Current Issue March 2014 magazine cover  Save 81% off the
newsstand price!  Trinidad and Tobago - History and Heritage
Trinidad and Tobago - History and Heritage  Christopher Columbus
landed on Trinidad, which he named for the Holy Trinity, in 1498
and found a land quietly inhabited by the Arawak and Carib
Indians. It was nearly a century later that Europeans began to
settle Trinidad (called "leri&—land of the hummingbird—by the
Amerindians). The Spanish settlement of San Jose de Oruma,
located near the current city of Port of Spain, was the first of
the island’s European villages, but was summarily invaded and
destroyed by England's Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595. Trinidad
remained under Spanish control until eventually seized by the
British in 1797. As sugar plantations developed around the
island, thousands of African slaves were brought to the island
as laborers. When Britain abolished slavery, plantation owners
looked to India, China, and the Middle East for laborers,
bringing to Trinidad thousands more ind