The first inhabitants of the Turks and…

The first inhabitants of the Turks and Caicos Islands were Arawakan-speaking Taíno people, who crossed over from Hispaniola sometime from CE 500 to 800.

Together with Taino who migrated from Cuba to the southern Bahamas around the same time, these people developed as the Lucayan.

The Turks and Caicos Islands around 1200 had been resettled by Classical Taínos from Hispaniola.

The first European documented to sight the islands is Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León, who does so in 1512.

Soon after the Spanish arrive in the islands in 1512, they begin capturing the Taíno of the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Lucayan as slaves (technically, as workers in the encomienda system) to replace the largely depleted native population of Hispaniola.

The southern Bahama Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands will be completely depopulated by about 1513, and will remain so until the seventeenth century.