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Besides information on Christopher
Columbus, the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink endeavours to provide information
on some of the other major European colonial adventurers who figured prominently
not just in the recording of information on Caribbean Amerindian populations,
but whose own interests also played a role, directly or indirectly, in
shaping the (mis)fortunes of native polities. Sir Walter Ralegh (alternately
spelled by some as Raleigh), whose
travels took him to encounters with the Amerindians of Trinidad and Guyana,
was one of these prominent figures. Sir Robert Dudley and Sir Lawrence
Keymis were two other British figures of similar importance, and information
on them will be posted on the CAC as soon as more is available on the Internet.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica, Sir Walter Raleigh, 1154-1618:
Excerpt—“Raleigh also spelled RALEGH, English adventurer and writer,
a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who knighted him in 1585. Accused
of treason by Elizabeth's successor, James I, he was imprisoned in
the Tower of London and eventually put to death….Between 1584 and
1589 he had tried to establish a colony near Roanoke Island (in
present North Carolina), which he named Virginia; but he never set
foot there himself. In 1595 he led an expedition to what is now
Guyana, in South America, sailing up the Orinoco River in the heart
of Spain's colonial empire. He described the expedition in his book
The Discoverie of Guiana (1596). Spanish documents and stories told
by Indians had convinced him of the existence of Eldorado, a
fabulous city of gold in the interior of South America. He did
locate some gold mines, but no one supported his project for
colonizing the area. In 1596 he went with Robert Devereux, earl of
Essex, on an unsuccessful expedition against the Spanish city of
Cádiz, and he was Essex' rear admiral on the Islands voyage, in
1597, an expedition to the Azores….He still hoped to exploit the
wealth of Guyana, arguing that the country had been ceded to England
by its native chiefs in 1595. With the King's permission, he
financed and led a second expedition there, promising to open a gold
mine without offending Spain. A severe fever prevented his leading
his men upriver. His lieutenant, Lawrence Kemys, burned a Spanish
settlement but found no gold. Raleigh's son Walter died in the
action. King James invoked the suspended sentence of 1603, and in
1618, after writing a spirited defense of his acts, Raleigh was
executed….”
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"Raleigh's Tall Tales", by Kim Johnson, Trinidad Express, Sunday, 04
July, 1999: [look half way down this page
to find the fifth article] "Despite the six-cent commemorative
stamps issued in 1935, 1938 and 1953 by the colony of Trinidad and
Tobago, Sir Walter Raleigh never claimed to have discovered the
Pitch Lake. He knew that the aboriginal inhabitants of Trinidad were
long familiar with the pitch lake-pitch is an Amerindian word….Yet
his most outrageous tales were swallowed, such as that of the
Ewaipanoma tribe, who 'have their eyes in their shoulders, and
mouths in the middle of their breasts, and that a long train of hair
groweth backward between their shoulders'…"
This page last updated:
Saturday, 29 July, 2006
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