31 Days of Where I live (day 3) - Our History Part 1

It's day 3 of write 31 and I'm still here!!!!!


Trinidad and Tobago have dissimilar histories so I'm going to cover them separately. They were two separate countries until 1889. So I'm going to provide brief histories with a few key points in two parts

Trinidad was discovered by Christopher Columbus 0n 31st July 1498 and was named La Trinité. Columbus saw three hills (now named the Trinity Hills) and thought of the Holy Trinity and so blessed us with the name.

Before Columbus the island was inhabited by the Amerindians (think Native Americans), mainly two tribes the Caribs and the Arawaks. The Caribs were a warring tribe while the Arawaks were a more peaceful tribe. One of our local beers and beer producers is called Carib and one of our chicken producers is called Arawak. Just saying.

Sir Walter Raleigh came to Trinidad in 1595 looking for El Dorado, the City of Gold. I remember from school that he found the Pitch Lake and proclaimed he had found black gold. However the area named El Dorado and the Pitch Lake are not in the same area.

During the French Revolution, French planters and their crew migrated to the Caribbean, Trinidad was one of the islands that they came too. The country was still under Spanish rule at this time despite Sir Walter Raleigh's little stint on the island and a little uprising by the Carib Indians some years back.

Trinidad has a relatively peaceful history. Though not totally.

In 1797, General Sir Ralph Abercomby landed, prepared to take the island by force but the Spanish Governor capitulated without fight (as I said relatively peaceful). Trinidad became a British Colony with French citizens and Spanish laws,

The British brought in lots of slave labour but after slavery was abolished East Indian labourers were brought in to make up for the slaves who refused to work.

Trinidad has a very multi-ethnic population thanks to coming and going pre-1889. Post we have the Chinese and Syrian influx but I'll get to that in time.

If you would like to learn more about writing for 31 days in a row, please visit www.write31days.com and learn more about it. I chose the "Too Awesome to Categorize" category for my own blog this month.