Great Guana Cay
11 April 2012 | Abacos, Bahamas
Great Guana Cay has been continuously inhabited since the 1770's by the Bahamian version of indigenous peoples - the loyalists. When Europeans first visited the Abacos, there were indigenous people on these outer cays. The men and women of the Abaco out-islands were the farthest extension of the human migration - the Lucayans who fished and foraged on cays like Green Turtle, Manjack Cay and Great Guana Cay were the descendents of people who before them came from islands further south in the Caribbean - their ancestors - the mouth of the Amazon, Brazil's rivers, Mexico, Colorado, British Columbia, Alaska, Mongolia. But the Spanish wiped these people off the face of the Earth.
When the loyalists, Americans loyal to the British Queen, escaped places like Florida and New York before imminent war in 1776, Abaco was settled only by a handful of Spanish, British and French castaways.
reprinted from various sources