Conflicts

The first known inhabitants of Jamaica were the Tainos, an Arawak-speaking tribe that traveled throughout the Caribbean after leaving South America. The Tainos left very little evidence of their time on the island, but their influence was profound. The Tainos' Arawak name for the island was “Xaymaca,” which means “land of wood and water.” This was later written phonetically by Spanish explorers, who substituted a J for the X at the beginning of the word.

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Tainos farmed and fished and were even the creators of the hammock. Unlike many other islands in the area, they were never at war with the Carib tribes that peppered the region. After the arrival of the Spanish, Jamaica’s history was no longer as peaceful; the Tainos’ new enemy was the Spanish, who began enslaving the natives around the time they established their first settlement in 1510.

This settlement was Sevilla Nueva, “New Seville.” By the late 16th century, the Tainos had been almost completely wiped out, whether from the hard farm labor, European disease, or by their own hand—committing suicide to escape slavery. There were almost none left, and many Africans were imported to replace the Tainos as slaves

Later many settlers moved to Villa de la Vega, “City on the Plains,” now called Spanish Town. Spanish Town became the center for the Spanish colonists and was often attacked by the British. In both 1596 and 1643, the British sacked Spanish Town, and in 1655 captured it after failing an assault on Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). It took five years to defeat the Spanish, who eventually fled to Cuba.

However, before fleeing, the Spanish freed and armed their slaves. Most of these freed slaves ran to the interior of the island and formed the Maroons, a group which still exists today. The Maroons waged guerrilla war against the British colonists and are respected for their ability to defeat the British in battles throughout the early colonial period.

The British encouraged new settlers to come to the island through gifts of land, and soon the economy was booming through the business of the vast sugarcane plantations. Jamaica was the world’s largest producer of sugar, yielding 22 percent of the world’s supply during the 1700s. Sugarcane wasn’t the only cash crop grown on the islands, the British also produced cocoa and coffee plants for trade. However, many Africans were brought into slavery to help the British rise to this caliber of economic power on the island.

Slaves were treated poorly, especially after the American colonies split from England and the French Revolution, when feelings of freedom were stronger than before. In fact, Jamaica had more slave revolts than any other West Indian island. With frequent resistance and uprisings, anti-slavery feelings grew in Britain especially after the 1831 Christmas Rebellion, in which 20,000 slaves killed planters and ruined crops. The British owners convinced them to lay down their revolt with promises of abolition, which were never kept. Afterward, 400 slaves were hung, and many more were whipped.

European and Taino Relations

Tainos and Caribs were the inhabitants of the Caribbean when Columbus reached the Americas, both human groups became extinct soon after contact, decimated by the Spaniards and the diseases they brought.

When Spaniards landed on the coast of Jamaica in early May 1494, perhaps 50,000- 60,000 Tainos lived there (Sherlock and Bennett, 1998:48). By 1655, when the British invaded Spanish Jamaica, the Tainos were nearly extinct, and the few survivors lived in the vastness of the Blue Mountains. Jamaica was settled by the Spanish in 1509, and “under Spanish rule, Africans were brought to Jamaica from 1517 onwards as laborers to take the place of the native population, the Tainos/Arawaks, who became extinct as a result of diseases, and horrific abuses by the Spaniards” (Dalby, 1971, p.31).

Few and, for the most part, evil are the records of Spanish colonization in Jamaica. The sites of the early settlements are hard to trace, and the history of the 150 years, during which the Spaniards bore rule in the island, is little more than a blank. The Indians (Tainos), said to have been at first kindly treated, were afterwards exterminated, and the colony, which began with brightness and prosperity, gradually passed into obscurity and decay (Lucas 96). Jamaica had been at first intended as a place of supply for Spanish ships and expeditions, and its main trade is said to have consisted in providing fresh provisions for the homeward bound merchant ships. The island, being a half-open land, given up in great measure to forest and to pasture, it is not surprising that the colonists were few or that the Spaniards found Jamaica less attractive than the larger islands and the vast continent teeming with gold and silver (Lucas 97).

Terracotta figurines and Spanish coins found in association confirm that Taino inhabited parts of Jamaica when the British took over the island in 1655, indicating that some indigenous people, thought by some to have long since been exterminated, survived into the seventeenth century. Those finds challenge the myth that all the Amerindians in Jamaica had been exterminated before the arrival of the British (Hauser 148).

