Page 221 - The Dutch Caribbean Isles
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Curacao
T he history of Curaçao starts with accounts of the Arawak Indians, out on their quest between 1499 and 1500 to map the South American
who inhabited the island long before it was found by Christopher coast and various offshore islands, including Curaçao. Some say that a
Columbus. The Arawaks and their subgroups came to the Caribbean number of sailors aboard de Ojeda’s and Vespucci’s ship were dropped
from South America about 6,000 years ago in 2500 B.C. and settled on off on Curaçao when they came down with scurvy, but this informa-
different islands that they discovered while on their northbound voyage. tion has been the subject of much dispute. When the pair of explorers
Curaçao was named after the Caiquetios, the group of Arawaks who returned to the island almost a year later, they found that the sailors they
settled on the island after leaving Venezuela around 500 A.D. The first had left behind were in good health, apparently cured by the abundance
explorers to arrive in Curaçao were the Spanish soldier Alonso de Ojeda of Vitamin C on the island. Here then it is said that the explorers named
and the famous Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The two voyagers set the island Curaçao, after the archaic Portuguese word for “cure.”
