Ancient History of Bahamas

July 28, 2006 (Press Release) -- The original inhabitants of The Bahamas were the Lucayans, a tribe of the Arawak Indian group, who arrived near the turn of the 9th century. The peaceful Lucayans lived primarily off the sea, fishing and harvesting shellfish, conch, lobster and mollusks. What little remains of their culture is limited to pottery shards, petroglyphs and words such as 'canoe', 'cannibal', 'hammock', 'hurricane' and 'tobacco'. Christopher Columbus planted the Spanish flag on San Salvador upon his first landfall in the Americas in 1492. Three years later, Spanish colonialists established the first settlement in the archipelago, which served as a terminus for Lucayan Indians enslaved by the Spaniards for shipment to Hispaniola. Within 25 years, the entire Lucayan population of 50,000 was gone, and the Spanish eventually abandoned the settlement. In 1513 the Spaniard Juan Ponce de L é on sailed through the archipelago searching for the fabled Fountain of Youth. Instead he ran into the fast-moving Gulf Stream, which whisked him to Florida and his 'discovery' of North America. Soon Spanish galleons were passing by the reef-encrusted Bahamas laden with treasure from the empires of Central and South America, bound for Spain. Many foundered, and the waters of the archipelago were littered with wrecks. Tales of treasure lured pirates, and they used the Bahamian islands as hideaways and bases. For the most part, the islands remained unsettled and unclaimed until over a century later, when King Charles I of England granted them to his attorney general. The English Civil War infected the colonies with religious persecution, and the Puritans of Bermuda were forced to move on. In 1648 some set sail to found a colony of tolerance, and so it was that the Company of Adventurers for the Plantation of the Islands of Eleuthera arrived at today's Abacos. Political rivalries forced a split, and the majority continued south to the island then known as Cigatoo (now Eleuthera), where the ship ran aground and sank. A few survivors set out by rowboat to enlist support and made it to Jamestown, Virginia, whose residents sent provisions to the marooned, who then founded the first independent republic in the New World. In the same century, the British-sponsored privateers patrolled the waters in and around The Bahamas, turning the main settlement of Charles Town into Buccaneer Central. After the town was destroyed by a joint French and Spanish fleet in 1703, the pirates proclaimed a 'Privateer's Republic' without laws or government, and Edward Teach - better known as Blackbeard - made himself their magistrate. This lasted until 1714, when Britain signed the Treaty of Utrecht, which outlawed pirates.

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