Amerindians Arrival & Settlements

Long before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, most of the islands were inhabited by aboriginal people of different ethnic groups originated from parts of the Orinoco and Amazon River valleys.

They first settled on the Caribbean coast of Central and South America and the forest wetlands of (Florida) North America.  The whole of that area and the eastern coast of Venezuela are collectively known as the Cultural cradel of the Caribbean.

Caribbean Nations Of Central America

Caribbean Nations Of South America

Amerindians Ancestry & Descendants

The Amerindians are said to be ancient descendent of the Inca, Aztec and Maya Indians that gradually migrated along the coastal villages stretching from northern Beleze to Cayen (French Guyana) in the south.  As they migrated further away from the mainland, they inhabited and populated most of the Leeward and Windward islands with very few exception.

Islands Groups & Location

The Caribbean is composed of two distinctive chains of islands: the Lesser and Greater Antilles. The Lesser Antilles are a line of mainly volcanic islands sweeping northward from the island of Trinidad, near the mouth of the Orinoco River in Venezuela. This island chain continues northward to the three American Virgin Islands (St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix), where they meet the Greater Antilles.

The Greater Antilles consist of four large islands: Puerto Rico, Hispaniola (containing Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Cuba, and Jamaica. While there is evidence of volcanism in the Greater Antilles, they are, for the most part, a submerged mountain range jutting westward into the Caribbean for over a thousand miles. To the north of Cuba and Hispaniola are the low-lying Bahamian Islands.