Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

As to­day marks the be­gin­ning of a week of ac­tiv­i­ties in cel­e­bra­tion of Amerindi­an Her­itage Day on Oc­to­ber 14, it's worth ask­ing what do we know about the ear­ly his­to­ry of our first peo­ples and their de­scen­dants? And no, not the sim­plis­tic sto­ry about Caribs and Arawaks you were taught at school.

Ar­chae­ol­o­gists like Dr Basil Reid at UWI de­scribe ev­i­dence that sug­gests Trinidad was set­tled by around 7,000 years ago. These first peo­ples are de­scribed as "Ar­cha­ic" or "Or­toiroids." They were hunter-gath­er­ers who sur­vived by hunt­ing, fish­ing and shell col­lect­ing. With tools made from stone, shells, bone and wood.

Dis­cov­ered in 1969, "Ban­wari Man" is ev­i­dence of set­tle­ment in Trinidad and car­bon-dates to about 5,500 years ago. In­ter­est­ing­ly Reid notes that Ban­wari Man was more like­ly a woman.

Trinidad, of course, is vis­i­ble from South Amer­i­ca. Thanks to both a land bridge once con­nect­ing us to the con­ti­nent (dur­ing the last ice age, when sea lev­els were much low­er) and a dense web of sea chan­nels and rivers south of Trinidad nav­i­ga­ble by ca­noe, we have al­ways been easy to reach. Over mil­len­nia our is­land be­came an im­por­tant hub for the move­ment of var­i­ous dif­fer­ent Amerindi­an groups be­tween is­lands in the Caribbean and the con­ti­nen­tal main­land.

Around 2,000 years ago, the ev­i­dence sug­gests, new types of peo­ple, over a long pe­ri­od of time, ar­rived here. They were dis­tinct from the ar­cha­ic peo­ples and are de­scribed as pot­tery-mak­ing cas­sa­va hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ists. Hor­ti­cul­ture means gar­dens and cul­ti­vat­ing foods. It trans­forms no­madic life. Groups be­came more seden­tary and larg­er as they grew a va­ri­ety of foods around where they lived.

The um­brel­la term for these new peo­ples is the Sal­adoid. Many sites of Sal­adoid vil­lages have been found around Trinidad and sug­gest the Sal­adoid con­sist­ed of mul­ti­ple eth­nic groups with a cer­tain lev­el of au­ton­o­my rather than be­ing a sin­gu­lar cul­ture. The Mar­i­anne Es­tate in Blan­chisseuse is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to have been one of the largest Sal­adoid sites, with ev­i­dence sug­gest­ing it was once a vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty built around a cen­tral plaza. It's easy to imag­ine why.

The "Sal­adoid," like oth­er um­brel­la terms for lat­er Amerindi­ans, refers to a par­tic­u­lar ce­ram­ic tra­di­tion, and the Sal­adoid are recog­nised for their thin, well-fired pot­tery style with its sym­bol­ic mo­tifs de­pict­ing an­i­mistic re­li­gion. Even­tu­al­ly the Sal­adoid ap­pear to have been en­croached by, and in­ter­act­ed with, a new group of peo­ples de­scribed un­der the um­brel­la term Bar­ran­coid. Sal­adoid sites like that found in Erin Bay pro­vide ev­i­dence of in­ter­ac­tion be­tween these groups.

From around 1,200 years ago to a few cen­turies be­fore Colum­bus, ev­i­dence points to ex­pan­sion along the Orinoco by a new group col­lect­ed un­der the name Arauquinoid. El­e­ments of this pop­u­la­tion prob­a­bly moved down­riv­er to the coast be­fore cross­ing to set­tle first in Ica­cos and Guayagua­yare, then dis­pers­ing both across and off the is­land.

Over the next few cen­turies the Arauquinoid pres­ence in­ten­si­fied and lo­cal ex­changes and com­mu­ni­ca­tion lines be­tween the main­land and oth­er is­lands were es­tab­lished, de­vel­op­ing the com­plex­i­ty and in­ter­con­nec­tion of Amerindi­an so­ci­ety across the re­gion.

These ex­change and com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works al­lowed the con­sol­i­da­tion of in­de­pen­dent lo­cal vil­lage poli­ties across the Less­er An­tilles, in­clud­ing Trinidad, and pop­u­la­tions grew again. This growth in pop­u­la­tion im­plies sta­bil­i­ty, peace­ful co­hab­i­ta­tion and adap­ta­tion be­tween lo­cal groups. Long be­fore mod­ern Trinidad was mul­ti­cul­tur­al, the first peo­ples of the is­land prob­a­bly al­ready were.

In this pe­ri­od short­ly be­fore Colum­bus, lo­cal groups re­lat­ed to one of three lin­guis­tic fam­i­lies-Arawakan, Carib­an and Waraoan-and formed part of large re­gion­al is­land-to-is­land and is­land-to-main­land trad­ing net­works. We know, for ex­am­ple, that the Warao of Venezuela were fre­quent vis­i­tors.

On ar­rival to Iere, Colum­bus met a far more di­verse so­ci­ety than his­to­ry tra­di­tion­al­ly imag­ines. The la­bel "Caribs" is an um­brel­la term used for the many dif­fer­ent tribes he en­coun­tered and whose names in­clud­ed Carinepago­to, Ch­aguanes, Yaio, She­baio, Lokono and Nepoio. Some es­ti­mate that at the time of Eu­ro­pean "con­tact," Trinidad had 35,000 in­hab­i­tants liv­ing in com­mu­ni­ties across the is­land.

This brief tour of ear­ly Amerindi­an his­to­ry leaves out a lot. Yet it con­tains enough to recog­nise that the sto­ry Colum­bus sold of just two groups-can­ni­bals and no­ble peace-lov­ing farm­ers-was a lie. His sto­ry was a colo­nial nar­ra­tive to jus­ti­fy geno­cide, slav­ery and the forced con­ver­sion of mul­ti­ple groups and cul­tures.

Sad­ly, for a long time it al­so pre­vent­ed us from see­ing the Amerindi­an sur­vivals and adap­ta­tions all around us in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Thank­ful­ly "his-sto­ry" is be­ing rewrit­ten.

• Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine