Bahamas - 16th Century
Columbus’ first voyage reached landfall in the Bahamas and claimed the Bahamas for Spain. Upon his arrival, Columbus encountered natives known as Lucayans, related to the Arawak Indians.
Columbus passed through the islands, and in one of his letters to Ferdinand and Isabella he said, "This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendour; the natives love their neighbours as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces always smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear to your highness there is not a better people in the world."
But the natives, innocent as they appeared, were doomed to utter destruction. The most valuable Bahamian resource appeared to be its people; the native Lucayans were enslaved and brought to work in mines and pearl fishing industries in other parts of the Spanish Caribbean.
Ovando, the governor of Hispaniola (Haiti), who had exhausted the labour of that island, turned his thoughts to the Bahamas, and in 1509 Ferdinand authorized him to procure laborers from these islands. It is said that reverence and love for their departed relatives was a marked feature in the character of the aborigines, and that the Spaniards made use of this as a bait to trap the unhappy natives. They promised to convey the ignorant savages in their ships to the " heavenly shores " where their departed friends now dwelt, and about 40,000 were transported to Hispaniola to perish miserably in the mines.
From that date, until after the colonization of New Providence by the British, there is no record of a Spanish visit to the Bahamas, with the exception of the extraordinary cruise of Juan Ponce de Leon, the conqueror of Porto Rico, who passed months searching the islands for Bimini, which was reported to contain the miraculous " Fountain of Youth." This is in South Bimini, and has still a local reputation for healing powers.
Within a quarter of a century, the Lucayans had been decimated, the result of diseases brought by the Europeans and of having been forced to work in the mines of Hispaniola (the island containing present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic). By 1520, the Lucayans had been removed from the Bahamas and the islands remained uncolonized backwaters of the Caribbean for the next century.
The Spanish chose to settle areas of the Caribbean that contained more promise of wealth. For the next century, the Bahamas was a forgotten colony. Attention was focused instead on the mineral wealth of the other Caribbean islands.
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