Curacao The Arawak Tribe migrated from the Amazon Basin to the island about 1000 years ago. They hunted, fished, and gathered fruits on the island; they did not build cities or empires. The Arawak name for the island is not known. Explorers from Portugal called the island Curaçao, the Portuguese word for healing or curing.

The Caribbean, Island of Curacao

The Caribbean, Island of Curacao

Dutch Colony Holland is a tiny European country; it’s also called The Netherlands. People from there are Dutch, and their language is called Dutch. The Dutch followed other European homelands in the rush to conquer and colonize islands in the Caribbean. Spanish explorers made Curaçao a colony. They conquered and enslaved the Arawak people. In 1634 it became a colony of The Netherlands. The port of Willemstad became the center of Dutch shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. The island was the base for the Dutch slave trade. Slavery was outlawed in 1863. Curaçao was a Dutch colony until 1954. It became a separate country in 2010, but it is still connected to Holland.

Oil Refinery Oil was discovered in Venezuela in 1914. The next year, the Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell (now called Shell) built a huge oil refinery on Curaçao. The owners thought they could control the island easily, and the new Panama Canal allowed them to ship oil to the west coast of the US.

World War II Led by Adolf Hitler, Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and Holland and France in 1940. Great Britain (also called England or the United Kingdom), led the fight against Nazi Germany. British airplanes, trucks, and tanks needed fuel, and so the oil refinery and port of Curaçao became an important spot. German airplanes attacked from the air, and submarines, called U-boats, took aim at oil tanker ships. German submarines, called U-boats attacked oil tankers to control islands such as Curacao.

Attack on Curacao On February 16, 1942, a German U-boat rose to the surface of the water and fired bombs, called missiles or shells, at the oil refinery in Willemstad. The sound terrified the residents of the island. There were a few Dutch soldiers at the fort near the oil refineries, and they fired on the submarine.

Cay There are 7000 islands in the Caribbean sea. The Arawak word cayo means small island. That word came into Spanish, and then into English as cay. The base of a cay is coral under the sea. Sand is carried by ocean currents on top of the coral and forms an island. Cays change shape and size as the wind and weather move the sand around. They are not permanent land, so they are not shown on maps.

Charlotte Amalie Timothy is from a small port town called Charlotte Amalie on the Caribbean island St. Thomas. Since St. Thomas was a British colony, Timothy speaks a language called Creole English. “You ‘ad a mos’ terrible crack on de ‘ed, bahss.”

Charlotte Amalie

The Cay