Under British government Jamaica became the headquarters of the British buccaneers. Their marauding exploits were permitted if not encouraged, by the British authorities in the island, and they regularly brought their booty to be sold in Jamaica, generally spending the proceeds in drink and rioting.

In Jamaica, the indigenous population is still being referred to as the Arawaks despite the adoption of the term Tainos, to distinguish the native population of the Greater Antilles from the Arawaks of South America. Irving Rouse defines the Tainos as “the ethnic group that inhabited the Bahamiam archipelago, most of the Greater Antilles and the northern part of the Lesser Antilles prior to and during the time of Columbus (1992, 185.) According to Rouse, in Columbus’s time, the Tainos lacked an overall name. The people referred to themselves by the names of the localities in which they lived- for example the Puerto Ricans called themselves Borinquem, their name for the island. Traditionally Jamaicans have been taught that Xaymaca was the Taino name given to the island, meaning “land abounding with springs” from which Jamaica- land of wood and water- was derived.

Citations"

Historical Linguistics 1997, pg. 323

Lectures on British Colonization and Empire: First Series (1660-1783) pg. 50

Lucas, Sir Charles Prestwood. The West Indies. pg. 96-98.

Atkinson, Lesley Gail. The earliest Inhabitants: the Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino.

Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica. pg. 29

Chang, Mildred M. The Jamaican Accompong Maroons: Continuities and Transformations. pg. 28

Hauser, Mark W. Out of Many, One People: The Historical Archaeology of Colonial Jamaica. Pg 148.

Jamaica's Indigenous Population

Now that we know who first settled Jamaica on the colonial front, let’s take a look at who first called Jamaica home and where exactly Jamaica is. First, let’s find Jamaica on a map in the midst of all the various Caribbean islands.

 Jamaica, approximately 146 miles from east to west and fifty-one miles at its widest, with an area of some 411 square miles, lies ninety miles south of Cuba and about the same distance west of the long and narrow peninsula of Haiti in that northern section of the Caribbean archipelago known as the Greater Antilles. The island of Jamaica is covered by rugged, inaccessible mountains with deep valleys.

Now let’s see who the first inhabitants of Jamaica were;

Many scholars argue that the first or earliest Jamaicans were Arawak Indians (also called Taino Indians) but not all scholars agree with that statement, “The first Jamaicans were not Arawaks, as is commonly believed, human beings came to Jamaica first from Central America” (Schafer, 1973). When Columbus came upon the island of Jamaica on May 5, 1494 he countered large permanent villages, each governed by a chief and thickly populated with Tainos (Rouse, 1992). The inhabitants of Jamaica before the first Spanish colonial settlers arrived in 1494, were indigenous Amerindians, engaged in communal agricultural production. This population estimated at about 60,000, was virtually eliminated by the time of the British settlement in 1655.

            Africans were brought to Jamaica under the Spaniards from 1517 onwards as laborers to take the place of the native population the Tainos/Arawaks who became extinct “as a result of diseases and horrific abuses by the Spaniards” (Dalby 1971, p.31). While the Spaniards were in possession of Jamaica, they derived little or no benefit from it, and many years elapsed before it became essentially productive to the English.

            By 1655, when the island was appropriated by the English, the population of Spanish and Africans numbered no more than 2,000, half of the slaves. By 1670, sugar plantations were established, leading to increased labor demand. Between 1673 and 1703 the population of African slaves grew from 10,000 to 45,000. A century later, around 1807, Africans comprised roughly 45 percent of the slave population.  

            The advent of these substantial African populations over a period of three and a half centuries quite naturally stamped a mark on the demographic profile and cultural tenor of Jamaican life. While it is possible, however, to associate some of Jamaica’s cultural features with a particular African ethnic group, the diversity of African peoples who settled the island makes particularization in certain cases difficult and even questionable.

            Jamaican society after the arrival and emancipation of the slave population proved to be a hybrid cultural mix of all the various African populations. In the period between the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slave population of Jamaica was essentially a closed population. Between the years 1800-1808, 86,821 African slaves were brought to Jamaica and only 7,885 were re-exported to different locations.

Citation

1 The Jamaican Accompong Maroons: Continuities and Transformations, 2008.

2  John Stewart, An Account of Jamaica, and its inhabitants

3  Glen Richards, Jamaica in slavery and freedom: history, heritage and culture.

4 Slave population and economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834