Arawak

The Arawak of the Guianas, who call themselves Lokono, are the mainland branch of a widely spread language family of the Americas. Arawakan tongues probably formed in the Orinoco valley and spread along the rivers and coasts of northern South America, carrying manioc agriculture, pottery and raised fields.

The Lokono settled the shorelands from the Orinoco delta to the Amazon, while related peoples reached the Caribbean and became the Taíno Columbus met in 1492. Unlike the islanders, they kept Spain at arm's length through the sixteenth century.

In the seventeenth century Dutch and English traders arrived, founding posts such as Essequibo in 1616, and the Lokono built a profitable exchange of cassava, fish and canoes, allying at first with Spain against the Kalina, or Caribs. Their riverside villages joined the colonial Guianas, where Lokono communities kept their language and customs under Dutch and later British rule.