Prehistory of Tobago

The Pre-Columbian Period.

Outline of the Cultural Chronology of Tobago.

The island of Tobago, as were most of the islands of the Caribbean, were inhabited by people migrating through the islands and static groups.

When the Meso-Indians of the pre-ceramic period established communities in Trinidad, they made it tie first settled island in the Caribbean, hunting, fishing and gathering in the swampy coastal areas. Their tools of stone, bone and shell were left behind like fingerprints.

Around 300 BC Neo-Indians of the ceramic period - the Saladoid people arrived again from the mainland and their skills were even greater. They could spin and weave, make nicely painted pottery, cultivate sweet potato and cassava and process the later into a long-lasting bread. These people eventually colonised the lesser Antilles. The Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, but around the time of Christ they were only in Tobago. The two peoples were joined around 250 AD by the Barrancoid people and Saladoid pottery was replaced by Barrancoid - the names come from archaeological sites in Venezuela.

Figurine. Tobago Museum	Figurine. Tobago Museum
Pre-Columbian figurine circa 1000-1500 AD. Size: 14x12.5 cm (5.5x5 inches). Venus figure with squat body, triangular flat-topped heads with a braided strip representing hair and horizontal incisions for the eyes and mouth. The body is painted in a series of diagonal criss-crossing motifs possibly in mimicry of tattooing. This figure is hollow and contains small ceramic beads that create sound when shaken as maracas.	A polished stone 'celt' circa 1000 - 1500 AD Length: 22.5 cm (9 inches). This stone was selected for its natural beauty. Although its true purpose cannot be determined. Folkloric accounts refer to them as thunder stones, the most universal belief in the West Indies being that they are the result of lightning.
"> Figurine. Tobago Museum	Bowl on Stand. Tobago Museum

From Tobago you can see Trinidad and from the south of Trinidad you can see Venezuela. A sharp break occurred around 1000 AD when central and southern Trinidad developed close cultural links with the Paria coast of Venezuela. Tobago and north Trinidad kept their ties with the Windward islands to the north. Formerly, all of the tribes or Trinidad and Tobago had spoken Arawakan dialects, but after the caesura, Cariban dialects were probably introduced. And for the nest 500 years more immigrants arrived from the mainland to settle on what was than called 'Ieri', the land of the humming bird, eventually, perhaps to move on up the Caribbean archipelago.

Post-Columbian Period

So when Columbus arrived off the coast of Trinidad 1498, who was there?

Shehaio and Arawak tribes were on the south coast, Nepoio on the southeast and east coasts, and Yao on the southwest coast. In the northwest were the Carinepagoto who, like the Yao and Nepoio spoke Cariban dialects, along with the Kalina of Tobago. All in all, they totalled about 35,000.

The Trinidad and Tobago Amerindians were described by the Spanish as well-proportioned and of fairer complexion than the Island Caribs. They went naked but for girdles and head bands, painted heir bodies red and wore feathers for decoration. Chiefs wore crowns and ornaments of gold while normal folk contented themselves with beaded decorations of stone and bone and teeth.

Living in villages of no more than a few hundred inhabitants, they moved their bell-shaped thatch houses regularly. Theirs were loose societies, and chiefs, who held little secular power, were easily replaced. This arrangement allowed then, to resist the Spaniards much more successfully than the rigidly hierarchic Incas and Aztecs of Central and South America, for the death of a chief did not immobilise the tribe.

Cannibal Chiefs. The main social divisions west between men and women: men cleared the forest, hunted and fished; women planted, weeded, harvested and prepared meals. The economy was based on the shifting cultivation of cassava, maize, tobacco, beans, squashes and peppers for food, cotton for clothes and hammocks, and annatto for body paint. They fished, hunted and gathered shells, crabs and turtle eggs. And they traded and made war.

Villages fought with one another, formed and dissolved alliances, and captured staves. Their weapons were darts, stones, bows and poisoned arrows. Yet most war expeditions resulted in no more than a minor skirmish which never interrupted the mutual commerce between otherwise hostile villages. What of the notorious man-eating habits of the Caribs, whose very name has given us the word cannibal? Undoubtedly most Amerindian tribes in the region practised some form of ritual cannibalism, eating bits of the heart of a courageous enemy or a beloved chieftain. Certainly their existed nothing like the voracious flesh-eaters with a taste for the human as portrayed in many history books. This scurrilous myth was the creation of Spanish slave traders who sought to justify to their Queen their very un-Christian activities. In 1510 there were declared as be no peaceful Indians along the coast of Tierra Firma, except in Trinidad. The King of Spain forbade slave raiding from the island.

In 1510, however Trinidad was categorised as Carib. Las Casas protested vociferously and an investigation was made. When the report was presented in 1520, Trinidad was excluded from the list of Carib islands. In 1532 Sedeno nonetheless asked for permission to catch slaves in Trinidad, for the inhabitants were 'Caribs and people who eat human flesh and have other rites and evil customs and are very warlike'. And so on.

The Amerindians in Trinidad and Tobago participated in a trade network that stretched for thousands of miles. Feasts were held for the initiation of chiefs or their burials, or as part of war preparations. But feasts also integrated several villages for trade in a fair-like atmosphere where products were bartered: cassava graters for salt, pearls for axes, trumpets for hammocks. The last were produced by a tribe called Lokono, whose villages were found in Trinidad and along the Orinoco. Lokono specialised in trade, travelling thousands of miles up the river with the wares of other tribes, for water in those days did not separate people but brought them closer.

One particular Lokono village located on the left bank of the lower Orinoco, was larger than the others because of its admirable position for trade upriver and downstream along the coasts. This 'town' was called by its inhabitants 'Arucay' and supplied many a Spanish expedition with food. This earned the Arawaks, as they were called, the title 'friends of the Christians'.

Spanish dependence on the Lokono and especially those from Arucay, enhanced the latter's economic strength, for they had access to the coveted iron tools. It also exempted Lokono from Spanish slave raiding, so that all Lokono, and other tribes as well, found it expedient to describe themselves as Arawak, A reverse logic worked for the Spanish slave raiders for whom it was convenient to find as few 'friends of Christians' as possible, and as many cannibals as there were Amerindians.

Spanish Trinidad. It was a well populated expedition of Columbus to the New World, and certainly a harrowing one it must have been. Becalmed at the equator, he changed his plans not out of desperation and sailed due west and north. It was on this course, just as the water on his ships was about to run out, that they sighted three peaks joined at their base. Overjoyed at their deliverance he named the land 'La Trinite', or Trinidad.

Columbus cruised along the south coast for an anchorage and found one at Punta de la Playa - now Erin - where he landed. His men met only footprints in the sand. He continued along the coast, to the southwestern tip, dropping names along the say like a god.

Next day his ship was approached by a pirogue containing about twenty Amerindians. Men from the two worlds stared at each other for some time until the Spaniards began singing and dancing on their deck. The Indians let loose a flight of arrows and the Spaniards responded in kind. The Indians approached one of the caravels and invited the pilot to come ashore but then lost their nerve and fled.

The Admiral departed, never to land again on the island, content with leaving a few more names before heading on to Santo Domingo where he had deposited settlers on an earlier voyage. En route he espied two islands to which he gave the names 'Concepcion' and 'Assumpcion'. They were Grenada and Tobago.