity has allowed them to maintain a stronger sense of community that other Bermudians in the modern age.

Mr. Rothwell's book developed from his Master's thesis topic which tackled the quizzical nature of the St. David's Islander and last week at a dinner for the Diabetes DREAM study sub-researchers, he outlined his findings as the group's guest speaker.

Mr. Rothwell was particularly interested in the North American Indian connection on the Island and quickly received funding in Canada to study his "specific ethnic group", he told those gathered.

Getting permission from the Bermuda Government to come to Bermuda and research his topic, however, proved a little harder, he said.

Mr. Rothwell said Immigration originally informed him Bermuda did not grant work permits for those carrying out independent research.

After months of hurdles, he enlisted the help of his Bermudian father-in-law.

"I thought someone sophisticated in the ways of the tribe and a member of the tribe would succeed where I, a neophyte, had failed," he said.

Soon after, Mr. Rothwell was granted permission to study in Bermuda and set out to see what made St. David's islanders so different from the rest of Bermuda despite the limited land mass of the country.

The difference has always been widely attributed to St. David's Islanders is that they are of `Mohawk' descent, he said.

In fact it was Pequot and Mohican Indians that were brought to Island as slaves in the mid 17th Century.

Their introduction to the Island was not highly successful however, as Pequots and Mohicans were involved in a heated tribal war at the time, he said.

In order to try and quell tensions among the new slaves, Bermuda requested that American Indian females be sent to placate the males".

"Carib women were sent to the Island," he added. "But they proved to be undesirable to the males who were much more taken with African women."

Into this Native American and African mix, were thrown Scottish and Irish prisoners who were kept in St. David's during a seven-year exile under Cromwell.

Within a short-time, St. David's Islanders developed a unique and distinguishable appearance. They were described as being yellow-skinned and red headed with green eyes, Mr. Rothwell said.

The mixing that occurred in St. David's was strongly outlawed in the rest of the Island which maintained a "race bar" system.

Mr. Rothwell said mainland Bermuda's "race bar" was unique when compared with Caribbean colonies where a "mulatto" group normally emerged and took a middle position in the social strata between blacks and whites. Mulattos tended to have more social privilege than blacks but less than whites.

Bermuda was an exception - other than in St. David's - and had only strict categories of black and white. There was no middle category, although there were obviously people of paler skin colours.

Despite the deeply segregated wider society, both white and black mainlanders accepted the St. David's islanders were different - because they were descended from the Native Americans, he said.

Even when Bermuda had a segregated Regiment, men from St. David's were allowed to choose which race they would enlist under.

Within the system, St. David's maintained a particular niche.

"St. David's openly challenged the concept of the race bar. St. David's Islanders were `too black to be white and too white to be black'," Mr. Rothwell said.

As the group received a special status and was isolated from mainland Bermuda, the islanders developed a sense of "oneness", he said. They paid less regard to colour or class than elsewhere on the Island, Mr. Rothwell said.

"They tended to shut out the rest of Bermudian society. In St. David's you had to be born there to belong and this isolation led to a different dialect from mainland Bermuda."

The "mystique" which developed over centuries deepened when the Second World War brought the US base to Southside and took away 300 acres of land from St. David's islanders.

They were then "symbolically cut off from the rest of Bermuda," Mr. Rothwell said and he argued the base may have been the reason St. David's never took to mass tourism the way the rest of Bermuda did.

Tourists sought entertainment and relaxation in Bermuda and disregarded existing social structures, Mr. Rothwell said.

As Bermuda re-geared to suit their needs, many Bermudians took up "tourist values" as their own, he argued, dedicating more money and more time to pleasure activities. St. David's Island did not.

"They didn't consider St. David's a tourist playground," Mr. Rothwell. "It was and is their home which outsiders might want to visit."