ABSTRACT
The history of Trinidad Carnival is essentially the history of the peoples of Trinidad – embedded in the stories of conquest, enslavement, resistance, and indentureship, and in commercial, cultural, and ethnic exchange among the many who were forcibly brought to the place or settled there after Columbus first named the island Trinidad in 1498: Spanish, French, English, Africans, (East) Indians, Irish, Germans, Corsicans, Chinese, Syrians, Portuguese, Canadians, Lebanese, and probably more. Also present are the vestigial influences of the estimated forty thousand indigenous people who lived in the island as of 1500, from five known groups (Nepuyo, Aruaca, Shebaio, Yaio, and Garini), with some evidence of the Warao from the Orinoco region and "increasing incursions of Island Carib, the Kalipurna or Califournians" (Elie 1997: 3). It is not clear exactly when enslaved Africans were first brought to Trinidad, but trading in human lives remained legal from the mid sixteenth century to the British Abolition Act of 1807, and was carried on illegally for several decades after that. Public records indicate that most of the enslaved were Igbos, Mandingoes, Yorubas, Asantes, Hausas, and Alladas from West Africa and Kongos from the Congo Basin (Public Record Office, Slave Registration Returns T1, 501–3, cited by Liverpool 1993: 11; see also Elder 1969: 5–6).
