Although all traces of them have been erased from Tobago’s modern-day population, the island was once occupied by the Ciboneys, Arawaks and Caribs, whose presence dates back as far as 3,500 BC.
However, clues to their existence remain today, and the Tobago Heritage Conservation Society has amassed a collection of artefacts that are on display at a museum in Buccoo.
In glass cases around the little museum in Buccoo are relics of the people who first occupied Tobago. Stone tools, carvings of various creatures, bits of pottery and shells are all evidence that Tobago’s history began long before European colonisation.
Chairman of the Tobago Heritage Conservation Society, Gabriele de Gaetano, says their years of research and the generosity of people who presented these artefacts have encouraged them to share these pieces of history.
“Not to keep it at home, but to share it and give the possibility to other people, especially students or visitors, to come and see it.”
It is difficult to determine the age of the artefacts on display. However, Mr de Gaetano believes they are from the ceramic age, somewhere between 3500 BC and 300 BC. Many of the pieces were found in areas such as Sandy Point, Golden Grove, Friendship, Milford, Courland and Lambeau.
“The indigenous people were moving during the course of a year, which means they were hunting or in a period of rain or dry season, they were moving to more suitable areas.”
He said there were camps that moved around areas near rivers and coastlines.
“So when you, for example, find artefacts, it is not necessarily from people that were living in that location but you can recognise a pattern, and from there you establish where people were coming from.”
There also appears to be evidence of trade with tribes from Trinidad and South America, with artefacts such as the groove axe closely resembling items discovered in those regions.
Research on indigenous people in Tobago is limited, having only begun in 1988. Mr de Gaetano and his volunteers use available research to catalogue and understand the artefacts in their possession. For Mr de Gaetano, this labour of love and passion is important for understanding how the indigenous people lived in harmony with Tobago’s natural environment.
“You are looking at how farming was conducted and the stone to grind cassava roots or to squeeze out juice out of it so it is very, very interesting to see how all of this relates to what we could still be doing today.”
Historian Mervyn O’Neil notes that the last Carib inhabitants of Tobago were found on Little Tobago and at Man O’War Bay in Charlotteville in 1786. They eventually disappeared from the island, either through death or migration to neighbouring islands such as St Vincent. Nevertheless, their legacy endures as an important chapter in Tobago’s history.