Bonaire's first inhabitants

Caiquetios:
Archeologists and historians can trace the history of the Netherlands Antilles back to the Caiquetio Indians, a subgroup of the extensive South American Arawak tribe.

Arawak:
Arawak history is sketchy, but it is generally believed that these early Amerindians followed migrating herds of animals from the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains in South America, north on the Amazon River and its tributaries into the Orinoco Valley (in modern-day Venezuela and Colombia). From there, they made their way to the northern coast and continued across the Caribbean Sea to Bonaire, Aruba and Curaçao.  

Split into several groups:
Because the tribe split into several groups as it traveled, their culture diversified, but their language remained fundamentally the same. Early European explorers found tribes of Arawakan-speaking Lucayo, Igneri, and Taino Indians when they landed on islands in the north and mid-Caribbean. But, people calling themselves Arawaks were not discovered until the late 16th century when British sailors landed on Trinidad.

Arawak (now a days...):
Arawak Indians still live in Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, and French Guiana. However, they have become extinct in the Caribbean as a pure, distinctive race. Most of what we know about the Arawaks comes from research done by a friar named Ramon Pane. While his study focused on Taino Indians, it is likely other Arawakan-speaking tribes had similar highly developed rituals and sophisticated class distinctions.

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