1000 BC to 1509

Xaymaca

Farming peoples who came by canoe from the islands to the east settled Jamaica centuries before Europeans. The Taino called it Xaymaca, often translated as land of wood and water. Columbus reached it in May 1494, and on his last voyage he was stranded there for a year, from 1503 to 1504, after his ships were wrecked on the north coast.