 The name was restored by Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines as the official name of independent Saint-Domingue, as a tribute to the Amerindian predecessors.In French, Haiti's nickname is the "Pearl of the Antilles" ("La Perle des Antilles") because of both its natural beauty, and the amount of wealth it accumulated for the Kingdom of France; during the 18th century the colony was the world's leading producer of sugar and coffee.The island of Hispaniola, of which Haiti occupies the western three-eighths, has been inhabited since about 5000 BC by groups of Native Americans thought to have arrived from Central or South America.