Haiti’s recorded history begins on December 5, 1492, when Christopher Columbus discovered a large island in the western Atlantic Ocean, an area that later came to be known as the Caribbean Sea. The native people at the time called themselves Taíno, meaning "men of the good," who variously called their island Ayiti, Bohio, or Kiskeya.

The Taíno lived throughout the islands of Cuba, Haiti, and Puerto Rico, having migrated from South America centuries before Columbus’s voyage to the Americas. They are said to have been peaceful and hospitable people; the Haitian Taíno were the most advanced of the Taíno, with a flourishing civilization.

Columbus renamed the island La Isla Española ("the Spanish Island"), or Hispañola, later Anglicized as Hispaniola. He established a small settlement, but when he returned in 1493, the settlers had disappeared. Columbus claimed the island for the Spanish Crown, and left his brother Bartholomew to found a new settlement.

Following the arrival of the Spanish, Haiti’s indigenous population nearly became extinct, probably by their treatment as slaves, organized massacres, and exposure to diseases to which they had no immunity. According to early Spanish historians, there were as many as three to four million Taíno on the island in 1492, but about fifty years later, most of them were gone. A significant number survived, however, escaping and resettling elsewhere.

Spanish interest in Hispañola waned in the 1520s, as more lucrative opportunity was found in the gold and silver deposits in Mexico and South America, and the Spanish population of Hispañola grew slowly.

Competition for Haiti

In 1625, the first French adventurers (buccaneers—similar to pirates, with a slight variation in meaning) landed on the island of La Tortue (Tortuga Island), north of mainland Haiti, and established a settlement. They survived by pirating Spanish ships and hunting wild cattle, and later began exploring and settling the mainland. Although the Spanish destroyed the buccaneers’ settlements several times, each time, they returned, eventually defeating the Spanish and driving them out of the western part of the island. The first official settlement on Tortuga was established in 1659 under King Louis XIV.

In 1664, the newly established French West India Company took control of the colony, renaming it Saint-Domingue, and France claimed the western portion of Hispañola. (The western one-third of the island is now Haiti, while the eastern two-thirds is the Dominican Republic.) In 1670, they established the first permanent French settlement, Cap François, now known as Cap-Haïtien. In 1697, Spain signed with France the Treaty of Ryswick, formally giving Haiti to France. With the encouragement of Louis XIV, they had begun to grow tobacco, indigo, cotton, cacao, and ebony on the fertile northern plain.

To provide labor for these plantations, the French imported people from Africa, who were enslaved and submitted to virtually the same cruelty imposed on the Taíno. By 1789, the slave population numbered about 500,000, ruled by a white population of only about 32,000.

The brutal conditions of slavery prevented the population from growing by natural means, so new slaves were constantly being imported from Africa; at all times, the majority of slaves in the colony were African-born. So African culture remained strong among the slaves, especially the folk-religion of Vodou (voodooism), which mixed the beliefs and practices of Guinea, Congo, and Dahomey with Catholic tradition.

Slaves frequently rose against their masters, and some fled to the mountains, where they met some of the last remaining Taíno, who had also sought refuge there.

Saint-Domingue became one of the richest colonies in the 18^th-century French Empire, and was soon known as the "Pearl of the Antilles." By this time, Saint-Domingue produced about 40 percent of all the sugar and 60 percent of all the coffee consumed in Europe, more sugar and coffee than all of Britain’s West Indian colonies combined.

The French eventually developed Saint-Domingue into the richest colony in the world, making France the envy of all Europe. Many French plantation owners in Saint-Domingue were so successful, they were able to own lavish homes in France as well. Spain, France, and Britain continuously fought for ownership and control of Saint-Domingue.

In the meantime, the slaves constantly rebelled against their conditions. Some poisoned their masters; others killed their own children to save them from a horrible life of slavery; group suicides were not unknown. The most successful and persistent form of protest was the "marronage"—slaves running away to hide in the mountains or forests, then conducting raids, coming at night to burn the plantations and poison or kill their masters.

A great leader, in the person of Toussaint Louverture, emerged to organize the slaves into a formidable army. From 1791 to 1800, Toussaint pitted the French, Spanish, and English against one another, managing to eliminate all his enemies until he was the only power left in Saint-Domingue. In 1801, he proclaimed himself governor of the colony, and a constitution was drawn that declared Saint-Domingue an autonomous French possession where slavery was abolished.

Napoleon tried unsuccessfully to seize control of Saint-Domingue; in 1803, to complete their plan of freeing the country from any white domination and a possible return of the French, one of Toussaint Louverture’s chief lieutenants, Jean Jacques Dessalines, ordered the killing of all French remaining on the island. Internationally, Saint-Domingue was ostracized; they had no diplomatic relations with any of the European countries or the United States.

Saint-Domingue thus became the world’s first independent black republic on January 1, 1804. In honor of the memory of the natives who had been massacred by the Spanish, the people renamed the island by its original Taíno name, Ayiti, or Haiti, which means "high land," "high ground," or "mountainous land."

Freedom to the Haitians, unfortunately, meant freedom from work and a return to the simple lifestyle they’d been content with in their homeland. It also included the destruction of everything that reminded them of the French—plantations, mansions, sugar mills, irrigation canals—all symbols of European domination.

Haiti is now by far the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

On August 14, 1791, many slave leaders of Haiti held a secret meeting at which they dedicated their country to Satan. Every year since then, witch doctors have met to rededicate the country to Satan, and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—a Roman Catholic priest—renewed the vow in 2004. When the Haitians won their independence from Napoleon’s armies in 1804, they attributed their victory to voodoo.

This native religion of Africa is a system of spirit worship that plays an important part in the poor conditions in Haiti. According to this belief system, everything that happens—good or bad—is at the whim of the spirits. People believe they have no control over their destiny and accept no responsibility for their situation.

In Haiti, witch doctors are relatively wealthy, because they exploit people who come to them with problems, taking all the money they have in exchange for a "cure." Interestingly, many witch doctors believe they cannot be released from their commitments to Satan, yet send their children to learn the Gospel—and Haiti is now the fastest-growing Protestant Christian community in the Western Hemisphere.

Read more about religion in Haiti.

The history of Haiti to be continued….