History On Jamaica

 

 

• Jamaica's history stretches much farther back; beyond even when Columbus sighted land, on his second voyage in 1494.

 

• In describing Jamaica, he recorded in his log: "The fairest land ever eyes beheld...the mountains touch the sky"--a description echoed by five centuries of newcomers.

 

• The Spanish mariners found a gentle American Indian people, the Arawaks, who lived off the sea and their cultivation, had invented the hammock, and had never experienced war.

 

• To them, the Spaniards with their ships, guns and horses were godlike, and were welcomed as gods.

 

• Under the Spanish settlement, however, the entire Indian population--perhaps a hundred thousand--died: a combination of forced labor, mass executions and European diseases previously unknown, like the common cold, to which they had no immunity.

 

• The Spanish never fully settled Jamaica, though Columbus himself was to spend nearly a year there in 1503, out of favor at court and nearing the end of his life.

 

• The island-named from its Arawak name Xaymaca", "land of wood and water"--passed to his son Diego, whose descendants to this day carry the now-honorary title of Marquis of Jamaica.

 

• In 1509--the year Henry VIII came to the English throne--they established a capital, New Seville, near the modern town of Ocho Rios (which they called "Las Chorreras," 'the waterfalls,' and the English conquerors later misunderstood, calling it eight rivers). Today the foundations of New Seville are being excavated, and the search continues for the two ships which Columbus left beached nearby.