When it comes to the above question the answer is at point blank: yes.
This is most evident when we consider what the wider world has to say about the history of the Bahamas. If you were to look up “History and Culture in the Bahamas,” the first result given back to you by any modern search engine would, not only probably be from some American or European travel blog or magazine, but also likely start its “historical accounts” with the arrival of the West Indians, or perhaps Columbus, in other words the arrival of Europeans. This is because unfortunately like many of the countries in the region, to the conquerors go the spoils, and like much of the conquered world, the spoils directly ties into the writing of an areas history on the world stage.
Unfortunately in this case, writing roughly translates to erasing. Very little is known about the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Bahamas. Historians speculate based on some archaeological evidence discovered in the region that likely the people who lived in the Bahamas prior to its enslavement where members of a group of Taino people, referred to as the Lucayans. However, this is about as far as the speculation goes because by the time Columbus has been in the region for about 25 years, the entirety of their population was decimated by disease and enslavement. So is that it? The culture of the Bahamas was just gone? Well yes, sorta… but also not really.
Having run out of the native slaves to complete the labour they required to fund their sugarcane empires, the Europeans “innovated,” they invented this little known process, you may have heard of it, the North Atlantic Slave Trade. So instead of use the natives, who were gone, or at least soon to be, the Europeans in the region merely imported slaves to the area. This had a massive impact on the culture of the region.
So by the turn of the 18th century there were a number of mixing cultures in the Bahamas. Firstly, there were the slaves, brought to the region from places all over Africa, who brought with them hundreds of their own languages, customs, and beliefs. These were mixed, first by those initial slave traders, and then, surprisingly enough, by piracy.
If I asked you where the first functioning Republic in the world was, you’d probably answer America, and you’d be wrong. In fact, republics in practise first originated in the Bahamas, in the port now known as the countries capital, Nassau. As piracy rose in popularity throughout the 17th century Nassau became a safe haven for crews throughout the Caribbean. Now plenty of those pirates were in fact disillusioned sailors from a number of European countries, but in fact the majority where from another, often forgotten group, freed slaves.
Piracy allowed freed slaves equality in many ways. They got equal pay, just as much say as any other, a very ahead of its time system, one that is often forgotten about. But this system allowed for the expedited spread of those hundreds of different African cultures to spread, morph, and solidify themselves in the region, creating the multi-cultured tapestry, that remains in the country until this day.
However, even those are endangered, as tourism spreads throughout the Caribbean, more and more cultures are pushed to the side in order for “less messy” less uncomfortable subjects to be lifted into the spotlight, so that visitors from afar can merely live out their fantasies in the region, far from the “difficulty” of the outside world.
Sources
https://www.iexplore.com/articles/travel-guides/caribbean/bahamas/history-and-culture
https://www.expeditions.com/expedition-stories/stories/lucayans-vanished-indigenous-people-bahamas/#:~:text=The%20Lucayans%20were%20a%20branch,a%20population%20of%20around%2040%2C000.
