History of Puerto Rico
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same region that arrived on the island between 430 and 250 BC.
Between the seventh and eleventh centuries Arawaks are thought to have settled the island. During this time the Taíno culture developed, and by approximately 1000 AD it had become dominant. Taíno culture has been traced to the village of Saladero at the basin of the Orinoco River in Venezuela; the Taínos migrated to Puerto Rico by crossing the Lesser Antilles.
At the time of Columbus' arrival, an estimated 30 to 60 thousand Taíno Amerindians, led by cacique (chief) Agüeybaná, inhabited the island. They called it Boriken, "the great land of the valiant and noble Lord". The natives lived in small villages led by a cacique and subsisted on hunting, fishing and gathering of indigenous cassava root and fruit. When the Spaniards arrived in 1493, conflicts with raiding Caribs, who were moving up the Antilles chain, were taking place. The Taíno domination of the island was nearing its end and the Spanish arrival would mark the beginning of their extinction. Their culture, however, remains strongly embedded in that of contemporary Puerto Rico. Musical instruments such as maracas and güiro, the hammock, and words such as Mayagüez, Arecibo, iguana, and huracán (hurricane) are examples of the legacy left by the Taíno.
Spanish Rule (1493–1898)
Beginning of colonization
On September 25, 1493, Christopher Columbus set sail on his second voyage with 17 ships and 1,200–1,500 men from Cádiz. On November 19, 1493 he landed on the island, naming it San Juan Bautista in honor of Saint John the Baptist. The first settlement, Caparra, was founded on August 8, 1508 by Juan Ponce de León, a lieutenant under Columbus, who later became the first governor of the island. The following year, the settlement was abandoned in favor of a nearby islet on the coast, named Puerto Rico (Rich Port), which had a suitable harbor. In 1511, a second settlement, San Germán was established in the southwestern part of the island. During the 1520s, the island took the name of Puerto Rico while the port became San Juan.
Colonization took the form of encomienda settlements, where settlers enslaved Taínos, providing them with military protection in return for labor. On December 27, 1512, under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church, Ferdinand II of Aragon issued the Burgos' Laws, which modified the encomiendas into a system called repartimientos, aimed at ending the exploitation. The laws prohibited the use of any form of punishment toward the indigenous people, regulated their work hours, pay, hygiene, and care, and ordered them to be catechized. In 1511, the Taínos revolted against the Spanish; cacique Urayoán, as planned by Agüeybaná II, ordered his warriors to drown the Spanish soldier Diego Salcedo to determine whether the Spaniards were immortal. After drowning Salcedo, they kept watch over his body for three