This is an extract from the introduction to the third chapter of the historical novel 'Bahama Saga' by Peter Barratt published by Authorhouse in 2002. Chapter 3 - The Lucayans  (600 - 1513 AD) I..think their life most happye of all men, if they might therewith enjoie their anciente libertie.  A fewe things content them, having no delite in such superfluities, for which in other places men take infinite paynes and commit many unlawful acts. - Peter Martyr.

The original inhabitants of the Antilles enjoyed nearly four thousand years of undisturbed tranquility. Then, just before the dawning of the Christian era, Arawak tribes living in the northern part of the Amazon rain forest started to migrate downstream from the mid-reaches of the Orinoco River into what is today the country of Venezuela. When they reached the open sea they turned north.  Soon their migration would touch the lives of almost all the Stone Age people living in the necklace of islands that stretch between South and North America on the eastern rim of the Caribbean Basin.

The Arawaks were a gentle industrious people. They introduced a new progressive culture to the islands of the Caribbean that was continually being adapted to the environment as they progressed northwards towards the Bahamas.  Outsiders who later met the Island Arawaks and the indigenous island peoples they influenced were full of praise for the Utopia-like communities they developed. But as the human history of the world has shown all too often, in time weaker nations succumb to stronger forces irrespective of morality, religion or race.

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