USVI Home Hotels Sites to See Restaurants History Weather Churches Seven Flags : The History of St. Croix PRE-COLUMBUS Prior to, and less than a century after Columbus' discovery, St. Croix was inhabited by two tribes of Indians: the Caribs and the Arawaks. The Arawaks were generally considered to be a peaceful tribe while the Caribs were warring cannibals. The word "cannibal" is in tribute to their fierce nature for it is derived from the Spanish word for Carib or "carrib ...

History of Central America The region between Mexico and Colombia supported a large pre-Columbian population, the most important of whom were the Maya. The Maya civilization originated in the highlands of Guatemala before the 1st millennium BC and reached its greatest flowering between AD 300 and 900 in autonomous city-states in what are now northern Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Maya unity was cultural rather than political, but the civilization's influenc ...