Lucayan people
Indigenous Bahamans prior to European-American conquest
The Lucayan people ( loo-KY-ən) were the Indigenous people of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands before the European colonisation of the Americas. According to some scholars, including Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius, they were a branch of the Taínos who inhabited most of the Caribbean and the Bahamas. Other scholars, including L. Antonio Curet, do not classify Lucayans as Taínos. The Lucayans were the first Indigenous Americans encountered by Christopher Columbus (in October 1492). Shortly after contact, the Spanish kidnapped and enslaved Lucayans with the displacement culminating in the complete eradication of the Lucayan people from the Bahamas by 1520.
The name "Lucayan" is an Anglicization of the Spanish Lucayos, itself a hispanicization derived from the Lucayan Lukku-Cairi, which the people used for themselves, meaning "people of the islands". The Lucayan word for "island", cairi, became cayo in Spanish and "cay" in English [spelled "key" in American English].
Some crania and artifacts of "Ciboney type" were reportedly found on Andros Island, but if some Ciboney did reach the Bahamas ahead of the Lucayans, they left no known evidence of occupation. Some possible Ciboney archaeological sites have been found elsewhere in the Bahamas, but the only one subjected to radiocarbon dating dated to the mid- to late-12th century, contemporaneous with Lucayan presence on the islands.
Christopher Columbus's diario contains the only contemporaneous observations of the Lucayans.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lucayan people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.