History And Culture Of The Bahamas

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Before the landing of immigrated English settlers there were a group of Lucayan Indians a sub-group of the Arawaks (The History of the Bahamas). The Caucasian population is descendent of the first English settlers who immigrated to Bermuda in 1647 to gain religious freedom and settled on the island of Eleuthera. The mix of culture and heritage is expressed in one of the two languages, Bahamas Creole English and English. Some families have been Bahamian for two centuries. Christopher Columbus first set foot in the Bahamas in 1492 on the island of San Salvador in the eastern Bahamas (The History of the Bahamas). Columbus made his first hemispheric land in the Bahamas and claimed them for Spain. After Columbus sailed to the islands it attracted other sailors such as pirates, buccaneers, settlers, invaders and traders. They found the shallow waters easy to attack other ships. Archaeological explorers believe people lived in the Bahamas as early as 300 to 400 A.D. These people probably came from Cuba and used the ocean as a source for food (The History of the Bahamas). In 1648, English Puritans set sail to find a place to have religious freedom and arrived in the Bahamas. The Puritans however found food shortages and a lack of proper supplies that split the group into separate communities. Piracy was at its height from the late 1600s to the early 1700s. The Islands of the Bahamas was a popular stopping off point for many of the world’s most infamous pirates (The History of the Bahamas).
“In 1807 Britain made participation in the slaver trade illegal for its subjects. Until the end of the Napoleonic Wars, British efforts had mainly involved stationing ships of the Royal Navy on the slave trading routes to intercept any vessels (British or Foreign) suspected of transporting slaves” (Johnson, p. 62). In 1815 the naval activity of se...