Long before Anguilla’s tranquil shores lured luxury travelers, the island nurtured a vibrant indigenous life. The first settlers arrived thousands of years ago, when Amerindian peoples – often referred to as Arawaks – paddled up from the Orinoco basin of South America in dugout canoes. These early islanders knew Anguilla as Malliouhana, meaning “arrow-shaped sea serpent,” a poetic nod to the island’s long, low silhouette. They established fishing and farming hamlets along the coasts, living off the bounty of the sea and the fertile land. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of at least forty village sites, with ancient tools and pottery shards still whispering tales of this bygone era (en.wikipedia.org).
Anguilla’s pre-Columbian inhabitants left intriguing marks of their spirituality. Within limestone caverns like Big Spring and Fountain Cavern, mysterious petroglyphs are etched into the rock – haunting faces and symbols that hint at ceremonial rituals and an intense reverence for nature’s forces. In one cavern, a stone carving believed to depict the Arawak rain god Jocahu stands sentinel, its circular eyes and flowing lines illuminated by flickers of torchlight (commons.wikimedia.org). These sacred sites suggest a rich religious life; one can almost imagine smoke curling toward the cave ceiling in offerings to ancient deities, while waves crash in the distance. The Arawaks thrived here for centuries, cultivating cassava and fishing in turquoise waters, creating a peaceful if isolated world far from continental strife.
All that changed at the turn of the 16th century, when European sails appeared on Anguilla’s horizon. Legend holds that Christopher Columbus himself may have glimpsed Anguilla’s low-lying outline on his second voyage in 1493, though he left no detailed record. A more credible first European sighting came from the French navigator René Goulaine de Laudonnière around 1565. Yet for decades, Anguilla remained largely undisturbed – a sleepy, caribbee island bypassed by the Spanish conquistadors who found no gold on its shores. The indigenous population, however, would not remain hidden forever. European colonization in the region led to displacement and disease that devastated many native communities. By the time English settlers later set foot on Anguilla, they found the island seemingly uninhabited – the Arawak communities had either left or perished, leaving behind only their artifacts and petroglyph-marked sanctuaries as echoes of a distant time (britannica.com).
In 1650, Anguilla’s solitude was broken. A band of intrepid English colonists from the nearby island of Saint Kitts came ashore, determined to make Anguilla England’s newest foothold in the Caribbean (britannica.com). They found an island of scrub and sea grape trees, with powdery white beaches and an interior salt pond shimmering in the sun. With no native population to greet or resist them, the newcomers carved out plantations and planted tobacco and corn. But Anguilla would not yield easily to its new masters. Within a few years, in 1656, a surprise raid by Indigenous people (likely Caribs from another island) descended on the fledgling settlement, catching the colonists off guard (britannica.com). Most of the English men were killed in the onslaught, and the women and children were carried off – a grim reminder that the wider Caribbean indigenous resistance was still very much alive, even if Anguilla’s original inhabitants were gone.
Those colonists who survived rebuilt their lives, eking out a tenuous existence. The English crown paid little attention to Anguilla, so the settlers were largely on their own, facing whatever threats blew in with the trade winds. Pirates occasionally lurked in coves, and rival European powers soon cast covetous eyes on the isle. In 1666, during one of Europe’s frequent wars, a French force sailed over from Saint Martin and attacked Anguilla, driving the planters into the hills (britannica.com). The French occupation was short-lived; by the 1667 Treaty of Breda, the island was restored to English control. Anguilla’s English settlers trickled back, only to face another raid years later. In 1688, a combined Irish and French raiding party struck the island, forcing most colonists to flee once more to Antigua for refuge. Through all this turbulence, Anguilla’s few families demonstrated a trait that would come to define the island’s people – endurance. Time and again they returned, rebuilt, and persisted, bound by an attachment to their “scrub island” home that no hardship could shake.