History & Heritage

Jamaica's history stretches back beyond even when Columbus first sighted land on his second voyage to the New World in 1494. From the gentle Taino Indians to the Spanish Mariners and from the English conquerors and migrants from Palestine, India and China who followed, to August 6, 1962 when the Union Jack was lowered and the Black, Green and Gold flag was raised for the first time and Jamaica became an independent nation, Jamaica's heritage is rich and exciting......

Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy. He went to sea as a young boy, and spent most of his life at sea.

The settlement of the first people

The first people to come to Jamaica were people from Venezuela, known as the Arawaks. They are thought to have come to Jamaica in two major waves. The first wave of people came in 650 AD, and the second in 900 AD. they were then joined by the Caribs, who came from Guiana. While the Arawaks were a peaceful people, it is said that the Caribs were cannibalistic and fierce fighters. Much fighting arose between these two groups.

Jamaica has a vivid and painful history, marred since European settlement by an undercurrent of violence and tyranny.

Christopher Columbus first landed on the island in 1494, when there were perhaps 100,000 peaceful Arawak Amerindians who had settled in Jamaica. With him, he brought fear, disease and terror to the Jamaicans. He named the island Jamaica because he heard the natives call it Xaymaca. He brought smallpox and other horrible diseases, to which islanders had no antibodies.

Spanish settlers arrived from 1510, raising cattle and pigs, and introducing two things that would profoundly shape the island's future: sugar and slaves. The Spanish, under the rule of Jaun de Esquivel, treated the Jamaicans no better than Columbus had and even more of the aboriginal Jamaicans died. Spanish settlers first settled in an area near St. Ann's Bay, and made a beautiful town named New Seville, they had to move due to the area's climate and swampy conditions. They then settled in present day Spanish Town.
Unfortunately, there are no remains of this city, it has rotted away after years of neglect and disuse.

By the end of the 16th century the Arawak population had been entirely wiped out, suffering from hard labor, ill-treatment and European diseases to which they had no resistance.

In 1654 an ill-equipped and badly organized English contingent sailed to the Caribbean. After failing to take Hispaniola (present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the 'wicked army of common cheats, thieves and lewd persons' turned to weakly defended Jamaica. Despite the ongoing efforts of Spanish loyalists and guerilla-style campaigns of freed Spanish slaves (cimarrones - 'wild ones' - or Maroons), England took control of the island.

Investment and further settlement hastened as profits began to accrue from cocoa, coffee, and sugarcane production. But with Britain constantly at war with France or Spain, effective control of the island was entrusted to buccaneers, a motley band of seafaring miscreants, political refugees and escaped criminals, who committed themselves to lives of piracy against the Spaniards. Depending on whether Britain and Spain had just signed or just broken peace agreements, Britain was either supporting the buccaneers, or helping Spain repel them.

Slave rebellions didn't make life any easier for the English as escaped slaves joined with descendants of the Maroons, engaging in extended ambush-style campaigns, and eventually forcing the English to grant them autonomy in 1739.

New slaves kept arriving, however, most of them put to work on sugar plantations in appalling conditions. Slaves were burnt, strangled and otherwise tortured to terrorize them into obedience. There were constant insurrections, especially after the American War of Independence (1775-81) and the French Revolution (1789) spread a spirit of subversion, but they were quashed with the utmost severity. The last and largest of the slave revolts in Jamaica was the 1831 Christmas Rebellion, inspire d by 'Daddy' Sam Sharpe, an educated slave and lay preacher who incited passive resistance. The rebellion turned violent, however, as up to 20,000 slaves razed plantations and murdered planters. When the slaves were tricked into laying down arms with a false promise of abolition, and then 400 were hanged and hundreds more whipped, there was a wave of revulsion in England, causing the Jamaican parliament to finally abolish slavery on August 1, 1834.

Maroons of the Cockpit Country

Cockpit Country remains one of Jamaica's remotest areas and home to the intriguing cultural group called the Maroons. Extraordinary wild and beautiful, the region is riddled with caves that lie hidden beneath the thick vegetation. In 1655, when the British seized the island, runaway slaves found refuge here and evolved their own culture.

Land of legends, the Cockpit Country remains one of Jamaica's remotest areas and home to the intriguing cultural group called the Marooons. Extraordinary wild and beautiful, the region is riddled with caves that lie hidden beneath the thick vegetation. In 1655, when the British seized the island, runaway slaves found refuge here and evolved their own culture.

The Maroons harassed the English until the latter gave up, and were granted legal autonomy, which is still recognized today. Descendants of the original slaves still live in Cockpit Country, under the leadership of the Great Maroon Chief.

Cockpit Country is an uncanny series of improbable lumps and bumps covering roughly 500 square miles of Trelawny Parish, just south of Montego Bay. The region is one of most intriguing parts of the island, not least because of the place names peppered throughout it: 'Me No Sen You No Come', 'Wait-a-Bit', 'Quick Sep' and 'Rest and Be Thankful District', though the last appears on aged maps only. Cockpit Country is also known as The District of Look Behind in reference to the justifiable paranoia of English soldiers who made hot, comfortless and usually ill-fated missions through the area tracking Maroons, whose superior local knowledge and guerrilla strategies brought most of the sorties to a bloody end.