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